Oh, No . . . I Didn't

Oh snap. I thought for sure I'd pre-written every day of the trip, at least a little. But here we are, two weeks later, with no words and TWO WEEKS worth of things at home to write fresh about. EEEEEEEK!

Okay, summary mode: Buck and the boys awoke and away-ed to check out the Moabite car show! I worked on the blog in the hotel room, but clearly not this day, because here we are . . .

The morning progressed without requiring any of my typical timing buffers! This only meant that my estimated Arches NP arrival reservation (you have to guess and purchase an hour-range admission pass the night before) was too distant in the future to secure. But the van was packed, the room was cleared, and who doesn't want second breakfast? If we were Hobbits, it'd be perfectly normal! :) We waited with many, many others for a table at the cute Moab Diner and eventually filled our tummies while we filled the time.

A good distraction, for sure! However, we likely could have gone straight to the park, because the wait, even for timed entry, was approximately an hour long. We actually got to the point where the clock nearly displayed the next timed-entry hour, and I was wondering how that would work at Ranger Point . . . "Sorry, you didn't get into line four minutes early enough to complete your 58 minute wait, so you're now two minutes over. Oooh, and I see you've got a red mark. No park for you today. Lady Elaine sends her regards." 

However, they let us in! Red mark and everything! The ranger even complimented Buck for having his pass, ID, and timed ticket all ready for presentation at the booth :)

And did I mention it was . . .

Woot! Not only did we return to the only national park, monument, historic site, etc. that we've NOT gotten a Jr. Ranger Badge from (since we didn't know it was a thing 13 years ago), but it was on National Junior Ranger Day! My Crew of three kindly allowed me to recreate a few pictures from our first visit . . .

Okay, so we didn't recreate this one, but awwww . . . look how little!!

We originally hadn't planned to spend much time in this park. Just grab the ranger book, fill it out, get the badge, on to Canyonlands. But as Canyonlands was now off of the schedule, we took a bit more time to explore the Arches--perhaps in prohibited ways (shhhh!) I think the thing the national park service needs to consider is that if a teenage boy sees a rock, he's going to want to climb it. It doesn't matter if he is made of stars and is stepping on the living cultures of his cousins in the dirt below. So, if you see two tiny dots, silhouetted in the arches in the pictures to come, just realize--this is the adventurousness of youth, and a mother needs to bite her tongue, sometimes, and just hope that the fines don't start rolling in later :) 

But in the tongue-biting-mom's defense, even Graysen said Brennen should not be up climbing inside the future arch cave in the following pictures . . .

The above arch was part of the double window arches? I think. Remember, we're summarizing this account. The boys (white dot, purple dot) tried to climb this side, but clever rangers had naturally blocked all the access points to ascension. We took the "primitive" trail around the back--and there they found the climb much easier :) No one else was on the primitive trail with us, which was nice in a busy park. But it also felt like breaking the rules to not be on a clearly visible trail . . . speaking of which, "rules" seem to vary depending on which park you visit! In the past week's other parks, stacking rocks was considered "Graffiti!!! Bad! Awful!! Destroying the natural landscape!! Don't do it, buddy!!" At this park--the RANGERS built rock stacks to mark the trails! I nearly kicked them over to help preserve the natural beauty of the park--take that, naughty rule-breaker who picked up the natural rocks and built natural-looking piles with them! Turns out I would have (probably) gotten a fine for being another park's do-gooder here in the rogue rock-building rangers' park. Lol! Fines, schmines! I think they'd have to get on the same page with each other before taking out a page on us :)

We accidentally found the mountain biking trailhead (I'd read about) when the Balanced Rock parking lot was full and we sought overflow parking near the picnic area. I had to interview a "rock star" for the Jr. Ranger book--I did not talk to the rock, but I did pretend the rock talked to me--all for the badge--while the boys went for a ride.

When the boys biked back and the booklet was complete, we headed to the ranger station/exit to get that badge! The two rangers were young and I told them my story of returning with now grown kids to get the badge we missed. Well, the ranger guy decided he'd make me earn it with the pledge required (by most rangers) at the end of the session. Pretty sure he even made me say, "Senior Ranger" while acting out the words to the pledge, reminiscent of my Adventures in Odyssey theme-song dance. And if I didn't raise my voice (you know, so everyone in the room was looking our way) when the ranger raised his voice--well, then that section had to be repeated. The cute, red-haired young lady ranger would have been my preferred badge presenter in this scenario. She just kind of smiled and likely said something along the lines of, "I cannot believe you made that mom do all that goofy stuff to get a child's badge." If she didn't, she should have, lol :) Buck made sure they read my poem out loud. I also told them we weren't yoga people, so I skipped that page. To which the red-headed ranger responded, "Oh, is that why we get so many kids talking about yoga poses?" and the bearded one said, "Well, that's usually the only page I require." Sometimes, being jokey with people means they are jokey back . . . but I earned my badge after 13 years (and like a month or two), and I requested Buck take my picture to commemorate the moment! An older guy walking by with his wife said, "That's a good picture!" And I said, "I GOT MY JUNIOR RANGER BADGE!!" and they both kind of walked away more quickly, heeheehee :)

And with that, we were like, "Lates Utah, it's Colorado time." (You can see how summarizing changes my writing style to 90s teen lingo for speed and efficiency). Pretty sure it snowed again on the drive, I clearly didn't work on the blog--or at least not for Arches day reminiscings, and we scooted on over to Glenwood Springs to land long enough for Buck to have a day off of driving to celebrate his birthday!

Dinner at the Jamaican hot wings restaurant that is Chase's favorite in GWS :)