Remember how we were going to go with our “bubble family” to Moab to hike and hang out at the end of a shitty 2020. And with hospitals being full and beyond with suffering COVID patients at the time, we felt it would be irresponsible to travel and hike, even in an isolated way, and so like nearly everything else that year, the trip got canceled. Well, this year we finally got to go.

Loving each other for warmth – Balanced Rock in Arches NP.

The kids get a full week off for Thanksgiving, so we flew to Salt Lake City and drove nearly four hours from there to Moab, UT. It was afternoon when we landed, but the sun sets pretty early there this time of year, so we experienced most of the scenic drive between the two cities in the dark. After a stop in Provo for dinner at J’Dawgs and a bracing cold pit stop en route, we finally rolled into Moab just shy of 10 o’clock, Mountain Standard Time.

A word about our hotel. We stayed at a Homewood Suites right in town. It was nothing fancy but it suited our needs almost perfectly. They started serving a hot breakfast at 6:00. They had an indoor pool. Our fairly large room featured a small kitchen, and the kids got to sleep in bunk beds. Also, there was a really nice doughnut shop across the street, and the main part of town was an easy walk away.

Arches National Park was maybe a 10-12 minute drive away from us, so that’s where we started our adventure the next day. Maya is in fourth grade this year, so we took advantage of the Every Kid Outdoors program. I had filled out the form and procured a paper pass while we were still in Austin. At the entrance to Arches, we traded it for a nice plastic pass that Maya can wear on a lanyard.

We started slow with a quick walk to Balanced Rock. It was a brisk 18 degrees F out at the time, and the kids weren’t super impressed with that part. As soon as we were near the rock, Ian went perpendicular to the trail and started scampering around in the sandstone. Being a not-quite-eight-year-old, Ian has no sense of his own mortality, so we discussed the balance between independence and caution. Probably it leaked out of his brain almost faster than it was going in.

Double Arch

We drove out to a series of trails leading to Double Arch, the North and South Windows, and Turret Arch. Here Ian’s impulse to bulldoze ahead of his grown-ups was a little more dangerous. He has an independent streak about a mile wide and he’s really nimble, but those things can get him into positions he can’t easily get out of. Also, he learned that if you climb up something, you also have to climb back down, and believe it or not, down is often scarier. Add to that that his listening parts aren’t always 100% functional, and you have a recipe for a stressful hike.

We spent long enough here that we needed a snack before carrying on, but then we made our way to the easy Sand Dune Arch hike. Even with all the people, this one was almost peaceful. You wander in the shadow of big sandstone fins, and the arch seems almost tucked away and hidden.

Sand Dune Arch

Our snacks were sustaining us, so we chose to head out to see Landscape Arch, the longest arch in North America. The park service’s website tells me that it has a light opening of 306 feet and that the arch is only 6 feet in diameter at its narrowest. In the 90s, a 60-foot-long chunk dropped from the underside of the arch. I read repeatedly in guidebooks for hikes, if you hear loud cracking sounds, get away from the rocks. Noted.

Landscape Arch

By the end of this hike, we were ravenous. There are no services within the park itself, so we drove back into Moab for late lunch / early dinner. We ate at Antica Forma, where we found friendly service and a delicious array of Italian food. Sean and the kids even sprung for dessert.

We ended our day with a walk through Park Avenue. Here, after a decent down stairs, we walked through a valley with sandstone formations towering over us on either side. The sun was setting and the colors, when not in shadow, were warm reddish-brown in the golden light. I think it was along this hike that Maya started deploying what became the signature commentary on this trip. I looked at here at one point and told her she was flirting with disaster. I explained what I meant and then she chuckled and said that no, she was twerking with disaster. She and Ian must have said it to each other a hundred times over the next few days, and they were rarely incorrect.

Sunrise – Turret Arch taken through the North Window

The next day we woke up and headed immediately out the door to catch sunrise. The kids and I puttered around at Double Arch again, while Sean enjoyed a kid-free scramble through the boulders to get sunrise shots of Turret Arch through the North Window opening. When Sean’s in his element, he doesn’t really feel time passing, and so by the time he was done, the kids were cold and grumbling about boredom and hunger. We headed back into town for a late breakfast. Then we loaded up our snacks and water and cameras and headed to the Arches visitor center to check in for our big deal hike of the trip – Fiery Furnace.

There are only two ways to see Fiery Furnace – either via a ranger-led hike or by applying for a permit for a self-guided hike. This is a maze-like hike without any real “trail” through a land of sandstone fins, canyons, and boulders. There’s nothing to guide you but a series of difficult-to-spot arrows, and every piece of literature you encounter will warn you how easy it is to get lost. No maps are provided. Given all this, our original plan had been to take the ranger-guided hike. Alas, that was no longer an option in November.

