Friday, May 29, 2015

Family Road Trip - Day 1

Saturday, May 23
Miles Traveled: 458
States Visited: Utah, Colorado
Cost of Gas: $2.88 (Moab, UT)
Breakfast: Cereal etc. at home
Lunch: Taco Bell in Payson, UT
Dinner: Wendy's in Moab, UT (twice as expensive as Ogden Wendy's)
Sites Visited: Payson Temple, Delicate Arch
Lodging: Days Inn of Cortez, Colorado

(Since we haven't had a lot of time to blog yet on this trip, I'm going to just post an outline of where we have been with some statistics, and Edith can come back and fill in the details later.  She's better at that anyway.)

School ended on Friday. We packed and cleaned Friday night, and left our house about 9:15 in the morning on Saturday. We wore our church clothes because we had this idea that we could go through the Payson Temple open house even though we didn't have tickets, and even though it was the last day of the open house. And we could have, but it would have taken 2 and 1/2 hours of waiting in the no ticket line. Apparently there are a lot of procrastinators just like us!
So we decided that we'd just take pictures outside. Anika says it is her favorite temple of them all.


After the temple, we stopped for lunch at Taco Bell where we also changed into hiking clothes. Then we drove to Arches National Park. As we were driving into the park we realized we didn't have enough gas to make it all the way to the trail head for Delicate Arch. So I dropped everyone else off for a different hike and drove back out of the park and into Moab for gas. The traffic going into Moab was bad, but getting back went super fast.
Rosalie had been sick the whole last week of school but was feeling better, aside from persistent boogers. Unfortunately, Meredith was now feeling sick herself. We basically dragged her up the mountain while she protested that her legs were breaking.
The weather was chilly and occasionally rainy, which I prefer to a hike in the heat.
The landscape was beautiful. Meri and Rosie were cold and unimpressed and wanted to leave as soon as we arrived at Delicate Arch.
It was a lot faster and easier on the way down, of course.

We had originally thought we might camp or stay in a hotel close to Moab, but we accidentally picked the busiest weekend of the year--Memorial Day--so we instead we drove to Cortez, Colorado. Just as we were arriving we could hear a rattle in the engine that sounded ominous--turns out we were completely out of oil, but I had been worried that might happen, so we had some with us and we saved it from seizing. I had taken it in for an oil change and inspection before we left, but now we realized we'd have to check it more often.

We checked in to our seedy little motel room about 11:30 and were asleep as fast as we could--the end of the first very long day.

2 comments:

JennyHP said...

I stayed in that Day's Inn! (with Mom, en route to Leo's Mom's funeral last year).

PhilHale said...

The picture of all of you under Delicate Arch is awe-inspiring! Good for all you great hikers!