The Latest Stops on our National Parks Tour

A few weeks ago I mentioned that we are trying to visit several national parks this year while Daisy has the free 4th grade National Parks pass.

(Can I just sat that I really love going back and reading my blog posts about vacations? Can't stop. Won't stop).

Over the weekend, we made it to FIVE National Parks and Monuments, which only required us to drive 1,000 miles and a total of 19 hours in less than three days. But who's counting?

Mesa Verde National Park

We left home at 5:00 in the morning on Friday (because we are crazy like that), and our first stop was the Tamarisk Restaurant in Green River. We've eaten there before and loved having an excuse to go back.

After a fair amount of bathroom pit stops and a quick jaunt into Arches national Park to get some permits for the Fiery Furnace, we made it to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. The park is in the off-season, so they aren't currently doing tours, but we still saw a lot of the sights, just not up close. It would have been cool to do some tours, but not with kids.

It's pretty neat to see the man-made structures that have survived hundreds of years. One pit house dates back to 600 A.D. There's not much to it - it's basically just a hole in the ground, but its pretty amazing that modern man has been able to excavate things like that from so long ago.

I wonder how I would have fared as a cliff dweller. I'm pretty sure I would have plummeted to my death.

I would share more photos of Mesa Verde, but they seriously

all look the same. And the sunlight was so harsh for most

of this trip - it made it hard to get good photos. 

Yucca House National Monument

That night we stayed in a hotel in Cortez, Colorado.

On Saturday we woke up early, packed up our stuff, and headed to Yucca House National Monument. Never heard of it? Yeah... neither had we. And even after googling it and reading a few articles, we're still not really sure what it is.

Are you impressed?

There's a field with some bricks in it. That's about it. As far as we can understand, whatever is there is unexcavated, but it's supposedly a 600 room pueblo.

We knew from Scotty's prior research that Yucca House wasn't going to be a very eventful stop, but we went anyway so our kids could get the stamps in their National Parks passports (the stamps are available at Mesa Verde and not at the actual monument).

Nicky admiring the bricks in his t-shirt and shorts

in 26 degrees (It was so cold at Yucca House).

Four Corners

After we left Yucca House, we went to Four Corners way out in the middle of nowhere. I've always wanted to see Four Corners because of the Simpsons. My expectations were low. I just wanted the photo and the honor of stepping into four states.

As we were leaving Four Corners, Scotty informed me that the monument isn't even in the right place. I feel cheated.

Four Corners also isn't run by the National Parks Service, so we had to pay to get in, but we knew that when we made the decision to go there. The place is laughably unimpressive, and the bathrooms reek to high heaven. But we got our photos! And we totally broke the "three photos only" rule because we could! We pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Hovenweep National Monument

Our next stop was a fun little surprise: Hovenweep National Monument. Like Yucca House, we'd never heard of it. Scotty saw it listed in the kids' National Parks passports. I imagined it being as non-exciting as Yucca House, but it ended up being really cool.

A short hike afforded us the opportunity to see several prehistoric structures. How cool would it have been to stumble across something like that? There's a part of me that wants to be an archaeologist. But there's another part of me that's super non-adventurous and doesn't want to be dirty and gets bored with ancient civilizations.

Natural Bridges National Monument

Believe it or not, we weren't done with our Saturday journey yet.

Last week I took Zoe to the pediatrician, and the doctor had just returned from Mesa Verde. She recommended that we stop at Natural Bridges (again... we'd never heard of it). She showed me some pictures, and I told her we'd look into it. She said she really likes it because it's not very crowded, and it's beautiful.

I didn't think we'd actually make it there because we already had a full itinerary, but when Scotty started researching it, he really wanted to go! And we are so glad we did.

At Natural Bridges, we stopped to see the Sipapu Bridge from the lookout.

It's very hard to see, but this is the view of Sipapu Bridge from

the lookout deck.

Zoomed in a little bit.

It blends in well. 