These are the arrows meant to guide you along one possible route through the Fiery Furnace

I am a trail-hiker, through and through. I’m fine with a difficult trail, a long trail, a stupidly large elevation change, whatever. But I want a trail or series of rock cairns to follow. Even with all this, given the natural beauty we were sure to enjoy and the interesting challenge the hike presented, we eventually decided to give it a go, and I secured our reservation for a permit.

At the Arches visitor’s center, we learned how fragile the environment was. That we must avoid trampling any cryptobiotic crust by staying on rocks or sandy washes. The kids learned, to their delight, about poop bags (no pit toilets in Fiery Furnace, except at the trailhead). The ranger encouraged us, wherever we saw a sign that read, “Dead end,” to follow the path back beyond it because more often than not, it lead to interesting things.

The scenery did not suck

As an added measure of insurance that we’d make it to the end of the trail, we had also purchased an independently produced guide. We both had it loaded on our phones and could kind of match up rock formations and settings from time to time to feel confident we were on a path that would eventually get us through the hike. We have friends who went through without a ranger or a guide, and they did just fine. For us though, I’m glad to have had the comfort of a reference, albeit unofficial, for the hike.

Fiery Furnace hike

We did still explore many of those “dead end” paths – the kids took particular delight in going past the signs. One of the park rules is that no one under 5 is allowed on this hike. I’m completely impressed with any 5 year old that manages this. With our 10 and not quite 8 year old, it was challenging. There were squeezes, scrambles, and crawl-throughs. We sometimes had to jump across gaps between rocks, and you could really tell Maya was hesitant about these. There was at least one point where we kind of walked wedged between two cliff walls – hands on one side, feet on the other. Had it been me and Sean, I think it would have just been physically hard. Making sure the kids got through, from time to time, was a wee bit nerve-wracking. All that said, I’m so glad we went. I’ve never been on a hike quite like it and the scenery was incredible. Plus we’re all really proud of the things we managed to do.

We made it through the Fiery Furnace!

After that crazy hike, four tired and hungry Woodses headed directly to Moab Brewery in our sweaty clothes and red-dusty boots for early dinner. There were giant pretzels, beer cheese, fish and chips, house made root beer, actual beer and a whole lot of talking about our day. My only advice: don’t order the kid-size cheese pizza. Everything we ate was delicious and well-made … except that pizza. Thankfully Ian liked the fried fish in Sean’s and my dishes, so between fried fish and baked pretzel, little dude loaded up.

That pretzel didn’t know what hit it.

We had promised the kids pool time, and so after dinner, that’s were we went. I don’t know where they came up with energy for swimming – I could barely manage to sit upright in a chair to watch them, but they played in the hotel pool for about an hour that evening. I believe they both slept soundly that night though.

The next day, we were finally going to spend a little time at Canyonlands National Park. The closest entrance to Moab is to the Island in the Sky district, so that’s where we went. There are several different districts in the park, none of which are really connected by any roads, and while we wanted to come back another day and visit the Needles district, we simply ran out of time and energy on this vacation.

Carefully peeking through Mesa Arch at Canyonlands NP

“Island in the Sky” is a poetic description of the mesa you’re on, sitting sometimes a thousand feet or more above the surrounding area. Every corner you turn provides some new and breathtaking vista. After stopping by the visitors center and getting the kids passport books stamped (this is a new thing for this trip – we had never fooled with it in the past, but for whatever reason, this time it took the kids’ interest), we headed to the very popular Mesa Arch trail. The kids liked this trail because there were patches of snow right along the path, so they could mess with it a little bit.

We had been in Arches for a couple of days and were well versed in the “no climbing on arches” rule, so it was astonishing to see people lined up along the top of Mesa Arch having their photo taken. Sure enough as we got closer, there was the big sign forbidding people from climbing on the arch. We puttered around here for a while, scrambling around on the rocks, poking at the snow. Ian had been dealing with a loose tooth and every so often would spend a moment fidgeting with it and complaining.

Quick tooth extraction between hikes.

As we made our way back to the car, he went to work wiggling it back and forth, back and forth. As we were sitting in the car after the hike, he finally managed to extract it. There was a bit of blood, but having that pesky tooth out of his mouth was clearly a relief. And we even managed to keep track of it through the rest of our trip so that we could tuck it safely under his Austin pillow for the tooth fairy to find.

Maya’s definitely not a ham. And Sean definitely doesn’t encourage her.

