Fall Break

We had our first official UEA weekend last week and decided to take advantage of it and head south for a vacation. Cody worked half day Thursday and at 2:00pm we were all packed up and headed off to our destination of Bluff, UT. Bluff is a little less than 2 hours away from Moab. It took us about 6 hours to get there including a stop in Moab for dinner. We have a portable DVD player and we were able to set up Cody's laptop so that the kids in the back could watch a movie too. The kids did great!

This is a view of our set up at Sand Island Campground the next morning. Our kids don't ever sleep in so we were eating breakfast every morning by 8:00 and out of their by 9:00.

Our first stop was at Goosenecks State Park. It's pretty amazing what a lot of water and erosion can do over 300 million years. Of course we had to reign the kids in and try to keep them on the inside of the fence. : )

En route to our next stop we drove through the Moki Dugway. You see several of the signs below leading up to it.

And this is what you travel up. The speed limit was 5 miles per hour. Pretty crazy, but some spectacular views.

Our next stop was Natural Bridges National Monument. It has the 2nd largest natural bridge (like an arch) in the world. (The largest bridge is Rainbow Bridge at Lake Powell). We hiked down to this one, Sipapu. The kids did awesome on the hike down and their favorite part were the ladders.

Blake was Mr. Happy baby the whole time. Who wouldn't be, when you get carried everywhere you go?!

Straight up shot of Sipapu Natural Bridge. We drove to the overlooks for the other 2 arches. They are quite impressive with their wingspan and thickness.

After Natural Bridges we realized that we were only 45 minutes away from Lake Powell, so of course we hit the highway and drove to Halls Crossing. My Grandpa had a timeshare on a houseboat their while I was growing up and Cody and I both LOVE Lake Powell and can't wait to buy a boat and make Lake Powell trips one of our family traditions.

We let Tucker and Aubrey search for some seashells before we headed to our next destination.

The channel never looks this great in the summer!

The scenery was amazing on all of our drives and would change as we'd go over each mountain pass. I thought these zigzag patterns were pretty neat as we drove toward Mexican Hat.

This is Mexican Hat. A balanced rock that looks like an upside down sombrero.

After passing Mexican Hat we continued south to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. This was probably one of my top two favorites for the trip. There are land structures jutting out of the desert floor in neat shapes. This one is called Left Mitten and across from it was...

Right Mitten.

We hit it just before evening set in and the colors were pretty sweet. There were formations that looked like elephants, camels and more. It really was spectacular to see, but because it is on the reservation it costs $5 per person.

So all the above was from our first day in/around Bluff. Now we are onto day 2. Saturday morning we headed off to Hovenweep National Monument. It is a site where 11 Indian ruins have been discovered and preserved. There is a walking loop to view them all.

It always makes me wonder about the people that lived in these and the story of their lives. I wish more was known about them.

After Hovenweep we drove through Colorado and New Mexico to reach Four Corners. I have always wanted to visit the one place in the United States where 4 states meet. I was informed before our trip to not expect much from it. It's true, it's out in the middle of nowhere, but still, I had to get a picture of everyone on the spot. I think learning about it in school made me want to visit so badly and now I can say I've been.

Cody didn't want to lay down. He probably wouldn't have even cared about a picture if I didn't make him hold the boys.

Finally, my moment of glory. I am officially in 4 states at the same time. Yeah!

After eating our lunch at Four Corners we drove back to Bluff to the Comb Ridge to view San Juan Hill. This place was made famous by the Hole in the Rock pioneers. It was their last huge struggle to get to Bluff where they were called to settle.

If you enlarge the picture below you can see me in my turquoise shirt climbing up/down the trail. It is amazing that they cut paths through this ridge. The last quarter of the trail to the top was very steep and I'm sure extremely difficult for those pioneers and their wagons, oxen, children, etc.

If you've read the book, The Undaunted, it describes the whole journey of these pioneers. In the book, while they are camped at San Juan Hill, paving a path to travel, some members found an Indian ruin around the corner. We drove around the corner and sure enough their is an awesome Indian Ruin that you can climb to and look around. I've seen a lot of ruins and this was probably the best/most intact one I've ever seen. It's pretty wondrous that it still exists and that they were able to build it up in an alcove to be protected from the elements and enemies.

Petroglyphs are still visible on the walls.

An attempt at a family picture, minus Blake.

After Comb Ridge we headed back to camp to relax and enjoy the evening. The kids had a blast throwing sticks into the river. Tucker even found a snake which completely made his night.

The San Juan River.

 

It was a great trip and luckily our kids did awesome on it. We google mapped everywhere we went when we returned home on Sunday and we drove approximately 20 hours and put 1100 miles on the truck. It was fun to knock off a bunch of things on our vacation to-do list. We saw a part of the state that we had never been to before, were able to utilize our awesome camping trailer and were able to be together as a family.