UTAZ Day 3: Capitol Reef NP

[Author's note: I plan to publish one travel post a day for the next week or so. I know it's a lot of detail, but I don't want to forget a moment and the posts help me when I (1) want something to read when I can't sleep at night; and (2) answer questions when friends ask me about the trip later!]

We woke up in Moab to a great motel breakfast and Streetfighter in the arcade room before packing up and heading out on our scenic drive through Capitol Reef National Park on our way to Escalante where we expected to stay for the next 3 nights (spoiler alert: no).

It's a 2 hour drive to Capitol Reef, our first new National Park of the trip. We had downloaded the GyPSy Guide app before we left the land of hotel wifi and that gave us a great narrated tour that tracks the GPS in your phone. We didn’t have cell service all day so I am SO glad a neighbor told me to download the guide- it was awesome and we learned so much!

Capitol Reef is an often overlooked part of the Mighty Five but having a guide narrating the history and rock formations really added another dimension.

The kids were fascinated by the historical schoolhouse.

We stopped at the Hickman Bridge trailhead. It promised a fun hike with great views and it delivered.

Just 1.8 miles round-trip, with a 400 foot climb in elevation, and you get to hike under a rock bridge!

(I love how the three of them can always be found together. These aren't staged, they're just always in a pack and sit in age order, every time.)

Post-hike, we continued on to the Fruita Orchards which were open for apple picking!

Planted by early settlers, the orchards are now run by the NPS and we got to pick Ginger Gold Apples for $1/lb.

We explored historic Gifford House and bought the last one of their famous apple pies.

After collecting our new passport stamp we continued on to several viewpoints, including Gooseneck and Panorama (Gooseneck was our favorite).

Escalante and the scenic highway is a masterpiece itself. Spectacular views, sheer cliffs, amazing colors… it was wonderful.

We got to Escalante and pulled up to our much anticipated yurt (full kitchen, master bedroom, and a loft for the kids- it was to be glamping at its finest) only to find they’d made a mistake in our reservation and thought we were coming August 6th. They were booked solid so we called our Zion hotel, bumped up our reservation, decided to backtrack to Escalante in 3 days, got a free dinner from the very apologetic yurt owners, and set out on another 2.5 hour drive west.

As noted earlier, this is when I bravely took took the wheel and played chicken with a cow. Then, to continue to adventure, we made it to Zion in pitch black darkness only to discover we had no cell service and our GPS was confused. It seemed to seemed to be directing us through the scenic drive, so we (I!) slowly drove through the park, through long tunnels and tight switchbacks, sweating through my shirt and hoping we wouldn’t reach the end and have to turn around. But we didn’t! At 10 pm we checked into a gorgeous upgraded hotel suite with fireplace and giant jacuzzi tub where I immediately settled in.

To liven up the otherwise dull evening a live tarantula was waiting for us on the path to our room. The kids named him Tony and were sad when he was gone in the morning.

James and I got to sleep in our own room while the kids were in the living room. In the morning James walked to the nearby market and made breakfast in our full kitchen while I called our canyoneering company to try to rebook our rapelling tour that was now going to be on a day we'd be back in Escalante. I'd heard a lot about the crowds at the park and especially the shuttle station, so I didn't love lingering around the hotel room waiting to refigure things, but it turned out perfectly and we set out for the Narrows about 10 a.m. on what would be my favorite day of the whole trip.

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.

UTAZ Road Trip: Planning & Logistics

I have been planning this trip in some part since 2016 when we did our first Utah trip to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Moab.

I knew we wanted to continue with the rest of the Mighty Five, but wanted to wait until our kids were a little older so we could do some of their most iconic hikes and this plan worked out perfectly. I'm so glad we already did Moab, Arches, and Canyonlands- it allowed us to start there with only one night as opposed to the 5-6 we'd otherwise need. Plus, doing Arches and Canyonlands with young kids was great- the hikes are fairly short and it's a lot of lookout points and exploring; whereas Zion and Escalante involved much longer/steeper hikes we couldn't have done with our baby Cora in her backpack and an enthusiastic but short-legged 5-year-old Claire.

When I plan our trips I usually make a basic itinerary based on driving time, stops, lodging, and some bullet point highlights of what we might do there. I'm all for flexibility once we arrive, and I will take a Park Ranger's recommendation over anything I've researched, but I like having an idea of what the notable things to do/see are, so if we miss them, it's on purpose, and not because we didn't know they were there.

(Abbreviated version of our itinerary abvoe; the one I printed out and brought with me had more details on the hikes and our meal plans for each day, like the line below.)

I keep a document on my computer and add to it as I have time to google some travel blogs or reviews. I also keep a packing list with things I've read or recommendations from others.

In the end I brought everything on there and we used and/or were glad for it all. The kids all got their own hydration backpacks for Easter and that was so great. These hikes were HOT and long and there is no way our old practice of letting the kids drink off ours would have worked.

