Utah Trip Continued

I'm not really sure how far away from home Colter and I traveled on our trip to Utah, but it was far--a little over a thousand miles. It took a good day and a half to reach our destination, and Colter did amazingly well. He watched movies, colored pictures, threw things at Poppy, played with my hair, and ate lots of snacks! He did better than my sister Courtney and me. We're whiny. We did find some ways to amuse ourselves besides whining though. During part of the long trip through Colorado, we stuck our heads out of the moon roof to take pictures of the Eisenhower tunnel for entertainment. That way we wouldn't have to Photoshop the hundreds of dead windshield bugs out of the picture. Cool, huh?We also got to take pictures of some bighorn sheep grazing at the side of the road. At least I guess they were grazing, but there wasn't much to graze on besides rocks. Maybe they eat rocks. Maybe it was rock candy. Hmm... Maybe they were just hanging out at the side of the road to see how many people would stop to take their pictures.Then a nice big horned sheep let Colter pet him. Colter even got to grab his horns! What a cooperative, patient sheep! Kids were climbing all over him, and he didn't even care! It's almost like he was made of bronze.On the second day of our stay at Arches National Park, we were recovered enough from the long journey to actually go on a few hikes. Most of the cool rock formations are off the main road, so visitors have to hike a mile or two. Here's the desert landscape we were hiking through.The first arch we hiked to was Broken Arch. (The color seems to be a little off on these pictures I uploaded. Grr... They looked fine before I uploaded them. What's up with that, Blogger? Oh, well. Imagine this picture with more vivid colors.) Courtney took 3 gazillion pictures because she didn't have a baby on her back and was able to take more than me. She had her camera stuck on her face almost the whole trip. As a a sidenote, she's wearing a sweatshirt she stole from me seven years ago in this picture. She's also wearing my hat. What a thief.Looking up at Broken Arch...I assume it's called Broken Arch because of the crack down the middle.Colter got mad because I wouldn't let him jump off a cliff. I'm such a mean mommy.On the same trail, we saw Tapestry Arch. It's not really obvious from the pictures, but these rock formations are huge! Colter got to climb with his poppy underneath Tapestry Arch, so he was happy.

The trails were kind of challenging in spots. I love this picture of my mom scratching her head trying to figure out where to go next. All the rock formations we saw are really awesome but strange. We watched a video in the visitor's center about why there are a bunch of rock arches in this area of Utah, but I was so tired when we saw it, it didn't really register. Some mumbo jumbo about salt in the rocks, erosion, and 17 trillion 7 billion 3 million years ago. The wind had something to do with it too. Oh, and the ocean that used to be in Utah. I tend to tune things out when the scientific explanation involves time periods that are so long ago, that it seems ridiculous for people to claim they know what was happening during that time. To me, the explanation is simple. God decided it would be cool to have some weird rocks in Utah because heaven knows, there's not much else there besides salt, sand, and a lot of Mormons. :)