1481 US South I

Discovering Arches, Monuments and Indians 孚嵜^
Leaving the nice little town of Boulder we headed West to discover Arches National Park. After a night drive we discovered in the morning that Anna had some sort of eye infection and instead of reserving our campsite in the park we had to go to find a doctor in Moab. After having got the treatment we went to the park and spent some time walking and admiring these wonderful arches. In fact, they are build through a hard layer of sandstone on top of a soft layer. The softer layer gets wasched away and the hard layer starts to drop blocks over time and leaves the arches behind. At the visitor center we even saw a film where part of an arch dropped off (filmed by a tourist).
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In the afternoon we drove on to Monument Valley. Fortunately, we managed to get a bit closer to one of Kate’s pet topics: meeting the local cultures. I have to admit it is an important part of our trip to get out of the tourist attitude and make the children meet the people and the culture. And Kate is the driving force behind identifying the opportunities to see Indian ruins, find the reservations or buying books about the way the Indians live. Now Monument Valley is right in the immense Navajo reservation and managed by the Indians. But before visiting we had an even more important event to take care of: Cléo’s sixth birthday! We took a day off at a nice campsite with view on the monuments and spent it mainly preparing the cake and the presents. alic
The spectacles with a big potato nose
The three gossips! (top or bottom?) ¾
Attacking the cake ü
an piece of art
Cléo’s account: My birthday was in monument valley. It was very very nice. I opened my presents. I got a film of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the book and I got a lovely princes dress from my Oma and it was very nice. And I got supersuper binoculars. I got the CD "Stick of the dump" from my cousins in England. And I got a twirly wirly ribbon to make nice forms. Cutting the cake was fun. It was a chocolate cake with 6 candles on it and chocolate chips who formed my name: cleo! A lot of icing in blue colour was on the cake too. I went in the swimming pool with my sisters and I wore my princess dress all day long, but not in the swimming pool.
We enjoyed the great facilities of the American National Parks with well equipped visitor centers and (mostly) very helpful park rangers. As before the kids absolutely wanted to become Junior rangers for the Arches park and had to work through their brochures. In the evening, I went for a wonderful run through one of the less populated paths of the park "meeting" deer, rabbits and other small animals. At some point when I was sort of lost (does not really happen to me, but....) not having seen signs for the path nor anybody for the last half an hour. I found an arch and was not clear on which side the path would return. So I went to climb through the hole in the arch to find myself... on the other side confronted with a dozen photographers who had to take a picture of me instead of the wonderful setting sun on the arch! The following morning after school we went on a guided tour through the "Fiery furnace", a spectacular labyrinth of canyons, rocks, arches and washes. Anna and Cléo tried to impress the guiding park ranger by almost stepping on her heels all the way through. Just before the end we were trenched by nice thunderstorm and just made it back to the camper before we got washed out of the canyons.
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Discovering Arches, Monuments
and Indians

Leaving the nice little town of Boulder we headed West to discover Arches National Park. After a night drive we discovered in the morning that Anna had some sort of eye infection and instead of reserving our campsite in the park we had to go to find a doctor in Moab. After having got the treatment we went to the park and spent some time walking and admiring these wonderful arches. In fact, they are build through a hard layer of sandstone on top of a soft layer. The softer layer gets wasched away and the hard layer starts to drop blocks over time and leaves the arches behind. At the visitor center we even saw a film where part of an arch dropped off (filmed by a tourist).

In the afternoon we drove on to Monument Valley. Fortunately, we managed to get a bit closer to one of Kate’s pet topics: meeting the local cultures. I have to admit it is an important part of our trip to get out of the tourist attitude and make the children meet the people and the culture. And Kate is the driving force behind identifying the opportunities to see Indian ruins, find the reservations or buying books about the way the Indians live. Now Monument Valley is right in the immense Navajo reservation and managed by the Indians. But before visiting we had an even more important event to take care of: Cléo’s sixth birthday!

We took a day off at a nice campsite with view on the monuments and spent it mainly preparing the cake and the presents.

The spectacles with a big potato nose

The three gossips! (top or bottom?)

Attacking the cake

an piece of art

Cléo’s account:

My birthday was in monument valley. It was very very nice.
I opened my presents. I got a film of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the book and I got a lovely princes dress from my Oma and it was very nice. And I got supersuper binoculars. I got the CD "Stick of the dump" from my cousins in England. And I got a twirly wirly ribbon to make nice forms.

Cutting the cake was fun. It was a chocolate cake with 6 candles on it and chocolate chips who formed my name: cleo! A lot of icing in blue colour was on the cake too.

I went in the swimming pool with my sisters and I wore my princess dress all day long, but not in the swimming pool.

We enjoyed the great facilities of the American National Parks with well equipped visitor centers and (mostly) very helpful park rangers. As before the kids absolutely wanted to become Junior rangers for the Arches park and had to work through their brochures. In the evening, I went for a wonderful run through one of the less populated paths of the park "meeting" deer, rabbits and other small animals. At some point when I was sort of lost (does not really happen to me, but....) not having seen signs for the path nor anybody for the last half an hour. I found an arch and was not clear on which side the path would return. So I went to climb through the hole in the arch to find myself... on the other side confronted with a dozen photographers who had to take a picture of me instead of the wonderful setting sun on the arch!
The following morning after school we went on a guided tour through the "Fiery furnace", a spectacular labyrinth of canyons, rocks, arches and washes. Anna and Cléo tried to impress the guiding park ranger by almost stepping on her heels all the way through. Just before the end we were trenched by nice thunderstorm and just made it back to the camper before we got washed out of the canyons.