Spring Break - Arches National Park, Utah

This is pretty representative of our time in the National Park!

We drove from Grand Junction to Arches National Park, in Utah.  It was only a few hours down the road, and the landscape changed dramatically from mountains to red desert, but still with heaps of rocky outcrops.  Arches National Park has the largest concentration of sandstone arches found anywhere in the world, with over 2,500 arches found and recorded in the National Park. The sandstone arches, towers and other shapes are a result of water carving, chiselling and cracking the rock.  They are constantly changing as a result of erosion, and only a few years ago a piece of one of the arches fell away, and some tourists who were standing close by, though fortunately not too close, recorded it on video! 

The Three Gossips

We got the Junior Rangers booklet from the Visitors Centre for the boy’s to complete; as well as some water which is tapped from an underground spring, and headed off on the drive through the park.  The National Parks promote water conservation, and also refilling a reusable water bottle. It is really cheap to buy bottled water in the supermarkets – like $3 for a pack of 24, six hundred millilitre bottles, so a lot of people drink bottled water.  It is interesting to observe them trying to change habits, and behaviours!

Balanced Rock

One of the first, and my favourite rock formations was The Three Gossips.  They are pretty cool, and you can see them from the edge of the road.  Next on our drive, we saw Balanced Rock, which pretty much speaks for itself!  We only had a few hours in the park, as it was only a stop off on our way to Monument Valley, so we decided to walk to Delicate Arch, which is one of the most famous arches in the park.  We had lunch before we started, and headed off on our hike.  It was a 3 mile, ‘strenuous hike’ (we read later!). 

We had just started on the first bit, which is a well -defined trail, when Ryan asked why we had to do this walk, as he had done it yesterday, and had seen it all before!  It was going to be a long week, if every National Park looked the same to them J.The boys all did really well, as the trail disappeared, and we then crossed over some slick rock.  We had plenty of water, but there was not much shade on the walk – but Quinn managed to find some, to have a little rest! 

The trail climbs steadily, and levels out toward the top of the rock face, before you get to Delicate Arch.  It is an amazing view, but a bit nerve wracking with three boys who climb like mountain goats, and no edges on the side of the trails, only a sheer drop! However, we all made it up and back safely – though Quinn did get a ride on Phil’s shoulders on the way down. 

We saw a little squirrel up near the Arch, (which is what Quinn is pointing at, in the photo above)and the boys were fascinated, as they are when we see the ones in the backyard at Castle Rock.  They were really friendly, and obviously very familiar with people climbing past every day – I expect that they might be there for any crumbs they can get from when people stop to snack, when they reach the Arch.

We had a lovely warm, sunny day to visit Arches National Park, and it was a beautiful park with some amazing sights to see!  There are a lot more Rock formations, including the Devils Garden Area, which we did not have time to go and see.  You could spend days here, and still not see it all, but we had a great time anyway, and were really pleased that we stopped in at Arches.  The boys got their Junior Ranger badge here too, so began their collection!

Here are a few more pictures we took at Arches.  It is pretty unique, and very pretty to see.  And a photo of me, just to prove that I was there too!

Snack once we reached the Arch

Boys, "Sitting on top of the World" at a little arch before the big one

Love the snow capped peaks behind the red, rocky outcrop

Another Arch

Petrified Dunes

 

 

 

 

Spring Break - Grand Junction

 On Saturday, we went to the Math & Science Museum in Grand Junction.  It had gotten rave reviews on different websites I had looked up for things to do, so I was keen to go and have a look.  We put the address into the GPS, and it took us to what looked like a really dodgy part of town.  We were driving past houses with bits of motorbikes and other bits of steel in their yards, and cars up on bricks.  The John McConnell Math & Science Centre was set up in part of an Elementary School.  We ended up spending a good few hours there, and it was

lots of fun for everyone.  It was very hands on – the first station was a bucket full of bubble solution, and it had a three dimensional shape in it.  When you winched it up, and put a straw inside it to blow a bubble, the bubble took the shape of whatever it was in – inside a cube, you got a cube, and inside a pyramid, the bubble was the shape of a pyramid.  You can see the other pictures show a ball that Ryan made from different shapes, a Roman Arch that Luke assembled from blocks, and Quinn looking through ‘fly goggles’ which showed him how the world looks to a fly, through their numerous lenses. Phil and I had a great time as well, and I learnt things! There was a bike which you pedalled, a kaleidoscope of mirrors, which was lots of fun, a vortex which you threw a penny in, and timed how long it took to get to the bottom, as well as many other exhibits.

We had some lunch and Candice called to say that a hike she had been planning on doing that afternoon had been called off, as it had just started to snow out at Palisades.  It was only a small snow shower, and by the time we got out there, there was not much sign of it.  It was nice to catch up with Candice, who is on exchange here from Gippsland, Victoria, and teaching at an elementary school in Grand Junction.  Phil enjoyed talking to someone else about the exchange, and the differences in the teaching between Australia and the USA.  Candice is

staying in a 3 bedroom semi, so there was plenty of room for us to stay. She headed off on Sunday, as she was travelling to New Orleans for Spring Break, with another Aussie exchange person based in Denver.

On Sunday, we dropped Candice into the train station in Grand Junction, and then we went on to Colorado National Monument.  This was our first visit to a National Park, and we were introduced to the Junior Ranger program.  At each of the National Parks we visited, they have an activity book for kids aged about 3-12 years.  It teaches them about the park, gives them

things to look for, draw and focus on, and at the end they get a badge. The boys really enjoyed it, and we had to identify certain plants, and draw pictures. It was fun, and they were very pleased with their badges.  

We only walked a trail about a mile long, but as you can imagine, it took us quite some time with all the stops to check out plants, take photos, and encourage little people to keep walking!  The scenery was amazing, and it was a beautiful clear day, but freezing winds!  The boys’ decided that, ‘it is not cold’ – I am sick of explaining that at 30 degrees, it literally is freezing, and that it is cold.  I just tell them now if they get sick, I am not taking them to hospital (the kind, caring mother that I am).  So you can see in the photos, they all have their hoods on, and Quinn has his grumpy face, in all the photos.  That was because he didn’t want to walk, which was pretty unfortunate, as there was no other way to get back to the car!

 It was nice to walk around the National Park, although it was really cold.  It had a really good visitor centre, which showed a movie which told of how the rock formations came into existence over millions of years, and how the road was built to get up and into the Monument, over 100 years ago.  It was an interesting story, though one that was to be repeated throughout the week of our Spring break tour.  The park is over 23,000 acres, so after our short walk we got back in the car, and saw the rest of it by driving around, and stopping at lookouts.

 

Once we got out of the park, we found the boys favourite - a bike track! There were lots of kids riding around the track, and some of them were only around Quinn's age.  You can see one guy here 'got air'.  It was very important that I got this shot!  We spent ages sitting here, watching them go around the bike track.  The boys were only sorry that they didn't have their bikes, so that they could have had a go :)