288 miles and still in Utah we traded our tent for a hotel room and WiFi. Smaller trails throughout Arches National Park totaled up to about 5 miles of hiking.

We started our day off with a parade of school children hollering on by our tent site – we were up moving and packed about 30 mins earlier than we had planned so headed over to the park to wait in line before it opened.

We got our stamp and trail map and headed off into the park. Although the morning started off cool temperatures rose throughout the day up to about 85 while we were there.

Here are some of our favorite sites along the various hikes we did …

(I made him try to hold it up but I couldn’t back up any more and was already on the ground trying to get it haha, so this is the result.)

We took part of the ‘primitive trail’ which is not as traveled and obvious as the other trails so at some points we questioned if we were going the right way, but there were these small rock piles we kept looking for to know we were in the right path.

There were some tight spaces to get to one of the arches and some we just decided to explore.

To get to the arch in the middle of all these rocks it was purely sand to walk on

Making our way to the ‘broken arch’ we passed a couple volunteers who gave us some fun facts about some plants we passed which were desert roses .. and I didn’t take a picture. Whoops

We took a picture for a couple so we asked them to take ours with the arch … but they forgot to get the arch in the frame (above) so here is Chris with the arch.

Andddd me trying to climb it in these old sneakers

One of our last hikes was a solid incline the whole way to see the ‘delicate arch’ which you can see from a much easier hike and get closer on a hard hike. We chose, ahem Chris chose, this one.

And that folks is the delegate arch……….

In all seriousness it was a good hike and an awesome viewpoint.

Chris told me to try to be serious. Nailed it ..?

We drove the rest of the National Park road and it was 100 times busier than when we got there – in today’s game of beat the bus load.. we won. SUCCESS.

We would say that hike wise these have the most family friendly trails for all ages. The majority are well traveled, some paved, and limited inclines. There are some that would not be ideal for the older crowd, but we certainly saw many giving them a shot.

We headed out of the park and hit the road for Salt Lake City with no plans for the rest of the day!

Gas Stop: Green River, UT $3.29/gal

Hotel living for the next two days folks .. LUXURY! We got to the hotel and did nothing for a couple hours, planning out our next two weeks ahead and booking campsites for the next couple of nights.

Chris picked out the Red Rock Brewery for dinner

Don’t mind all the dead bugs on our windshield hahahah. This is literally 2 days worth we just cleaned it the other day.

Anyway, we got a seat located in the back corner of the Brewery which I loved because it was a great people watching spot and right next to a portion of the actual brewery.

The food was amazing we started off with some baked Italian bread and beer cheese (and fried mozzarella because I’m 12).

The beer cheese was SOO GOOD obviously I am no foodie and can’t even pretend I have a food vocabulary so just trust me when I say it was good and try it if you’re in the area.

Dinner was this delicious warm goat cheese salad with mixed greens and pear. Yum. Chris had a short rib sandwich with sweet potato waffle fries.

He also had one of their house beers and I had the house made cream soda.. much better than the store bought kind.

Way too stuffed for dessert, but we did see a spot we are going to try for dessert tomorrow.

Stay tuned for more adventures of my HUSBAND and I,

JBJ