Arches National Park (July 2017)

We left home yesterday morning and started our month-long drive to take Cierra and Hunter home to North Carolina.  The drive was pretty good except, of course, the Salt Lake City area was pretty congested with trucks passing on the right and the left.  We took Hwy 6 through Price, Utah since it's the most direction road toward Moab and about 40 miles before reaching Arches we saw a lot of pretty intense storms.  I have to say I LOVE a good summer shower.

UT-6 about just before I-70

Our first stop on the trip was Arches National Park.  We arrived at 2:30 pm and went to the Visitor's Center where I stamped my National Passport Book and the kids got their Junior Ranger booklets.  The weather was amazing!  80s and cool with a slight breeze from the storms coming in.  The Visitor's Center wasn't as packed as usual, which made parking the RV easier since we unhitched the truck so we can drive the park easier.

Cierra and Hunter at Arches with Jr. Ranger books in hand.

Because Coco and Chanel are with us on this trip (Roxy stayed home with Scott's mom watching our house), I hiked around Balancing Rock with the kids.

Standing in front of Balancing Rock

Balancing Rock

Walking the trail

Another angle of Balancing Rock

Hunter made a mini cairn

Cierra's obligatory hand stand everywhere we go

Another view of Balancing  Rock

And, yet another.  It's different from every angle!

Finishing up the trail

The kids climbed an old, dead Juniper tree.

Scott hiked with them to Double Arch.  We really wanted to take them to Delicate Arch, but it would have taken more time than we could spare and still get to our campsite in Cortez, Colorado by tonight.

Hunter at Double Arch.

Cierra at Double Arch.  I can't tell if she's tired, grumpy or sick of photos!

Once we were done 2.5 hours later and finished the entire book and getting re-drilled by a park ranger, they received their wooden Jr. Ranger badge.  This booklet was pretty hard because it was a big one.  You had the choice of doing X amount of activities and since the kids wanted their patches AND badges, they opted to do the entire book.  They were a bit disappointed since I assume they would have gotten the same thing for only doing 3 activities in the booklet.  Oh well, at least they learned a lot about Arches National Park, right?

The ranger took a lot of time teaching the kids.

Swearing In Ceremony

Handshakes to Hunter

...and for Cierra

After we left the Visitor's Center, the kids were hanging out with the bronze sculptures of local type animals in this park. 

Here little lizard!

Cierra found another lizard.

The kids with some goats.

We headed out, driving through the whole city of Moab, which is really fun to do...usually, there's a lot of action, but it seemed pretty dead for a Friday afternoon.  Interesting...or lucky.  As we started driving closer to Colorado, those storm clouds were getting more and more intense.  I have to drive between 45-55 mph due to the winds, but we pulled into the Sundance RV Park at about 7:45 pm and pulled right into our space.

Pretty scary storm clouds for miles!

Heavy duty rains!

Once we parked the RV, Scott opened the coach to find water saturating the entire floor of the unit right above the sink due to the heavy rains we went through.  I quickly cleaned up the wet, soaked floor and Scott climbed the top of the unit.  We found out that the leak was coming from the satellite installation we had installed. AND, to make things worse, the crown molding is coming off. Uggh! More problems to get ironed out.  

Water is coming in right about the crown molding!

Pretty bad gap from this water leak!

The entire trip, the breaking system wasn't working so we're hoping someone in Cortez and fix that and now the leak and the crown molding.  Hopefully, very soon, all the kinks will be worked out. I accidentally left my laptop in the bedroom and when Scott closed the slider last night, the laptop was in the path of our sliding bedroom door and it took the door right off.  My bad! The door has already had problems of not staying in place when we drive and now I think we have to replace the whole track.