Vail, Colorado and Moab, Utah – November 16-18

We left Colorado and knew we wanted to check out Boise, Idaho next. We’ve heard great things and wanted to satisfy our curiosity. We were going to drive through Wyoming to get there, but my family in Highlands Ranch thought going through Utah would be a better way to go. The drive from Denver to Grand Junction, Co was gorgeous. We stopped in to Vail, Co for lunch. The Rocky Mountains were just starting to get some snow which made the mountaintops look incredible. Note: the further we get west the more frustrated I become to find the right words to describe the beauty we are seeing! I used too many of the good words earlier on in the blog :)

I was looking at the map on our drive to Utah and I saw that the town of Moab was close to the interstate we were on. We decided to stop in there for one night at least, b/c Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park were closeby. I had read about Moab in Backpacker magazine a few years back, and remembered wanting to visit there. We got to Arches National park around 2 p.m. and were awed by the enormous sandstone formations that were in front of us. Utah is said to have “Nature’s Skyline.” Instead of skyscrapers lining the sky like in New York, in Utah, the sky is full of these beautiful rocks. We kept driving around and snapping pictures. Around 3 p.m. we started a hike to Delicate Arch, the best-known arch in the park, and perhaps Utah. The views from the short hike of 3 miles were so rewarding. They brought you so high up so you could see how vast the park was. 800,000 people visit Arches a year. There are 700 arches in the park. Of which we saw about FIVE. And we hiked and drove a fair amount in the park. Crazy. It’s the highest concentration of natural arches in the world.

Just goes to show you that going off the itinerary can really pay off!!!!