Today was the day I was more nervous for on our Family Vacation as it was our first Family Vacation since all the babies had been born. So we haven't done any vacations with everyone together in like...3 years or so.
And with it being a hiking vacation....
I was nervous but excited to see how it would go.
Because it's Arches National Park. My Favorite Place in the world to go on vacation. And I really wanted my baby niblings to have a good enough time here that their parents -my siblings- would be willing to do this sort of vacation again.
But it was totally unknown how said baby niblings would react to the hiking...or how the parents would react to hiking either with various life events going on and such.
Like two of my baby niblings have been to Arches before. But they were babies. They weren't even walking yet.
Now they were old enough to walk about on their own if they so desired.
And it was going to be unknown how they would do. If they would want to walk. Or if they would prefer to be carried by their parents in the baby backpacks the entire time. If they would be happy or if they would cry.
So we started out easy.
With the Windows Section. Where all the Arches are RIGHT THERE and the cars are also RIGHT THERE so that if there were any issues we could turn right around if needed.
Plus it would allow the parents and the grandparents to gauge their own energy levels on how well they would do with longer hikes than the windows area.
Which really. The kiddos did quite well. The youngest nibling was content to be in the baby backpacks the entire time and the older baby niblings loved to wander around and walk with us.
Lol it was weird that they wanted to hold my hand while walking so I couldn't do quite as many picture as I usually do since I had a hand full.
But overall they were quite happy to be wandering around and walking and looking about.
They're not quite old enough yet to trust to climb and clamber all over the rocks on their own, but I did really love how my niblings seemed to love being out and about.
It was a good enough experience that we decided to attempted Delicate Arch that evening.
Which, while it's not a long hike...it is a steep hike with a huge sandstone slab you have to clamber up for a good half mile or so. It's a lung burster for sure...but way more easy to do in the current 60-70 degree weather than when I attempted to do it at the end of September last year when it was 95 degrees out. Yeesh. That was HOT.
The niblings all ended up in their respective baby backpacks for that hike. We let them walk for the first little bit but they were tired and dragging their feet enough the parents decided to just put them in the backpacks so we could move faster....as we were kinda racing the sun to get up to Delicate Arch before sunset and hopefully back down before it got dark.
Heh...we failed on the 'before dark' part as the sun was quite set by the time we all made it down to the parking lot again.
But the babies again did really well on the hike and the adults also did really well on the hike, much better than most of the were expecting.
So overall a success!!!
And we were able to end the day on a high note by driving to a darker spot in the park away from the cars and actually were able to see Comet Lemon!!!
I'd brought it up as a possibility to look for since Arches is a really good dark zone and I was right! I was great to see the comet but also to see all the stars and the milky way that you can't usually see as well when closer to the city.
Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!
-Sarnic Dirchi
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