More hiking and more heat

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Another hot one in the desert. Today we let the kids go off schedule, and swim first then tour the park. We usually use swimming as a way of "motivating them" to do the things we want to do during the day, but today we were more flexible. It was good because it was hot already in the morning. Today was declared "sarong day", and Elise, Simone and I started the day off wearing sarongs.

We decided to tour Canyonlands National Park today. Canyonlands is the largest National Park in Utah, but also is the least family friendly. It is a large Mesa, that came up out of the ground but was cut by two rivers and is divided up into three areas….Island in the Sky District, Needles district and the Maze. You can only travel Island in the Sky by car. We stopped by the Visitor Center and the kids signed up for the Junior Ranger Program. We then stopped at a variety of lookouts, as you really can’t hike into Canyonlands very easily with small children We did hike to Mesa Arch, the largest arch and one of the most photographed arches in all of Utah. The hike was .5 miles each way and truthfully, the kids were done after that. They were hot.

We stopped to have lunch, and to fill out their ranger booklets. Finally, back to the Visitor Center where we ran into the people from New Jersey again. Joe remarked about their thick accent to me later on....then he reminded me that I used to talk like that.

Once we got home, Joe went off on his own to Slick Rock Mountain Biking Trail. It is supposedly a famous mountain biking trail, but there are no signs and the directions to get there are sketchy. It was extremely hard, jarring, and scarey…and that was all in the 2.3 mile practice loop. Joe biked with two Brits on the main loop for some time after doing the practice loop on his own and arrived home tired, dirty and 4 hours later. He loved it.

Tomorrow we are off to Bryce Canyon. I think everyone is looking forward to landing in a permanent home in California soon. Joe and I are talking about shortening the trip a little. This is also likely because we just received notice that our campground at Grand Canyon will be under construction from 11pm to 6 am the days we will be there. Funny, that made me cancel our reservations. We will probably only stop there for 1 day or so now, and will be at the South Rim instead..

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