Glamping!

We got up early and had breakfast at the Red River Inn restaurant (at our hotel) which overlooked the Capitol Reef National Park.  Next we packed up the car and started our drive to Moab. We stopped halfway at a gas station, which was called Canyon Country Bowling. This was no plain jane gas station, they had tons of snacks, drinks, full service deli / food, and a full service bowling alley with at least 5 or 6 lanes. It was like a Wawa with bowling, simply fantastic. Who doesn't want to bowl when you're filling up your tank? and you get to have lots of snack options while you bowl. We're thinking of talking to Wawa to see if they would consider adding that to future stores. :) 

I know we mentioned wildlife in our last post, but we saw some interesting signs on our drive. Some said "Frequent Deer Crossing for the next __ miles", others said "Open Range" with the cow symbol, and they also had a large traffic sign that said "Watch for Deer, 93 car crashes". The good news is we didn't encounter any wildlife that threatened to cross the road. 

The deli of Emily made us some more sandwiches while we continued our drive on the Bicentennial Highway, which was gorgeous. We arrived in Moab early afternoon and headed to Arches National Park. Arches National Park is a large park with lots of different natural rock arches carved by the wind, rain, and sand. There are various hikes you can do, so we looked through the guide to decide what we wanted to tackle. We decided we would do the "strenuous" 2-3 hour hike to the Delicate Arch along with some easier ones to the Tunnel Arch, Sane Dune Arch, and Landscape Arch. The view of the Delicate Arch and view over all the landscape was well worth the physical intensity of this hike. We enjoyed a snack and just resting for a few minutes before starting our hike down, see our pictures below. After the big one, we did a few shorter, less intensive hikes and took additional pictures of the arches. This was another one of my favorites as you could choose what type of hike / walks you wanted to and you can go at any pace. The only challenge is that there isn't much shade, so we had to stop a few times for additional sunscreen. 

We were pretty worn out after our hikes, so we began looking for a dinner place. We decided to go to Moab Brewery as it was casual fare and we wanted to try a Utah beer. Robert got their famous burger and steak fries and the local IPA. I got a southwestern chicken dish that came with veggie chili and rice, along with tortillas if you wanted to make it fajita style. We started off with beer cheese soup as it was supposed to be awesome since it was made with their local brewed beer, and it was! Another local restaurant to add to the list for whenever you all travel to Moab. 

After dinner, we headed out to Moab Under Canvas, our housing for the night. There is a term for glamorous camping, where you don't have to set up your own tent and sleeping bags and have facilities closeby, it's called glamping. Brandon & Alicia mentioned that it is super popular these days, and they are right. Just google CO Glamping and you'll get a ton of options. We chose to "glamp" in Moab and Moab Under Canvas set up a teepee, cots, mattress pads, sleeping bags, and linens for us. They have a trailer with showers and restrooms. They had a tent for reception and a campfire for smore roasting. We got some great views of the stars and found the big dipper. We roasted our smores before turning in for the night, and they were delicious!

Picture 1 caption: mid hike

2-4: delicate arch
5: climbing a rock

6: Moab under canvas