Up, Up and Away

Our Utah national parks day started off really early (at least for Megan and Maggie!) with a 5 am wake up alarm. We had to roll to get to our sunrise hot air balloon ride over Moab. What an amazing way to the see the beautiful landscape of southern Utah. It was Megan and Maggie’s first balloon ride and it did not disappoint, especially with a wild 15 mph landing in the wind that toppled over the basket and dragged us for many yards!  After all the excitement we did the traditional hot air balloon champagne (and apple cider)  toast that dates to the first balloon flights in France in the late 1700s.

From there we jumped into a 4x4 for our private backroads tour of Arches National Park. The pictures don’t do it justice. There are more than 2000 rock arches over the 100 square mile national park and they are incredible to see. Our guide Zed was amazing and told us many great stories and tidbits about Arches and Moab. He even encouraged Maggie and Megan to climb up a sheer face of rock to the top of the Double Arch and then carried Maggie on his back to get part of the way back down. David stayed further down the rock formation to, uhhmm, “make sure someone got some pictures” …

During the offroad portion of the tour, we saw dinosaur footprints that have been captured in the rock and the Eye of the Whale arch that very few people ever get to see as it is in a remote part of the park.

Animals seen in Moab included the fastest land animal in the new world, pronghorn antelope along with prairie dogs, rabbits and ravens.

After an incredible day in Moab/Arches, we headed north through Salt Lake City and into Idaho. Megan and David both realized that Utah and Idaho were the first two states on the trip that neither of us had been to before. Today also marked two weeks on the road - hard to believe there is only one week left!