Wood Family Goes West 2020: Day 10

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Melissa

Best Day EVER! (To steal a quote from Tangled…)

We finished up (more) laundry and checked out of our apartment. Subway opened at 10AM and provided us with our picnic lunch again today. The two young guys working in the store were 14 and 15 years old and reminded me of Edwin. One of them was still mostly-asleep at 10 AM. The other took a lot of pride in making our sandwiches well. They were the polar opposites of the teenage-boy stereo-types.

I loved Canyonlands National Park! We stopped at the visitor’s center, stamped my book, and exchanged a park ranger truck that Morgan had bought yesterday. The wheel wouldn’t stay on, but they took it back no problem and gave us a new one. (Most of the gift shops in the National Parks carry the same merchandise.)

The walk to Mesa Arch was short and sweet. 0.5 miles round trip to the overlook. Y’all, it was BREATH-TAKING. That whole area was amazing. My bigger kids practiced their rock-climbing skills on the huge boulders, while Morgan found another beloved rock and stick. I can’t stress the beauty of this spot; I’m sure that my photos won’t do it justice. It’s just impossible to capture the VASTNESS of the space. You can only see such a small part of it through the camera.

The next leg of our trip was the most adventurous thing that we have done so far. We took an unpaved road down to the bottom of a canyon to the Mineral Springs Boat Ramp. You could see down in the canyon the road winding all the way to the bottom. There were really only two places wide enough to pull over if you met another vehicle. Looking out WAY ahead up or down the mountain, we had to take turns with the couple of cars that were out there with us. I was a nervous wreck, honestly. Kevin told me to relax and enjoy it. Seriously, though, we were on a narrow dirt road with our whole family with a drop off into a canyon just a few feet away. Lillie was screaming, “I don’t want to die at 6!” We managed to make it down and back and lived to tell it. Thankfully.

Tonight, we stayed in the lovely town of Grand Junction, Colorado. It was about an hour and a half from Canyonlands to our Airbnb. The house that we stayed at on Main Street was built in 1907. The owners did a nice job renovating it; they left a scrapbook for their guests showing the process. The house was full of antiques; I stressed to the kids to treat it respectfully. Our kids dined on Chipotle take-out and had a quiet evening watching television. Kevin and I had a DATE NIGHT. We got cleaned up from our dusty day and walked downtown to dinner. It was nice to be able to snag a little bit of one-on-one with my guy!

The kids were all still snuggled up together on the couch when we got back. The older boys got showers and headed to bed. Oh, I want to mention that most places out here do not have central air conditioning. In both Driggs, ID and in Colorado we have opened windows and used fans. Other place have had window units. I assume that it’s just not worth putting in central air for the two months of the year that they would use it. (Moab, however, had air conditioning. Man, it’s hot in Moab!)

Internet connectivity has been hit-or-miss on this trip. I had tried to write these blogs and add the photos in between the sketchy service through the desert and other remote areas. I noticed that there are a couple of errors, where sentences were left hanging here and there. I didn’t have the time to proof-read, really. This has been a good challenge for me, though, writing daily.