UTAZ Day 2: Moab & Arches NP

Day 2! The hiking and true travel blogging begins. We woke up early in Farmington, NM, a location chosen solely because it was 12.5 hours from Fort Worth and I felt like that was as far as I could make James drive in a day. Plus we'd wake up only 3 hours from Moab and could be on a hike by lunchtime if we wanted. And we did!

We drove straight to the trailhead for Corona Arch - a fitting name for our first hike of this pandemic-rescheduled trip.

Corona Arch is located outside Arches National Park, about 15 minutes outside of Moab, and has a nice trailhead parking area with restrooms for anyone who needs to change their shoes, apply sunscreen, pick out snacks, and fill their water packs with the gallon jugs you bought from Target and kept in the back of your car for a whole trip, refilling them at every water refill station you passed along the way.

It's a pretty easy 3 mile hike, 1.5 miles out and back, to a nice big arch.

(My favorite hiking partner and I under the arch for scale)

It was perfect to get our kids feet wet (or sandy, as it was) and test out our backpacks, hats, and sunscreen.

There's a fun little chains and short ladder section the kids enjoyed,

and of course the boys went way off trail to climb up into a rock cave that was just calling to them.

It was hot, it was sandy, it was sweaty, it was beautiful. It was a perfect preview of the rest of the trip.

Precisely 0.18 miles into the hike Landon- my child who can run 3 miles, swim for 3 hours, and then do both again and still be bouncing off the walls- dramatically declared that we had gone 2 miles.

Luckily he got his hiking legs back quickly because this was one of our easiest and shortest hikes by far.

After Corona we drove into Arches, one of our favorite parks from our trip 5 years ago.

We re-stamped our National Park passport books and proceeded to our very favorite hike from 2016, when a tiny Cora scrambled up the rocks in her tutu.

Double Arch was everything we remembered- a perfect playground built by nature with gorgeous views and secret caves.

Look mom! You can just crawl under this rock to get up!

A no-longer-tutu-clad-but-still-somewhat-small Cora chased a chipmunk through a crevice and then decided to live there. Can you find her?

It was a beautiful day and everything I remember Arches National Park being - gorgeous, rocky, giant in scale, and otherworldly in shape.

We retraced our steps over the rock to the cave bordering the double arches. Claire and Cora had no memory of it from last time and loved exploring the secret little crevices.

This is just one of our favorite things - busy kids, happy parents, everyone tired and sweaty and having fun. Hiking vacations are some of the best vacations.

Next we checked into our adorable vintage motel in Moab, threw our sweaty kids in the pool and our sandy clothes in the washer.

I highly recommend the Moab Expedition Lodge. It's located right on the main road, has queen bunk beds for the kids, a great pool, washer and dryer (we already needed to run a load), great breakfast, free game room, and adorable vintage touches.

The kids, not even remotely tired from hiking, played in the pool for another 2 hours before we forced them out to go get dinner.

I'd made Jambalaya before we left on our trip for us to microwave and eat in our first hotel, so for night 2, still without a kitchen, we followed some great Yelp reviews to Dewey's. Dinner was as delicious as promised and then we walked around to some of the Moab shops to buy stickers for our water bottles and exclaim over tiny things no one needs, another of the kids' favorite activities.

All in all it was a great first day of hiking and a great little visit to a city we enjoyed so much on our trip 5 years ago. If you're visiting Moab for the first time, you'll need way more than one day, but for us it was the perfect touchpoint to launch the rest of our journey through Utah's Mighty Five.