What are all the Poor People Doing?

My Grandma used to say "What are all the Poor people doing?". It was her way of saying life was wonderful. This past weekend we used a gift that my Parents gave us for Christmas. They took Greyson and Tobey (the dog) while we escaped to Colorado for a 2 night stay at a hot springs resort.

Thursday April 17th, 2008
One of the places on our list of places to go this year was Arches in Moab. What an incredible place. There are over 200 arches in this park alone. We started by visiting Delicate Arch. You can't describe the beauty, it is balanced right on the edge of a cliff.

Ben's in the middle, he just wore a color that kind of blends in.

For those of you that know Ben and I, you know that we can't just stay on the trail. After Delicate Arch we saw arches across another canyon so we left the trail and took off for 'Snails and Adventure' (def: finding your own fun and adventure off the beaten path). We found this arch and enjoyed some time looking through the window.

Here I was nagging Ben to be careful. He had to jump across a ravine to get to where he is and between these mounds there are huge canyons. I was not happy about this, but I love that he is fearless.

After Delicate Arch area we drove to the end of the park. The area was called Devil's Garden. We went on a path that took us by many, many arches, below are a few.

Wall Arch

Double O Arch (on the right) Look for Ben in the botton arch and the man on top. I can't remember the name of the arch on the left.

After Double O we decided the canyons were calling to us. You can see in the picture below how much fun and adventure was waiting. So once again we kept leaving the path and finding new canyons and adventures. The way this part of the rock is we kept getting cliffed out and had to retrace our steps many times, too much fun!

And Finally We went through and arch and there was a canyon below. It was getting late and we thought maybe it would be a good shortcut back to the car. We walked through the arch and started making our way down the canyon. It was so funny because people at the arch looked at us like we were crazy. We made our way down the canyon, got to the bottom and realized we were under landscape arch which is the only arch that you're not allowed to go near or under. There was a great rockfall there in 1990 (60 tons) and they don't think it's stable. So we quickly dove under the fence and pretended all was well.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday April 18th-20th, 2008

We spent the next day making our way over to Pagosa Springs. We played in Cortez and Durango and then got to the Springs just in time for check in. The next few days were spent lounging in hot springs pools ranging from 87 degrees to 111 degrees. The challenge of the trip was to jump into the river which borders the hot springs. We both did it twice, the first time up to our chest, the second time all the way under! It was 34 degrees!

Lowery Ruins on the Way to Pagosa

This was a wild animal rescue that was in Pagosa. This Cougar was laying down and then in 2 seconds had bounded up to the fence and was staring me down. My heart stopped. Then I played chase back and forth with him and Ben was many steps behind yelling at me to stop. We found out later that this cat loves to play.

There are 18 different pools at the Springs ranging from big enough for 2 to 20. We spared our readers any pictures in bathing suits.

That says the River is 34 degrees. We were crazy!

The River 1st attempt.