After our second night in Moab, we packed up and headed south to Natural Bridges National Monument, which is the first park in the world to be registered as an International Dark Sky Park. That means it is dark out here at night. Dark. So why did we pick this park? Because Mike has a huge telescope, of course!
Of course, it was overcast that night.
Curses! Foiled again!
Anyway, we had fun. We drove through the park and hiked down to the three main bridges: Sipapu Bridge (“the place of emergence” in Hopi).
Kachina Bridge (“dancer”):
And Owachomo Bridge (“rock mounds”):
Admired the local flora and fauna.
Then drove out of the park and took off on a dirt road, finding a site on the BLM land with an established fire pit, and nothing around us but trees, rocks, and sky.
I had two big hopes for this camping trip: 1. That we would be able to spend quality time together as a family, and 2. That the kids would get out and explore nature and love it.
We didn’t really have an opportunity at our first campsite to explore nature, but we did here. As soon as we had pulled up to the site and started unloading and setting up camp, Alex and Evelyn took off into the woods on an exploratory hike. Our rules were that they had to stay together and they had to stay within earshot.
They followed those rules very well at first, hiking around, finding flowers and bugs, digging holes, and getting awesome dirty ... but later, we called their names and received no reply. After several calls of increasing volume, Mike took off running and I stayed with Sweet Pea and tried not to panic.
He found them fairly quickly, but they were both far from camp, and they had separated.
I think they were scared enough to have learned their lesson, but we made sure to drive the point home. They were grounded to the camp for the rest of the evening, until we all went out for a hike together after dinner. Then both of them were so excited to show us where they had gone earlier.
Alex wanted to keep hiking higher and higher, “Up and up!”, but the setting sun chased us back down to camp and we finally got to introduce them to one of the highlights of camping.
S’mores.