Then Scotty got the itch to hike to it. We weren't sure if it was a good idea or not because it was a 500 foot descent, and we had four kids, my not-exactly-young step-dad, and my mom who just had a hip replacement earlier this year. But we gave it a try! As we worked our way down into the canyon, I envisioned all sorts of emergency scenarios and tried to calculate how long it would take one of us to hike back out and get help. The nearest cell phone service was about ten miles away. So not scary at all. Eek!

Fortunately, all 8 of us made there and back safely.

The hike was really fun. Our kids do really well on hikes that have a lot of variety in the terrain. This was the perfect hike for them because they got to climb down ladders and stairs. The path alternated between rock and sand, and there was a lot of fun stuff to see.

Stairs

More stairs

An amazing amount of bird poop

Stopping for a break. Might as

well play in the sand.

My mom and step-dad.

We made it to the lower lookout where we had an amazing view of the arch. Scotty and Nicky went down to the very bottom, but I stayed with the girls and my parents because the last stretch was pretty strenuous and involved a lot of slick rock and a very tall, twisty ladder.

Sipapu Bridge.

Shiny-faced hiker.

Twisty ladder at the bottom (if you look closely,

you can see me near the top of the photo

with my arms up - Scotty took this picture from below)

Nicky and Scotty heading down to the arch. This reminds me

of the scene in Lost where the Man in Black takes 

Sawyer down into Jacob's cave.

Sipapu Bridge from below.

This was definitely one of our favorite hikes we've been on.

Arches National Park

After we left Natural Bridges, we drove to Moab where we stayed for the night.

On Sunday morning, we went to Arches National Park and hiked the Fiery Furnace (we did not go with a Ranger). That was a fun adventure. We would have liked to stay in there longer, but the kids were starting to get pretty exhausted, and all they really wanted to do at Arches was play on the big sand hill that's not even in the park.

Entering the Fiery Furnace

Scotty and Nicky. This is the point where we 

turned around and came back. A couple of the

kids were losing steam. 

They were troopers, though, and did pretty well considering what we'd put them through in the previous 48 hours.

Just us. 

Hidden Mickey.

It was really cold on Sunday, so that made things a little tougher, too.

After the Fiery Furnace, we went to Sand Dune Arch and Double Arch - both are really short walks. I hoped to hike to Delicate Arch, but we were running short on time, and the crowds had gotten pretty fierce by the time we got out of the Fiery Furnace.

Since Arches is so accessible to us, we weren't worried about what we didn't get to do or see. We'll go back someday.

Originally we had also planned to go to Canyonlands as well, but since we went to Yucca House, Hovenweep, and Natural Bridges, we had to cut out Canyonlands. That's okay because it's not too far from where we live, and we can easily head down again soon.

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On Sunday afternoon we headed home. We missed out on snow at home and didn't feel bad about it at all!

We had a great time on our trip and saw a lot of things to wonder at, both man-made and natural. We also saw a lot of really ugly, colorless parts of Colorado and Utah. I had to laugh at the signs that said "Welcome to Colorful Colorado" that had no hint of color within miles! 

Scotty is already mapping out our next adventure, and he says this time we're going to need at least eight days and a five-gallon bucket full of money! I guess I better start saving my nickels and dimes!

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A word about the Passports To Your National Parks:

We bought these books when we went to Dinosaur National Monument last year. As you visit National Parks, you can purchase a sticker (or stamp) to put in your book, and you can also stamp the date (known as a "cancellation") in your book. We thought the books would be fun for the kids, and they have been. 

BUT...

My complaint is that they are divided by region, and they only have five pages per region. So we have already filled all the pages for our region, and there are several pages in other regions that we will likely never visit. This bugs me. So now our kids are putting stamps on pages that supposed to be for a different region of the nation. It's just a bad design. 

If I could do it over, I would purchase some nice, spiral notebooks with white, unlined paper (perhaps a sketchbook), and make our own books. Then I would let my kids get the stickers from the places we visit, do their passport cancellations, and pick a postcard to put in the book. 

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Our vacation tradition to help our kids remember the trip and to give them a chance to pick something from the gift shop is to buy each child a postcard and then write about the vacation on the back. Each child has a collection of postcards from our trips, and they love looking through them and reading about our travels.