Moab

Our original plan had been to stay in Kanab for three nights and then meander through Bryce Canyon National Park on our way to Grand Junction.  We quickly realized though, that with 400 miles between Kanab and Grand Junction, we wouldn't have any time to do Bryce because we would have to spend all day driving.  So we opted for two nights in Kanab and then a one night stop in Moab, where we could do either Arches or Canyonland National Park.

Truth: at this point in the trip we were getting kind of National Park-ed Out.  Yes, they were all amazing, but one does develop a kind of fatigue.  So by the time we were actually heading to Moab, we were very much on the fence about whether we would see the parks at all (which greatly played in our favor in the end).  

It was a long drive from Kanab to Moab, made seemingly longer by how completely empty Utah was.  It had seemed fairly populated down in the south, and then all of a sudden we saw the sign "No Services, Next 110 Miles."  And they weren't kidding.  There were barely any exits or roads, let alone services.  We might as well have been driving on Mars.

Don't let the greenery fool you.  I practically expected the Mars rover to roll on by. 

We were pretty glad to reenter civilization, even thought there wasn't that much of it until we were right up on Moab, which was an adorable little town.  It reminded me of a mini Boulder, CO.  

We pulled into the KOA for our last camping night, which had an awesome view and, perhaps most awesomely, private bathrooms.  That's pretty much unheard of at campgrounds.

It was my birthday, so I tasked Pete with making dinner while I took the kids to the pool (he did great).  And then we decided that we should do Arches that night so we didn't have to deal with trying to visit whilst pulling the camper behind us the next day.  (This ended up being a very good choice because the next day was hot.  Like inside of an oven hot.  We couldn't have walked for more than 10 minutes in the completely shadeless park the next day)

Unfortunately, because we hadn't originally planned on Arches and because the Visitor's Center was closed when we got there, we didn't know all that much about the park.  So we just kind of blindly drove in and looked at stuff.

Stuff 

Rocks that looked like people huddled together

More stuff

Yup.  Stuff.

We saw a little trail for "Balanced Rock" so we got out there and strolled around and climbed some stuff and took some pictures before realizing that we were unprepared for even a little time there - it was hot.

Guess how it got it's name?

Jax's contribution to our National Parks.

We drove back to town, stopping for birthday gelatto and (finally!) found a bookstore.

Goodnight, beautiful Utah.

And the next day we packed up the camper for good and made our way to Grand Junction so Pete could head to the airport at 4.45 the next morning.  The four-of-us/national parks/camping portion of our trip was over, and the heading home portion of our trip was about to begin.  The three weeks that we all spent together sped by at lightning pace.