Trip to Arches

A week ago, we took a trip to Arches National Park. We only camped overnight on Friday, seeing the park on Friday afternoon and Saturday most of the day. However, that turned out to be enough for all of us.
Dinosaur Tracks
On the way there, we stopped to see some dinosaur tracks. These are nine miles south of I-70 on Highway 191. You turn east on a graded road and follow the signs for about two miles. Then you have a short walk to the top of a hill (Copper Ridge). No wonder these weren't found until 1989. The children are each sitting in giant sauropod tracks, maybe made by a Camarasaurus.
Kirk has his hand inside a theropod track, possibly an Allosaurus. It was fun to actually see dinosaur things outside of a museum.
Arches National Park
Our first stop on Friday afternoon was the Windows Arches section of the park.
As we were walking up to see the arches, a German tourist stopped us and asked if he could take a picture of our family. He said he wanted it "to show his brother-in-law." So among his pictures of amazing rock formations, he now has a photo of a Mormon family from Utah.
The sky really was brilliant blue and the rocks really red. But this is what the boys wanted to do:
They just wanted to play in what Edward called "cinnamon sand." They are playing with their little trucks.
The next day we hiked out to Landscape Arch, stopping to see Tunnel Arch and Pine Arch on the way.
Edward was not happy with this 1.9 mile hike. The next week, though, he did 1 mile in 20 minutes around the BYU running track.
We got to Landscape Arch and promptly turned around and went back to the car to eat lunch. It was getting hot (close to 70 degrees), which made us happy we were there in April and not the summer time.
We ended our trip with a visit to the best arch of all, Sand Dune Arch.
It is a tiny, child-sized arch on top of a sand dune, shaded by huge sandstone fins. It is like a huge sandbox.
All the children loved playing in the sand.
Lucy even rolled around in it, just like all the other children were doing. We enjoyed sitting on the cool sand and watching them play. Finally, we had to drag them away and go home, completely covered in sand.