All right. Now that most of the chaos of Christmas is over – more on that later – I am officially writing a brief post on our babymoon. (editor’s note: this is not brief)
And since I really don’t want to spend the time reducing photo sizes and posting them, I’m providing a link to view our (condensed) photos of the trip. As usual, we took WAY too many. But these capture the main highlights. So enjoy!
The road trip itself was great – the 6-hour drive was totally doable with all my pillows and worked out better than I expected. No need for excessive rest stops or anything. And of course I ate my standard Cinnamon Bears, a staple for every road trip.
We arrived at our hotel in Moab in the early evening and then we went out for a nice classy dinner at Pizza Hut for some comfort food. (I had a craving, okay?) Afterward, we relaxed at the hotel on our KING SIZE BED (one of the best parts of the trip) and had our own personal Christmas party with the gifts we’d bought for each other. It was very fun and Ryan surprised me with some additional gift cards to my favorite places – Starbucks and Panera. We followed our party with a flick…good ole’ Titanic. I will never stop loving that movie I don’t think. I’m a sucker for any period-style movie done well (think Notebook, Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken, Far and Away, etc.)
The next day we went up the road to Arches NP, just outside the city. Even though it was overcast and a little chillier than we’d expected based on our weather.com research, it was still gorgeous! In fact, the haze and fog made for some beautiful, moody atmospheric views and sometimes made us feel like we were walking on the clouds. We first stopped at the Visitor’s Center to get a stamp in our passport (yep, we’re the nerds that have a National Park passport book…and it is great). Then we took the road to the very north end of the park, as recommended by the ranger, to do our day hike in the Devil’s Garden. And wouldn’t you know, it turned out to be just that…
Don’t get me wrong…the hike started off really great. Without going into detail about all the GOOD stuff (the bad stuff is more interesting), we basically hiked to and saw several amazing rock formations that, as I said before, looked very cool with the haze. The views were surreal and the backdrops looked fake. We hiked up the rocks and across ridge lines to get to the major arches and then that’s where our hike went downhill…
After reaching the last “big” one, Double O Arch, we questioned whether or not to go back the way we came, or continue on the trail looping around the garden. Since I was still game, I thought we may as well keep going since we were there already and didn’t want to miss anything cool. So off we headed on the trail marked “primitive” and “difficult.” Hmm…not the best decision we’ve ever made.
Basically what happened was that the trail was totally fine for the first mile or so. Then all of a sudden we were standing in a steep, narrow crevice with no where else to turn and we would basically have to balance precariously and rock scramble to get down. Could that really have been the right path? Probably not, but we didn’t see any other promising paths and it didn’t look TOO horrible, so we braved it – me scooting and squatting and squeezing through a tiny crawl space, nearly tumbling forward with every step. Well that was scary enough for me…I was not pleased with the route anymore.
Then, about 15 minutes later we reach another impassable path and were left with two not-so-great choices – either we blaze our own trail and get lost or we continue to follow the cairns that led over a seemingly easy to climb 10′ rock hovering over a pool of water with an unknown depth. Hmm. Not my favorite options seeing as I was already somewhat traumatized from our last experience. But we had to keep going and we didn’t want to risk getting lost, so we chose the latter.
Ryan attempted to cross the pool with no success, so we decided it was rock climbing time yet again…this time we would need good grip and balance in order to not tumble into the water below. I opted to go first so that I wouldn’t be stranded if Ryan went across and I couldn’t make it. Turns out, I couldn’t do it. After climbing across part of the way, I could not get enough grip with either my hands or my feet to continue on safely (not to mention I couldn’t balance properly with my giant belly) and at one point would have fallen in if Ryan hadn’t put the tripod out as a foot support. I was so frightened of losing my grip that I was shaking and panicking, not even knowing if I could turn back safely or if I’d be clinging to the side of the rock forever. Thankfully, I was able to back up slowly and jump back down to solid ground. Ryan determined we would, in fact, have to get our feet wet, so he scrambled across a floating log and sure enough, his foot slipped and he ended up in the water which was fortunately, only a foot deep where he fell in. He continued on through the water to the other side, then threw down a second log for me to cross. I was able to quickly scramble along it and make it to the other side without getting wet.
Phew. We were safe. And I was praying that was the last “difficult” part of the trail.
It was. But by that time, I was so exhausted from all the trauma that I was SO done. However, we looked at where we had yet to go and it was far, far away. It looked like miles (in fact, it was at least three). So we trudged on, each step feeling heavier and heavier until FINALLY…after what seemed like hours, we made it back to the car to eat our lunch. Yes, we hiked 6.5 miles, half of the way on a “primitive and difficult” trail without even having lunch (we had snacks, but had we gotten stranded…it would have been bad news). So for a 6.5 month pregnant lady, I think that was quite a feat. Not to mention besides panicking, I really didn’t even complain until the very end when I was beat…another feat in and of itself.
We finished up our time at Arches by just sticking to the viewpoints from the roads, managing to catch a glimpse of the sun setting on the rocks – gorgeous! – and then went back to the hotel to relax and go to bed early. Needless to say, that was probably the best sleep I’ve gotten yet.
The next day we headed 30 miles to Canyonlands NP. This time, we stuck to the roads and the shorter hikes that were under a mile. Still, we got to see some of the most beautiful, jaw-dropping views I’ve ever seen from our vantage points and didn’t feel we missed out on anything by not hiking around. Since nothing crazy happened here, that’s about all I’ll say about that because the photos really do speak for themselves. After the park, we grabbed some lunch downtown Moab with a stop in a couple stores (the only ones that were open) and since we still had most of the afternoon, we went back to Arches to check out some views we missed.
And that was our trip in a nutshell, with a little crazy thrown in the middle. It was a wonderful last adventure trip before baby and it was a great place to go not far from home.
Just a rock climbing mama,
Laura