Everyone places some sort of limit on themselves, whether it be a time, an ability, or a monetary limit. What if you told yourself there were no limits? We’ve tried to instill this belief in our children. To overcome your limits, you must prioritize your limit higher, save more, remove the mental barrier, or physically train yourself for the challenge. There is no limit in life, except the ones we place on ourselves. If you remove your limits, just once, you have the potential to find yourself and what you enjoy. Removing our barriers, during our 10-day trip to Utah’s red rock country, helped us discover what we enjoy about visiting our national parks.
Our biggest trip yet was a road-trip that took us through, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and California. The trip had over 18 hours of driving just to get to our first destination. I think we put over 2000+ miles on our odometer to visit:
- Canyonlands – Island in the Sky District
- Arches
- Canyonlands – Needles District
- Mesa Verde
- Natural Bridges National Monument
- Capital Reef
- Great Basin National Park (Lehman Caves)
When we began our National Park journey 4 years ago, Isabel decided she wanted to collect a patch from each park and put it on her backpack. We’ve continued to do that, but I’m not sure my fingers will be able to survive another trip like this (see how we subtly put limits on ourselves and don’t even realize it?).
Because there is too much information for just one article, in the upcoming blogs, I’ll outline each visit, what we thought was our limits, how we broke through those barriers, and what we learned along the way.
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Day 1 – The Drive
We started our trip early on Saturday with the hopes of making our way to Craters of the Moon National Monument for the night. The campground is a first-come, first-serve campground without reservations so the trip was flexible. Ever since we passed through and visited Craters of the Moon last year during our Yellowstone visit I’ve wanted to come back. We were ill-prepared for all the spelunking, Craters of the Moon had to offer. The kids were timid and scared the first time and we didn’t have hard hat, gloves, or enough headlamps. This time I had all and was ready for a dark adventure.
We stopped at the REI in Boise, to pick up new hiking boots. Before we left our house was chaotic and I couldn’t find Will’s Keen Boots. He tried on a pair of Vasque boots similar to the ones I bought for our Guadalupe Mtns trip and liked them. If you’ve never tried Vasque boots, you should. They are ‘bouncy’ with every step. It has more spring and a rounded sole that help relieve weary feet when you are putting on the miles.
While there, I checked the campground and it was full. Instead, we decided to drive as far as we could the first night and skip the park. As has become our custom, we listened to the Percy Jackson series, Heroes of Olympus, and we made it all the way to Utah. We drove for over 9 hours and were in the car for almost 15, considering all the stops we made we didn’t hear a complaint, except some minor car sickness from Isabel. I never have taken the kids on a trip longer than 8 hours because I didn’t think they could do it and come out alive at the end. The first of many limits we broke that trip. Our 15 hours were drudging, but not unbearable with the kids jumping out of their seats.
We found a place to stay at a place called, Earp & James Hitching Post just south of the Utah border. The owners were in the middle of remodeling the bunk house, but were kind enough to check us in at 11pm at night and show us the place. We got the bunk house for a steal, which was awesome since neither Will or I wanted to set up a tent after the long drive. We would totally stay there again, if we ever needed.
The next day we got our first glimpse of red rock as we made our way to Canyonlands, Islands in the Sky District and Dead Horse State Park where we spent the night.