We left after work on Friday, April 16. It is a LONG drive to Moab! Okay, so I guess it's not actually that long, but when you are pregnant, it sure feels like a long drive! There was a little gift shop area that we decided to stop at before we hit Moab's Main Street. We mostly just stopped to get out of the car and walk around for a minute. There were some teepees at the stop, so we both took a picture by them. :-)
Once we hit Main Street in Moab, there were tons of people out! We were trying to figure out where to eat, but it was so busy that we didn't have a chance to stop until the edge of town where there was a place called Yo' Mama's Pizza. So we ate there. It was not great... But oh, well. We were starving and weren't sure how much longer it would take us to get to Cortez, Colorado.
So after dinner, we left, and we passed Hole N" the Rock. Ry told me he alwasys wanted to go to one of those stupid tourist attraction places, so I told him we should stop there on our way home.
We got to Cortez a little after 9:00 p.m. It was strange for a Friday night--there were no cars on the road, no people walking along the streets. We were tired from driving all day anyway, so we just went straight to bed once we got to our hotel. We stayed at a National 9 Inn. Neither of us would recommend that hotel... Our fridge didn't work, the microwave didn't work, and the bed was not comfortable... It reminded us a lot of our first apartment!
The next morning, we got up and headed down to Mesa Verde National Park. It was about a one-hour drive from our hotel. We had planned to spend our entire trip at Mesa Verde because Ryan had found a two-day itinerary for the park. When we got there, though, we discovered that half the park is closed this time of year, and we were also advised to only go on one of the two hour-long tours (the easier one) because I was pregnant.
We decided to eat before we took the tour, so we ate at a restaurant called the Spruce Tree Terrace Cafe. They had really yummy hamburgers! And of course, because we weren't in Utah, there was no fry sauce for the fries, so we had to make our own. The fries were really yummy, too! Then we went to start the tour.
We signed up to hike to Cliff Palace rather than Balcony House. It was the easier of the two tours. Tickets were only $3 a person, though, so it was a nice, fun, inexpensive thing to do.
This is looking over the edge down to Cliff Palace.
This is Ry while we were on the hike!
These are some pictures we got at Cliff Palace...
The Pueblo people lived in these houses for 700 years, up until A.D. 1300. There are 600 cliff dwellings in this area. No one knows for sure why the Pueblo people left. All that their descendants have been able to offer is that it was just time for them to leave, that this area wasn't their "center."
After the drive, we drove around to find some of the lookout points.
The Pueblos built their homes in these hangover areas and then grew their crops on top of the plateaus. They mostly grew corn.
Lizard! Can you see him?!
This is Balcony House, the one we were advised not to tour.
The other pregnant girl who was on our tour followed us on this little hike and snapped this picture for us.
Our son's first vacation! And we didn't pay a dime for him to come!
This is Spruce Tree House. We were supposed to be able to hike to this one without a tour guide, but they had it closed off while we were there, so we only got to see it from afar.
This is Ryan outside the museum... :-)
And that was our day! Ryan's car was running on empty on our way out of the park, but luckily we made it to a gas station before we ran completely out. We headed back to Cortez and again, there were no cars on the road and no people on the streets.
We decided to go to dinner at a place across the street from our hotel. It was called the Dry Dock Restaurant and Pub. It was a seafood place. My food wasn't bad, but Ryan was pretty disappointed with his. He bought a drink that smelled really yummy, though (and no, I didn't even attempt to sample it!)... ;-)
After dinner, we went back to our hotel and tried to figure out what to do for the rest of the night and the next day. We thought about going to the movie theater in Cortez, but they only had two movies going, neither of which I was interested in, and the theater looked about as comfortable as a dollar theater around here... If not less comfortable. So back in the hotel, we got online and tried to find things to do that were close by. The only thing that seemed even remotely interesting was Four Corners. Ryan wasn't very eager to go stand in four states at once, though.
So then we started looking up things to do in Moab. We found some jetboat tours that looked fun, so we decided to see if we could cancel our hotel reservation for the next day in Cortez. The guy said we could if we talked to someone from the travel site we booked through, so we did. The people Ryan talked to said the hotel had to refund us, though, so Ryan decided to wait until the morning and then get it figured out. So then we called and booked the tour and hotel in Moab for the next night. Then we turned on the TV and went to bed.
We got up the next morning and packed up all our things, then Ryan went to turn in our key and get our money back. But, the guy in charge wasn't going to be back for half an our. So we decided to go get breakfast. We decided to try the Let It Grow Nursery and Garden Market. Neither of us was actually hungry when we got there, so Ryan got a coffee and I got a milk steamer. I forgot how good those are!
