Laboring in Utah

For Labor Day we took a little road trip up to Utah to visit a couple National parks.  We camped in Moab with my brother, Robert, and my cousin and his wife, Kody and Heather.  The drive seemed like it took forever to get there but all of us got to the campsite about the same time, I think it was 10:30 our time.  Since Melanie and I are expert campers we had no problem setting up the tent in the dark.
Our first day of the trip was spent in Arches National Park.  We decided to start off by hiking to Delicate Arch.  Robert and Kody had hiked it before and they told us about what we dubbed "The Devil's Backbone", which is the part of the hike where you go uphill on a sandstone slab, with no shade, for what seemed like 5 miles.  Even though the entire hike is only 1.5 miles.  Here is a picture of it.

We were in good spirits before we ascended the beast.

But the view from the top was well worth the hike.

We went on a few other short hikes and had lunch in the park, while the others went to go play in the Colorado river.  Arches turned out to be a lot more impressive than either of us though it was going to be.

Double Arch

Us sitting inside the 2nd arch

We spend the morning of the second day exploring a little bit of Canyonlands National Park.  That park is spit up into 3 or maybe 4 different geographical areas.  We went to the one closest to Moab called, Island in the Sky.  The entrance for the Needles section of the park is a little over an hour South of Moab, we'll have to go back and check that one out one day.  The part of canyonlands that we went to seemed like a smaller version of the Grand Canyon.  There were some scenic vistas but nothing else really to write home about....

We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the river.  Melanie and I swam across it to practice in case we ever get stuck down in Mexico and have to swim the Rio Grande back into America.  All in all it was a pretty fun little weekend trip.

Our Campsite

The River

The River with better light