Dinosaur Trackway

Today we went to see a dinosaur trackway, with footprints of the Brontosaurus and the Allosaurus. 

 

And while this was very cool, I mostly enjoyed watching our free range kids enjoying and exploring life:

 

 

Potash Petroglyphs in Moab

After the dinosaur hunting, we headed over to see some petroglyphs.  I thought these were so incredible:

 

 

And in typical style, the kids (or maybe it was Diana because she is great at that too) found someone who knew lots about this topic and he graciously shared with us:

He shared so many neat things, and the kids soaked it all up.  This has been one of my favorite aspects of going out into the world the way we have, that we have access to so many passionate people "in the field" who share their wisdom with us.  It is such a gift to me.  I rarely remember to ask people if they would allow me to share their pictures on our blog and/or share their names, so I'm glad I remembered to do it today.

Go and take a peek here to learn more about James Q. Jacobs and some of his art, writings, pictures and knowledge on archaeology and anthropology.  Very cool stuff!  Thank you so much, James.  You made the day even better!

Living the life in Utah!

Arches National Park

Today, I finally got to see our travel buddies.  We went to Arches National Park together.  Stunning is the best word I can find to describe this park:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living the life in Utah!

The Crew at Arches

As I said before, we were planning to be in Yellowstone this week.  The weather turned too cold so we had to scramble to make last minute plans.  Nathan is working on a big project and is on a major time crunch.  We don't normally do major time crunches any more.  We had very limited driving time and we don't normally like to travel more than six hour days.  Yet, here we were driving two very long days to drive more miles than we probably have for the past few months!  It was not at all what I wanted to be happening.

Although Nathan says I did way better than he thought I would, I was a little bit grumpy over all of this.  If I had not been so physically beat, I'd have been a lot grumpy.   Then I see and hug these people I so dearly love today, and it suddenly seems worth it.  They had as much, if not more, hassles to get to where we are too.  I hope they felt it was worth it all.

Diana pointed out to me today, that a year ago at this time, we were in Acadia National Park in Maine.  Here we are on the other side of our country seeing this fabulous National Park together.  It is a wonderful thing to be doing these kinds of things together as a family and for our kids to see the world together and building memories together! 

 

 

Idaho to Moab, Utah

Yesterday, we finished our driving in order to get to Moab.  We had planned on a nine hour drive, which is a good three hours longer than we normally ever drive.  It ended up being a thirteen hour drive instead due to traffic.  My back hurt so badly that I slept in the back seat most of the way.  It really did remind us how important it is so go slow and steady when doing this!

It took almost an hour to find our campground once in Moab, because we couldn't see it from the road.  Then we discovered our site (the one and only open one here) was too short.  So we slept in the parking lot of the campground with no hook ups.  Not a huge deal, but also not how we'd prefer to do it. 

We are here though and thrilled to be here.  It appears to be gorgeous here.  I think we'll enjoy our time here very much!

Living the life in Utah!