Spring Break!

I love the little breaks in school! Spring break, fall break, Christmas...It's always fun to do something as a family and have some time off away.  Growing up, we had Spud Harvest (I grew up in spud country Idaho) when all the older kids would go work in the potato fields during the harvest time. We got two whole weeks off, which was nice for us, maybe not so much for our parents who had to put up with us, especially since we didn't work in the spuds.

By high school, it was down to one week instead of two, but still a nice a break. I don't remember doing much traveling or family vacations where I was yonger, we did most of our family trips in the summer.

Now that we have kids, we try to go on vacations as much as possible.  Anytime there is a break, we do something, even if it happens to be projects on the house and taking trip after trip to Lowes to get things that we forgot the first time. Or even the occassional trip to Salt Lake to visit family, or up to Idaho to visit my sister and parents. Our kids love to go visit family, so we try to as often as possible.

We have tried for a couple years to plan a trip to southern Utah to see Arches and Canyonlands and Goblin Valley.  Every other time we tried to plan it, it just ended up being to expensive to stay in hotels and drive for hours to get to where we wanted, or just too much time in the car driving or we just didn't feel good about going (you have to listen to those promptings!).

This year, it just so happened that we felt good about going over spring break and we only had to pay for one hotel night, so much less. We left Thursday night and went into Green River, UT where we stayed overnight and Friday we went to Arches National Park. It is a very amazing place. We have never been before.

The land in Utah is very diverse! One minute you can driving through a big city only to go right into desert land and then immediately into the red rock and back to sage brush and into nice green and trees. It's amazing just how fast it all changes.

We met Mike's brother, who currently lives in Colorado, in Arches and hiked with them to Delicate Arch. First of all, I had never been to Arches so I had no idea what any of the structures are down there or just how big and fun they are. Delicate arch is the one that you see so often on advertising and on the licence plates. It is so much more awesome in real life! We took all of our kids (9 between the two families) and all but 3 of the kids even made the hike all the way up! I am so proud of my kids, they didn't even complain, one even said it was fun and he wanted to do it again. We went at one of the best times. It was around 70* which was perfect for hiking in southern Utah, but we definitely didn't take enough water. We could have used much more!

The hike itself was a pretty steep uphill hike, which didn't fare well for my shins over the next couple of days. I didn't know they could hurt so bad! But we had so much fun being with family and doing something we had never done before. There are so many rock formations in Arches, that we started naming them. It was fun.

This formation is called Balanced Rock, because it looks like it is just balancing there, it is pretty fun, my son thought he could hold it in his hand, since it's so small an all.  :)

This is us in front of the infamous Delicate Arch. It is so much more amazing in real life! Notice all the different land around and the snow capped mountains in the distance...Utah is so beautiful!

And there it is...With my husband, boys, Mike's brother and his kids standing underneath. This was the best hike I have ever been on!

If you decide to go to Arches, which I definitely recommend, be sure to take A LOT of water, you don't want to dehydrate in the desert. Chapstick is a must as well, especially after, our lips were so dry. And LOTS of sunscreen. I put on 30 spf before going on the hike, and still got sunburned. It was still fun though. Cost to get into the park is $10 and that is good for 7 days. So come and go as you would want

We followed our family back to their home in Colorado, about a 2 hour drive, which gave us some time to relax and my kids some time to sleep, and we spent Saturday and Easter Sunday in Colorado with them, which was a lot of fun and more than anything, relaxing! My kids had fun doing an egg hunt at a park and then playing with their cousins that they didn't really know all that well. It was a great time spent with family.

Monday morning we took off and headed back home, but not without stopping at another quick destimation, that was out of our way, but so much fun! Goblin Valley is seriously out in the middle of no where! It is a state park.  It is just a bunch of rock formations that look like tons of goblins spread out in this valley. It is just one huge playground! You can walk down into the valley and run and climb to your hearts content. It is really a fun place for the kids. The day we went, it was cooler than the other days we were gone, it rained on us as we drove home, so there was quite a bit of wind, which made it hard to see much in the blowing sand, and driving through a sand storm is just as bad, or worse, than driving through fog. But it was still a fun adventure. It is a state park and the fee to get in is $7 for the day.

 

 

Here is the fun Goblin Valley! We had tons of fun climbing all over everything. It is very pretty with the dark clouds in the sky. This was one of our favorite spring breaks ever! I hope everyone wants to get out and enjoy the wonderful state of Utah, there is so much beauty all around us!