The Great Dinosaur Adventure: Day 2, Moab

I’m sure my son with always remember this part of the trip as the day I tortured him. Or tunished him (he couldn’t quite remember the word for punish or the word for torture… so he put them together.) More to come……

The next morning we made our way down to Moab. Criss-crossing back and forth from Colorado, as we needed to at least see what Dinosaur Colorado was all about. (It has all streets named after dinosaurs and a post office and a few people… that’s about it!) We traveled early (I’m always awake when the sun comes up) so I drug my kiddo out to the car and we wound our way through more switchbacks than I have ever seen. The dino dude slept and I jammed to my music and before we knew it we were in the desert.

Now, I’m never one to fuss about climate.

But I really don’t care for the desert lands.

Don’t get me wrong, they are amazingly beautiful. I think everyone should see it.

But the entire time I was there, I felt as if I was going to get stuck there. Without water. And get eaten by lizards.  

When we first pulled into town, I had read about some dinosaur tracks that you could see just a couple miles off the road. Well.. my attempt at that was terrible. We got stuck in sand. It scared the crazy crap out of me… so we left the area without seeing tracks there. Instead we went and had a nice lunch, complete with ice cream and then made a stop at the local fossil shop, where my kiddo walked away with a t-rex tooth and some sort of pretty green rock.  We then were able to find along the road, at some distance Allosaurus tracks on rocks on a cliff.

And then came the torture.

Arches National Park is amazing. But there are even more amazing parts you can see if you do a little hiking. I waited until late afternoon, thinking it would have cooled down for our three mile hike to Delicate Arch.  I was wrong.

I drug my kid through the desert and over rocks against his will. He cried and complained and hung on my arm.  He held his side and drug his legs. He had to sit down every 30 feet in the shade of a sagebrush. I was carrying my camera bag and was not able to carry him too, otherwise I would have.   If you ask him, he will explain to you that is was the most “terrible experience of his life.” (next to the time I made him go to bed at 4:00 in the afternoon for being naughty) Near the top my patience was gone, and I too was near tears thinking that we were never ever going to make it and the lizards might as well have us for dinner.

But after climbing and climbing and giving every drop of water I had to my little dino dude ….we made it.

And it was worth it. These pictures do absolutely no justice to this natural monument.  I was something amazing to see. Even he said it was “beautiful.”

He happily galloped all the way back to the car. I was very proud of him for sticking it out. I was proud of myself for doing it with him.

We celebrated by going to sleep at 8:00.