Next we went to the Grand View hike, and the views all along it were indeed grand. The hike is generally flat, but you’re hiking along the top of an incredibly tall and breathtaking cliff. The kids drove us bonkers running up to the edge to look down, heedless of the potential for self destruction. Sean is not a huge fan of heights, so this was particularly stressful for him. He did carefully walk out to a few non-Sean-sanctioned edges and outcroppings to confront his apprehensions head on.

Conquering his fear!

I have no particular issue with heights, but I felt I had to be mindful of not giving the kids too much license for mayhem along the sheer drop-off to the lovely canyon-scarred land below. We were routinely graced with the caw-caw of ravens as we hiked. At the very end when we were nearly back to the car, one raven even went so far as to place himself in the bright sunshine and pose artfully so Sean could photograph him from several fetching angles.

Raven’s fancy

We thought we might hike up Whale Rock after that, however, all of us were still feeling the Fiery Furnace hike in our legs. Even the kids claimed they were too tired, so we drove up to it and observed that yes, indeed it does look whale-like, and then we headed on out of the park.

Rather than add on that last hike, we decided to drive out and see Dead Horse Point State Park instead. This is what I think of as that quintessential Colorado River winding through the sandstone overlook, and I had read that it was nicer at sunset than sunrise, so we saved it for later in the day. I may be wrong, but I think the scenery would have fared better  in morning or even midday light. It was beautiful, to be sure. But more of it was in shadow than I was hoping for. Also, as mentioned, we were all pretty beat, so we didn’t wander far along the trails and whatnot surrounding the area. I’d love to visit again and actually spend some time wandering the trails in the area.

Dead Horse Point

After this, we drove back into town and had Moab Diner for dinner. It was … fine. The kids say they really liked their food. For my part, I felt like we got the clipped, we’re-a-diner-we-gotta-move-quick level of service when there were only a very few occupied tables.

That evening, I availed myself of the hotel’s coin-op washers and dryers to get a midweek load of clothes through. This was our trade off – we packed a bit less so we could wash partway through. And really, we each only brought one good set of hiking layers, so freshening them up partway through was really nice.

Not before we have our coffee, Mom

After a good night’s sleep, we got up early to plow through breakfast and make our way out to Capitol Reef National Park. This was maybe a 2.5 hour drive from Moab, if I’m remembering correctly. We waxed and waned on doing this vs driving down to the Needles district of Canyonlands, but ultimately this won out because … there’s an arch here that you can walk across and we figured the kids would get a kick out of that.

The drive out to the park was predictably beautiful. We wondered endlessly how they decide while parcel of amazing rock formations and beautiful scenery they elect to designate as federal land and which they don’t. We headed straight to the visitor’s center for a passport stamp and a pit stop before heading to the trailhead.

Grand Wash trail

There were two hikes we were considering in Capitol Reef. Cassidy Arch was number one, and if we had time and energy, we’d like to try Hickman Bridge as well. The Cassidy Arch hike starts with a small jaunt down the Grand Wash Trail. This trail is flat and fairly easy and to be honest, the walk through the wash with the canyon walls rising up is absolutely gorgeous … and possibly that was our trouble. Maybe we were so busy looking around, we failed to notice the giant sign for the Cassidy Arch turn off. We essentially walked the whole Grand Wash Trail.

I mean, how could we have missed this sign??

We hoofed it back to the car for a light lunch (read here “glorified snack”) of cheese, crackers, salami, olives, and chocolate before heading right back the way we came, and this time taking the left turn to start our intended hike.

Along the Cassidy Arch trail

The path to Cassidy Arch is a mountain hike. You’re basically heading uphill the whole way, and oh my goodness, was Maya not impressed. We decided that she’s powered by sass and salami and let me tell you, by then she was all outta salami. With the rock cairns guiding us along the route, finding the arch wasn’t too hard. We rested and took turns having our photo taken on it. First I went to make sure everything was ok. I reported back that while you were on the arch, you didn’t really even realize it, so wide and sturdy was its top (which is, I’m sure, why you’re allowed on it).

The kids tried to show me how to dab, but I was hilariously not getting it.

Then I took the kids out there to have their photo taken. They tried to teach me how to dab (they mean the dancing kind of dabbing, just in case there’s any ambiguity for anyone here). There’s photographic evidence that I wasn’t picking up what they were laying down, but honestly that’s almost funnier to me. Non-cool mom being non-cool.

Sean on Cassidy Arch

And finally Sean braved the heights of the arch to have his photo taken as well. After a decent rest, we headed back down. Luckily, down was so much easier and faster that Maya was (mostly) able to keep her sass in check. Once we got back to the car, we decided to drive around the park a bit instead of attempting to squeeze in another hike. As mentioned before, the sun sets early in this part of Utah in November.

