Moab

Friday was the last day of 2nd grade for Elisabeth, and the last day of Primrose for Allison! 

We picked the girls up as soon as school ended and hit the road.  Our destination:  Moab, Utah!

We rented a nice cabin in the LaSal Mountains south of Moab.  This was the view from our front porch:  

We had reservations to go rafting on the Colorado River on Saturday.  It was way too windy, so our trip was canceled.  We quickly figured out Plan B...we rented this thing for 5 hours instead:

We hit the trails and enjoyed the unspoiled beauty of the canyons.  We rode for 61 miles.  The best part was the lovely helmets and goggles we all had to wear!  

We were all covered in red dirt by the time we returned our rental, but we had a blast!

The wind finally calmed down Saturday night.  On Sunday, we had a Jeep reservation but decided to cancel it and go rafting instead since it wasn't windy anymore.  No pictures from the rafting trip (since my camera is not waterproof!) but we rafted about 7 miles down the Colorado River between amazingly beautiful canyons.  Here's a scene of the river that we rafted:

It was a little chilly on the raft -- it was only in the 60's, and a little cloudy when we first started out.  We stopped for a BBQ lunch along the river and then continued on down the river.  About halfway into the trip, we reached a deep part of the river.  The guides invited us to jump in and take a little dip.  A few brave souls from other rafts jumped in and then immediately climbed back out shivering.  Everyone on our raft declined -- except Elisabeth.  Elisabeth asked if she could jump in.  We told her it was too cold and she'd freeze.  She kept pleading and begging (and we kept saying no), and finally she stopped asking and TOLD us, "I'm going in!"  Sure enough, she jumped in the river!  She said the water was FREEZING (we checked online later - the water temperature was 62 degrees) and declared, "That was worth it!"  She said she has no regrets!  We love her sense of adventure!

After rafting, we went to Arches National Park and took in more breathtaking scenery.

 

Next, we stopped by a huge sand dune across the street from Arches National Park so we could climb to the top and then run down:

Monday morning we headed back to Arches National Park to do a little more exploring.  

Then we hit the road and headed home, arriving home around 6pm.  Moab is a beautiful place - I hope we can go back again someday!