We headed back to the hotel and got our money back. Then we left Cortez and headed back towards Moab. We stopped in Monticello at a gas station and then hit the road again. As soon as we did, we got pulled over by a cop. Ry has the worst luck with cops and he has never been given a warning or the option of doing traffic school, so we were both a little overwhelmed... The cop walked over to my window and started talking to us. I had thought the speed limit was 40, because that was what the sign said when we saw his lights flash on. Apparently, though, until we hit that sign, the speed limit was only 30. Ry was going 56... While the cop was talking to us, the baby kicked, so I put my hand on my belly. I think the cop noticed and he let us off with a very strong verbal warning! Ryan's baby got him out of a ticket before he was even born, LOL!
So then we left Monticello and headed to Moab. We stopped at Wendy's for lunch before stopping for our 1:00 tour. The tour was a 4 Hour Jetboat Tour provided by Canyonlands by Night and Day. The tour cruises along the Colorado River through Canyonlands National Park. We had a lot of fun on the tour. As we got on the boat, the guide asked if we'd paid for two or three... LOL. The tour was nice and relaxing! We were the only people from Utah (aside from the guide). Every group of people was from a different state, everywhere from California to New York. About two hours in, we ran over a big stick that made the boat feel and sound like it was being ripped in half. That woke up the baby and he kicked for two hours non-stop!
Anyway, here are some photos from the tour...
Colorado River!
One of Moab's many rock climbers!
Jug Handle Arch!
A bird's nest!
Fossils!
Splashes from the boat!
This tree is not native to Moab. They believe it was washed from wherever it's from to Moab in an old river, that the mud ran over it, and that it then petrified.
That's Dead Horse Point there to the right! We didn't have time to go drive up there while we were there, though... But that is where Joe Dirt was left at the "Grand Canyon," LOL!
Every year, a grand piano is flown in and lowered down here for chamber music concerts at the Moab Music Festival. Crazy, huh?!
This is the boot, though one little girl once said it looked more like her daddy's chair with the remote control on the arm!
A tumbleweed!
These are some petroglyphs we saw along our tour!
After our tour, we went to check in at our hotel at the Ramada Inn. This hotel was SO NICE compared to the one in Cortez! We loved it!
We decided to walk along Main Street in Moab. It was a nice day--not too hot and not cold! We checked out some gift shops and then decided to go to dinner. We went to the Moab Brewery. Ry ordered a beer and a specialty glass to take home. When he tried to get the plastic wrap off the glass, he knocked over his beer. The bartender sent him a new one with a lid and straw. It was kind of funny. It wasn't until that point, though, that anyone asked to see his ID--after he'd already drank a beer and a half! How ridiculous is that?! I couldn't believe they asked at all. By that time, the restaurant would have been in very big trouble if Ryan had been underage. Anyway, the food wasn't bad, but the service was terrible...
By then it was late so we headed back to the hotel and hopped into bed. The next morning we went to eat at the restaurant connected to our hotel--Pancake Haus. They definitely were not very good, either... I actually wouldn't recommend eating anywhere we ate on our trip EXCEPT for Wendy's... And the Let It Grow place in Cortez, but that was for drinks... But while we were at the Pankcake Haus, I actually saw my belly move! From the outside! It was so crazy. I had thought I'd seen it move the day before, but I was never completely sure because we were on the boat when I thought I saw it...
After breakfast, we then checked out of the hotel and backtracked to Hole N" The Rock.
Hole N" The Rock is an interesting place... Apparently, this old couple named Albert and Gladys Christensen built their home inside of this mountainous rock... You pay $5 for a 10-minute tour. There are supposedly 14 rooms, but we didn't see all of them. The guy not only built the place, but he also liked to paint (there were creepy-looking pictures of Jesus and Franklin D. Roosevelt) and do taxidermy (the first donkey he taxidermied is in there and is falling apart, as well as two horses he did later on--they all have what looks like felt eyes and they look like creepy cartoon characters come to life). His wife made jewelry out of broken glass bottles and she also carved their headstone. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but you can see a few at this website: http://www.theholeintherock.com/photos.html. The pictures we did get are mostly of other artists' works, so here those are!
A public statement of the guy's love for Franklin D. Roosevelt...
This is where the creepy old couple is buried...
There was a petting zoo there as well that we didn't go to.
After that, we headed home! It was a fun trip but we were definitely glad to be back home!
The day after we got home we could both see the baby kick from the outside, so that was a lot of fun for us, too!
Anyway, hope you enjoyed this super-long post!
Check back later on to hear about my doctor's visit today. :-/
-Aubrey
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