Pizzaaaaaaaaaaa

After the long drive back into Moab, we had dinner at Canyon Pizza Co. This was good, solid pizza – one of my favorite meals of the trip. The kids and Sean bought a pint of ice cream to share back at the hotel, and I don’t remember doing much else before we sacked out for the night. Except … it occurred to Sean and I that we should make a plan for Thanksgiving dinner. We had a few no-reservations-allowed ideas, but none of them seemed like things the kids would be into. Eventually we found a thanksgiving buffet at The Cowboy Grill at the Red Cliffs Lodge and managed to secure reservations for a 3 pm meal.

These 12 should have only been 4. They were so good though.

On Thanksgiving morning, we walked across the street and bought a dozen doughnuts from Doughbird. For the record a family of four, at absolute most, needs only one Doughbird doughnut apiece, but we didn’t know that till we ate one. They are really, really spectacular doughnuts and oh my are they filling.

Next, we went out to hike the Delicate Arch trail. It was bright and early when we headed into the park, and at that time, there was only a single car in front of us at the entrance gate – by the time we left at around 11:00, the line was about 42 cars deep, by the kids’ count. Delicate Arch is also sometimes called license plate arch since it’s featured prominently on Utah’s license tags. What isn’t clear from the metal plates is how huge that arch actually is. The NPS website tells me that Delicate Arch has a light opening that is 46 feet high and 32 feet wide, which makes it the largest free-standing arch in the park.

More climbing – those poor, mistreated children.

The trail isn’t easy. We had to do a fair amount of climbing, and when the cold breeze hit us, it took our breath away. There were a few ice patches here and there, but if you aren’t an elementary school kid, they’re easy to avoid. If you *are* an elementary school kid, you will be magnetically drawn to the icy spots, and your brain will encourage you to chisel it with rocks and pretend to ice skate in your hiking boots.

Once we finally got to the arch, it was semi-crowded, but we really didn’t have to wait too long to get our photos under the arch. A nice local family volunteered to photograph us and I feel they did an excellent job. After sitting and having a much-deserved snack, we headed back down. The kids were on fire by this point. Maya and Ian struck off like little darts, weaving well ahead of their grown-ups. Once we couldn’t see them anymore, Sean caught up with them and we regrouped. The walk back though was quite fast.

Woodses at Delicate Arch

We all went back to the hotel to get cleaned up for our Thanksgiving feast. The drive out to that made me wish we had spent a little more time driving around – it was along highway 128, which I believe is considered a scenic byway. The part we drove wound its way along the river and it was absolutely gorgeous. The restaurant was nice enough. Service was perfect, and there was such a good variety of proteins and sides around that the kids could find plenty of things they wanted to eat, even outside the dessert table. Did it compare in quality to a home cooked meal? Probably not. But it was pretty decent for a buffet meal, everyone could find things they wanted to eat, and I didn’t have to clean up afterward.

We let our food digest for a while and started packing up some of our things for the return trip. We took the kids down to have one last long swim in the pool. And once it got dark, we all bundled up and headed back into Arches to the Balanced Rock area to hang out and look at the night sky. This is considered a “dark sky” area, with minimal light pollution.

Night sky at Balanced Rock.

When we looked up, after letting our eyes adjust, the sky was visibly full of stars. We could see the haze of the Milky Way. If we knew more about astronomy, I’ve no doubt we could have picked out planets and constellations. This is not something we get to see in Austin, and for a few precious minutes the kids were entranced. Eventually the cold got to them though and they were begging to go back to the warmth of the car. Sean stayed out a few minutes longer attempting to capture some photos, but we think the wind may have hindered his ability to focus well.

The next day was really nothing but travel. We had a long drive back to Salt Lake City, which, as predicted, was beautiful in the daylight. On the drive in, it would have wow-ed up, getting steadily more interesting as we made our way southward. But after our deep five-day soak in the rugged landscape around Moab, it was hard to get too wound up. Don’t get me wrong, it was still lovely to look at.

Utah state highway sign

I had been trying to work out what Utah’s state highway signs actually were off and on for most of the trip. Igloos didn’t make sense. They didn’t quite look like yurts. I figured it couldn’t possibly be a malformed boob. Finally I looked it up: it’s a beehive, meant to be an image of industriousness, productivity, and self-sufficiency. Now you don’t have to wonder.

I really loved this vacation. And while our kids may have complained about all the hiking, I think they loved it too. They learned what they were capable of. I’m going to pretend that certain members of the family learned the value of a little caution. And of course, hopefully they will remember some of the amazing things they saw. We of course didn’t get to do everything we wanted to do; I think we could easily go again for the same amount of time, repeat nothing, and stay well occupied. But the things we did were incredible, and allowed us to pleasantly disengage from our day to day lives for a while.