Trip to Moab/ The Arches

This summer, my cute husband and I have not had any "just us" getaways, sadly. We went to Canada with his parents, which was very fun, but certainly did not include any more than about 2 seconds of alone time. This is especially true considering we ended up in the kids bedroom for 2 nights of it, which, although hilarious, was not exactly romantic. We also went to Maryland for my sister Heather's wedding, which was wonderful as well, but that was still more family time than alone time. So, we decided to take advantage of the long Labor Day (sorry this is a late post) weekend to take a quick trip together. My parents were in town for Heather's Utah reception, so we hosted them from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon, and left right after they left.
We went to a local place for some dinner, went to the hot tub, watched some Walking Dead awesomeness, and tried to go to bed early so we could wake up early and get started on some awesome hikes. This was slightly inhibited by the worst heartburn/ acid reflux I have ever had (mostly because I pretty much never get it), but then Dahl got me some medicine and ice cream and it made it all better :) (TMI? Sorry!)
The next morning we got up early, ate the free breakfast, and drove to Arches National Park. We started out with the hike to Delicate Arch. It is ranked as one of the hardest hikes, but it wasn't too bad. That said, it was very hot, there was no shade, it was a lot of uphill, and we were very grateful for our Camelbaks. I was also very grateful for my $1 hat I grabbed at Walmart. Dahl didn't get one, but I highly recommend it.

It was beautiful!

So handsome :) 

If you look closely, you can see the person right next to it. It is HUGE!!

The chipmunks there were so tame! We fed this little guy a peanut from our trail mix!

He is SO cute, I was pretty obsessed.

This is him climbing on Dahl's shoe! He climbed on mine too. They must be very used to tourists!

We took a small detour on the way back to look at some Petroglyphs from hundreds of years ago!

Once we got back, we drove to the next hike we wanted to do. This one is to the biggest arch in the park (and I think the world). You could do a really long 7 mile hike or  just a 2-ish mile hike. Since we had already done the 3- mile uphill hike, we opted for the easier one this time. We definitely want to go back and do the whole thing one day! Even on the shorter hike, there were some fun detours on the way.

This was a fun little area I climbed up!

This is Pinetree Arch, it was pretty cool!!

This is landscape arch- the longest one! It is as long as a football field!

Another little critter we saw

We also saw the Balanced Rock. There's a better view in the next picture, but I thought this picture was funny because it was SO BRIGHT, so I was closing my eyes in this picture.

It is on the left of this picture behind us. 

After we finished those 2 hikes, we grabbed some food and ice cream to cool off and headed back home. It was a quick getaway- about 24 hours total- but we had a great time just being together and enjoying each others' company!