2022 Senstless Family Road Trip Day 3 Morning - Drive to MOAB and Hike Corona & Pinto Arches.

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Another Summer, Another Epic road trip in the books.

After a great vacation last year, we decided we could do another 10 day, drive across the country cramming in a as much as we could. Spend all day doing stuff, then load into the truck and drive another 4-6 hours... why not!!! I think I spent the entire vacation on almost no sleep and all coffee. I was dehydrated the whole trip since I could never drink enough water while driving and hiking, just coffee!!

• Pre Drive Friday Night to Altoona IA
• Day 1 Drive to Denver Co - Red Rocks Amphitheatre
• Day 3 Part 1 Drive to MOAB, Hike Corona Arch!!

Wake up while the rest of the world sleeps and get your drive on.... again

Honestly it was probably another morning where we left between 4:00 and 4:30. This means I was probably up before 4:00 using the bathroom changing and packing. Didn't take us long to pack but just to get for people through the bathroom does take 15 to 20 minutes, especially when you have to really convince a 9 and 11 year old to wake up and go use it before walking the truck.

It was always my intent the kids will be able to sleep in the back of the truck while going to the next location unfortunately they're not a size where it's quite uncomfortable for them to try to sleep in the back of the truck with vertical seat. It was almost easier when they were booster seats and had a bit more ability to create a recline. They did get a few naps but not as much as I was hoping.

Since we're leaving the Denver area in the pure dark, we got to start driving through the Rocky mountains in the dark. First thing I hit was this long tunnel. It is a pretty sweet tunnel, and I was happy to be the only one in it when we left. We managed to snap a picture, just to remind us of how big the tunnel was.

Driving from Red Rocks to MOAB!!!

The drive from Red Rocks to MOAB was a pretty easy drive considering the prior day. It was probably five to five and a half hours to drive time. Considering it left well before 5:00 we planned on getting there with stops at about 10:00 a.m. this would give us most of the morning to mid afternoon to go for a nice long hike before we had a special activity planned with the kids.

It was another 350 mi, and I think I stopped her fuel twice. Once at the three and a half hour mark, and then right when I hopped off i-70, because I wasn't sure when the next fuel station would be until I got the Moab. Well I didn't need it, I do feel better down at the full tank sometimes.

The one thing that we really noticed while driving was the lack of everything. A lot of the land we drove through was BLM or bureau of Land Management land. There's no houses, no power lines, no trailers no trucks no nothing. The vast emptiness, lack of water, and lack of trees makes it look almost like an alien landscape at times considering what works around a daily basis living in southern Minnesota Wisconsin.

Hiking the Corona and Pinto Arches

The krone Arch was recommended to Us by a friend who has been to the Moab area multiple times. It's one that we did not get to do when I went 5 years ago, so we wanted to get hiking as soon as possible. It was actually nice to start hiking in moab, since this was our first desert hike and would give the kids a chance to see Orion for for the whole vacation. We have some cool photos below of our hike to The arches and around the arches. Have a gander, and just know that these photos don't really do justice of the arches and to really kind of got to go see him in person to get the perspective.

Photos from the hike
The hike starts off with a walk over a active railroad track that is clearly blasted with dynamite down to the rock walls. It was pretty cool, and then you turn the corner and then you get to see that you are in fact going to hike and nothing but desert. As you look off into the distance you can sometimes see the arches and it gives you inspiration that you're going right direction and that you'll make it. It will say that it was hot and full sun and we were not ready when we started. It took a while to get acclimated, and buy a while I mean probably a day or two. We had plenty of water, it was just hard to keep going sometimes. Even our snacks and trail mix all melted together.
Starts with a Trane Track blasted straight down rock hills

Welcome to the desert

Bow Tie Arch

I liked bowtie Arch a lot. It looks really cool, and it really makes you wonder how it was formed. It really does look like you is an underwater formation, and something you would expect to find if you drained fast moving rivers.

Under Corona Arch

Once we got the corona arch, you took a nice long break to sit in the shade underneath the arch along with other hikers and eat snacks and talk quietly. It was a beautiful view and give us a chance to recharge a bit before we continue down.

We decided that we had enough time to add on the additional leg to go see the pinto arch. It put our timetable in a bit of a scrunch due to the afternoon activity that we have planned, but we thought we could do it so we pushed the boys hard to continue hiking to go see one more arch.

Pinto Arch looking up

** Inside the cave under Pinto Arch**

Pinto Arch was awesome. There was actually a cool cave there with another hole that looked like bow tie arch. This cave was fully shaded, and provided a really nice flow of air through the hole back down to the cave. It was quite refreshing to sit there and drink some water and eat some snacks. We were almost done with the hike at this point and just had to get back to the car.

Hike Results. 3.6 Miles, Plenty of fun in the sun.

That's a good first desert hike for the vacation. Just over 3 and 1/2 MI, and we got to see pinto arch, Corona arch, and bow tie arch. I felt like we really gave the boys a flavor of the landscape and just how different it is than we're used to.

Vacation Stats

Pre Drive Friday Night

Day 1 -Drive to Altoona

• 271 Miles
• 4 Hrs

Day 2 - Drive to Red Rocks & Hike - Drive to Look out Mountain and Eldorado Springs

• 694 Miles Red Rocks
• 10 Hours to Red Rocks
• 65 Miles Round Trip
• 2 Hours Round Trip

Day 3 Drive to MOAB - Hike and...

• 342 Miles
• 5.5 Hours
• Corona Arch, Pinto and Bow Tie Arch
• Part 2 coming soon

Vacation Running Stats

• Total Miles - 1372

• Total Time Driving - 21.5

Summary

It's been a good vacation so far, we've been very fortunate. Pushing up on 1400 miles, and over 21 hours of driving. Not too bad, considering we've only been on vacation for really a day and a half at this point. With the pre-drive Friday night that certainly helped considering the number of hours in miles we sucked away. Unfortunately I don't think it's going to get any better, since everything we want to see tends to be far away, and we need to drive there to see it. I'm not sure what it would be like to ever take a vacation and spend a week in one location without changing hotels.

I did break day three up into two posts, because this one got a little lengthy on me, and I know that my rest of the activities for the day have enough to make a full post out of them. Lots of photos to share, and fun activities to talk about. I look forward to getting that post out as soon as I can.

#sbi-skip

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