During the past two and a half months, while Alan and I have been renovating a rental property, nearly everything else has taken a back seat to the project, including my blog posts. For a while there, it seemed like whenever we weren’t painting and repairing, we were shoveling and plowing snow - or sleeping. We tried to fit a little of that in every once in a while, too. Now that the renovations are complete and a few warm spring days have us anticipating the even more delightful weather to come, we’re both looking forward to resuming our “regularly scheduled programming.”
This post represents another installment in the series detailing the second of our three cross-country National Parks camping trips with travel trailer in tow. At the time of this trip in 2010, our son, Ryan, was 16 and our daughter, Kyra, was 11.
With the visit to Capitol Reef, we crossed off the eighth National Park of our month-long trip. This epic journey, like our first cross-country National Parks trip with the kids three years earlier, was what we considered a “sampler” trip. We kept our visits to each Park short so that we could see as many different Parks as possible. By sampling each Park, we would learn which ones we wanted to return to for a more extensive visit. In addition, knowing that Ryan and Kyra wouldn’t be traveling with us forever, we chose to introduce our kids to as many areas of the country as possible when they were young and excited about such grand adventures. We figured that the more extensive our travels were as the kids were growing up, the better they would understand the geography, climate and opportunities in each area of the United States – providing experience that might influence their lifestyle and location choices as adults. That being said, the fact that Ryan and his long-time girlfriend recently bought a house just 25 miles away in the same beloved mountain range in which we live does not disappoint me. Wink, wink.
We left Capitol Reef heading north and east toward Moab and the final two National Parks of the trip – Canyonlands and Arches. First though, a stop at Goblin Valley State Park was needed. Who could resist a chance to play among a bunch of goblins?
