Looking out the sliding glass door of this cushy condo, it’s hard to imagine life here in the early days before AC, sunscreen, and Slurpees. Southeast Utah is as scratchy, hot, and hard as it is beautiful. With the sandstone arches, canyons, petroglyphs, and scraggly log cabin ruins, time shows here in a way it doesn’t in our DC suburb.

Our trip this summer was to Moab, Utah with five days rafting and camping on the Green River. It was both really good and really challenging. Good in the sense that we felt “away.” It was all outside after so much inside.

But being out in the elements- the sand, sun, water, and wind- for so long was just hard at times. And with all that, the kids did great- we did great. We left with a bank of new stories, inside jokes, experiences, and pictures that we could only get fully disconnected.

Here’s what we did…

Bookended by two travel days (because Moab is out there, y’all), we spent five days river rafting Desolation Canyon on the Green River with Mild to Wild and a day each in Arches and Canyonlands national parks.

A few of the highlights are below…

Desolation Canyon & Green River Rafting

I can’t even start writing about this trip without mentioning Annie and Cam- our simply amazing, amazing guides. (As a side note, I thought we should call them “Cannie” but it never stuck.)

Anyway, this 20-year-old dynamic duo are childhood friends and both Moab natives (somewhat rare in the more transient raft guide profession, I’m told.) They were cool, funny, thoughtful… and they worked their asses off making this experience possible for us. The responsibility on their shoulders was pretty massive— something I didn’t fully grasp until we were dropped off in the actual middle of nowhere.

A job description for a raft guide might read something like:

Get a bunch of inexperienced (sometimes fussy) people safety down a river with Class II & III rapids while rowing, rowing some more, hiking, entertaining, chatting history and geology, preparing elaborate meals, hauling all the stuff (and there was A LOT OF STUFF including our “groover” which you can look up if you have a strong stomach and weak imagination), conducting small motor maintenance in 20 MPH winds, having your performance continuously rated by a 7-year-old, and answering an unending series of questions….for FIVE DAYS!!!

It was an endurance event unlike any other I’ve seen but they did it and did it so well. Now we’re bonded for life via text, Instagram, and Christmas cards whether they like it or not (and I’m not going to ask.)

Here’s a short video with highlights.

Arches National Park

Back in Moab, UT and freshly showered, we visited the eye-popping sandstone arches in… Arches NP. This is a fantastic park in that it’s stunningly beautiful with these really cool rock formations carved by water and wind. It’s also a relatively small so it felt do-able in a day. Our day went something like: leverage our 4th grader for free entry, take a short drive, do a short hike, picture picture, short drive now with the Imagine Dragons in the background, take another short hike, picture picture, followed by snacks and more DJ’ing from the backseat.

After leaving the park, we stopped for a late lunch. Linc ordered and ate a soft pretzel the size of his torso. (He’s singlehandedly keeping carbs in business while the rest of the world is on keto.)

I’m pretty sure this was Linc’s favorite part of the trip.

Canyonlands National Park

The next day, we pushed the limits of our rented Jeep (and nerve) as Brian drove the Shafer Trail into the canyon with the same name. The switchbacks at the start were literally breathtaking.

Click the picture below to see a short video. It might look familiar. (It’s the spot where they filmed that famous final scene in Thelma and Louise. Yikes!)

Once down at the bottom, the rest of the gazillion (or really 2) hour ride was almost too bumpy to be fun but the view sho’ was pretty. Everyone perked up when we saw some goats that made us think of Grandma and Opa.

While away, we also celebrated Baya’s “Star” birthday. We’ve learned that’s when your age matches your birthday day. So, she turned 9 on the 9th under a sombrero with her favorite Mexican meal.