This trip involved a lot of food packing- we had plans to make our lunches in the car/lodging each day to eat on the drive or while on a hike. I also planned to make dinner in any of our rooms with kitchens like Cable Mountain Lodge and our Yurt. I also knew we'd be in pretty small towns with pretty small grocery stores (SO small; I actually overestimated their size and stock) so whatever I could bring from home I should. Then there was the complicating factor of it being over 100 degrees in many places we were driving to, so all food items had to be something that wouldn't melt if it had to sit in the car during a hike between lodging locations. The small white bin is the one that goes in the main part of the car with that day's; the other two are basically mobile pantries with ingredients, kitchen tools, and my electric kettle.

And finally, we had the shoes. So many shoes. We needed hiking shoes (and/or the kids' regular athletic shoes), an old pair of hiking or athletic shoes to be worn once during The Narrows, water sandals for our hike to/in a water fall, and some sort of flip flop or sandal to throw on as needed when not hiking.

But really, compared to packing for our usual Christmas ski road trips, this was nothing. The kids clothes were in a big old swimming duffel bag with their packing cubes, I had a small suitcase, James had a small duffel, our toiletries were in a bag, and everything else was food or shoes in their respective bins. It worked great, even with all the lodging changes.

The kids were responsible for packing their own backpacks of entertainment. We typically do hour-long cycles on and then off electronics, with books or coloring to fill the kindle-gaps. This time we did audio books for the first time- listening to Harry Potter books 1 and 2 - and that was a huge hit. Particularly since once we crossed into Utah on Day 2 we didn't allow electronics again until the long drive home on Day 11. Cora had some questions about that...

All the driving went smoothly and the views through nearly all of Utah were just incredible. We had one mishap when we got to Escalante on Day 3 and discovered they'd mixed-up our reservation and thought we were coming on the day we were supposed to leave. They were completely booked and so apologetic. Luckily we were able to bump up our Zion reservation (to a bigger, nicer suite that was completely worth the extra $30/night) and they comped us dinner in town while I re-worked our itinerary.

We had to drive 2.5 more hours to get to Zion, hours I gallantly volunteered to do because James falls asleep when driving after he eats and he'd already driven every mile of the trip so far. Things went pretty well until a cow decided to walk across the highway and pause to stare at me as I slammed on our brakes to avoid hitting it. Children screamed, items were thrown around the car's interior, and the cow stood placidly, staring me directly in the eyes as I came to a complete stop and then slowly drove around him.

So that was exciting. Otherwise, I rode shot-gun and James drove 3,153 miles and no cows were harmed on any of them.

I thought I'd do a little link/gear round-up here. For the most part, you don't need a lot of special gear to go hiking. We are hotel/vrbo people and not campers, so the gear is pretty minimal, but here are some things I love:

My Hiking Backpack: after years of using an old North Face backpack I bought in law school and then a small hydration pack from Costco, I finally bought a real day hiking backpack at the REI sale and I LOVE it. It fits me perfectly, holds a 3L hydration pouch, has the perfect number of pockets, and clips together at the hips and chest for perfect support.

Hiking Shoes: You don't have to have hiking shoes, and the kids used running shoes, but the extra grip and support is really nice, especially for some of our more intense hikes. I oderered these on sale at Merrell and I absolutely love them. Rainbow colors, fantastic fit- they made me smile everytime I looked down at my toes (which was a lot, the ground was uneven most of the time).

Athletic Clothes: I always wear t-shirts over tanks for better sun protection. I like these tees from Target and the two I own were the first things I wore again whenever I was able to do wash. For bottoms, I have some great hiking pants, but it was so hot I either wore my Lulu running shorts or leggings with side pockets to hold my phone (which I used as my camera). Everyone got a pair of wool socks for the Narrows (and any other hikes, but especially the Narrows to prevent chafing in the water) and I loved my Smartwool and Wrightsocks best.

Hats!: I wore this hat the most because it was light, covered the top of my head, stayed on even in the wind (which my old hiking hat did NOT).

Hiking Poles: We'd never used these before, but they were strongly recommended for the Narrows (and now having done the hike, I'd say ESSENTIAL for the Narrows). I bought these TrailBuddy Trekking Poles and they were great. I could break them down and clip them onto a special cord of my new hiking backpack so they were out of the way, and then use and extend them when needed. We didn't use them for any other hikes besides the Narrows, but could definitely see ourselves doing so in the future, so I'm gald we have them.

Microfiber Towels: I bought 3 of these years ago for one of our beach trips and we've used them on nearly every vacation since. They pack up so small, super absorbent, and dry quickly. We always had one or two in our hiking backpacks and used them frequently for various reasons.

On the electronic side of things, I used the Gaia Earth app to download trail maps offline (we didn't have cell service almost anywhere we went, so don't count on being able to access google maps or the internet) and the GyPSy Guide app to talk us through several of the parks.

Mostly the packing was putting together things we already own - first aid kit items in an old Clinique bonus bag, flashlights, our microfiber towels, dry bag, and LOTS of sunscreen. In the end I feel like we had everything we needed and nothing we didn't use!

Let the adventuring begin!