The next day we drove back into Arches to do some smaller hikes - after yesterday's 6.5 miles of hiking, none of us felt very adventurous, & there were definitely some bad moods to work with. We started at The Windows area to see the North & South Windows & took the primitive trail back,... Continue Reading →

We headed into Arches National Park for a full day of exploring. We were shocked at how dramatic the park is from the second you pull off the highway. The towering red walls & rock formations greet you immediately. As we made our way through the park, we stopped at some of the pull-off viewpoints,... Continue Reading →

On our way to Moab, TJ mentioned that we should weigh our rig sometime soon. I looked up CAT Scale locations, and one popped up at the next exit on the freeway, in the town of Green River. TJ pulled onto the 3-pad scale following the directions online. We weighed just under 25,000 lbs total... Continue Reading →

One of the benefits of staying in Hanksville was that we could do some other cool hikes that we normally wouldn't have stopped for otherwise. Goblin Valley is a state park 30 minutes from Hanksville with crazy goblin-like sandstone formations in what used to be a tidal flat millions of years ago. This area of... Continue Reading →

It's hard to justify a day at home when there's so much to see on this adventure. We woke up feeling like we should go somewhere and do something, squeeze every drop out of this place while we were here - but we were all really tired. We'd hiked 6 miles the day before (and... Continue Reading →

We drove 45 minutes back along Highway 12 to Capitol Reef National Park, which we'd driven through yesterday. We went straight to the Visitor Center, talked to a ranger, got a trail map, & read the information about the park in the center. We took the Scenic Drive through the park to Grand Wash Road... Continue Reading →

Our next stop was Hanksville, UT. It was a midway point between Bryce Canyon & Arches/Moab -- and, it was close to some fun nearby hikes as well. We set out on Highway 12, a route recommended to us by many people for its beauty. It was also the route our RV-safe GPS told us... Continue Reading →

We're developing a system: hike like mad on day 1 & rest the next day. We couldn't quite take a full day off, so we drove a little outside Bryce Canyon to try the Moss Cave Hike nearby. It's an easy, 1-mile hike, & we got to see a cave with ice stalagmites and a... Continue Reading →

Since the crowds weren't nearly as bad here as Zion, we had a slow morning at home. We drove 2 miles into the park & parked at Sunrise Point. Our plan was to hike down into the amphitheater today, so we started out on the Queen's Garden Trail & quickly descended. The trail felt somewhat... Continue Reading →

The trip from Zion to Bryce was a quick 2.5 hours (I didn't even have to pack snacks!). TJ & I both remembered how stunned we were at Utah's beauty when we moved to CA, & we got to be stunned all over again today, only this time with the kids. Thankfully, before we left,... Continue Reading →