Well we did it, we finally took the kids on their first vacation! It just so happened to be our first time camping as a family too. We were invited by Mike's brother and his family to Moab this year. My experience camping has mostly been growing up back east. Once with our 8th grade class, and the rest were all church activities. I have only been twice since moving to Utah, so it was somewhat a new experience for me, especially taking kids. My memories of camping have always been good ones, but also most of the work was done by the adults, and we just had to show up and have fun. We were lucky in that Tiffany graciously planned all the meals, so we didn't have to worry too much about what food to bring. But, I have to admit the thought of packing all the things we still needed, and also for the kids was a bit daunting. The closer the trip got, the higher my anxiety got.
The campsite was decent, although we will never forget the zillion caterpillars all over the place! They were all over everything, including ourselves! A few even hitched a ride home with us, and we discovered a few weeks later that they were moths! Other than the unavoidable, yet harmless creepy crawlies the campsite was pretty clean. I had been a bit worried after reading some negative reviews online, but overall I was happy the negative reviews were not accurate. For future trips however, I wouldn't mind finding a site that has a little more room for the kids to play, since the road was really very close to the site...but since we spent most of our time away from the site, it wasn't too big a deal.
Anyway, the first night we arrived we all went out to a restaurant called Zak's. They had really good pizza and other food as well. On the way there, there was a huge downpour with thunder and even some hail, it was pretty crazy. We were glad no damage was done to our equipment. The next day, Saturday, we went to the Arches National Park and pretty much spent the whole day there hiking and looking at the beautiful scenery. That evening a meal was planned by Tiffany, but since everyone was too tired, Mike offered to take everyone out to dinner. He found a place that was right by our campsite, Buck's Grill House, that had decent reviews online. After a long day in the hot sun, we were disappointed to be sat outside in the sun again. But thankfully, the sun shifted by the time our food arrived, and the patio was quite pleasant with live music as well. I LOVED the Pesto Pasta meal, and even wrote a review raving about it on Yelp. That evening the kids stayed up way too late! It was very crazy trying to get them ready for bed, especially Rowan. She kept screaming on the top of her lungs, and it wouldn't have been a big deal except it was late, and there were other campers trying to sleep! But once we finally got them to settle in, they crashed, and slept much better than the first night.
The next morning we decided to do one more trip into the park before heading home. The kids did amazingly well for their first ever family trip, and we look forward to making more good memories on our future family trips.
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