day 3: colorado to utah

Some roadtrip days are about big adventures, some are about small moments. Today was the latter. 

Partly because I accidentally gave Rico the number to Green River rafting in North Carolina, and partly because Green River, Utah has nothing but a Burger King, a gas station, and a literally green river, we spent more time on the road than we intended.

We woke up to crisp mountain air, and this view:

Utah is dinosaur central, and since Punk is an amateur paleontologist from way back, we couldn't barrel through this state without at least checking a few things out. That is how we found ourselves 30 miles from nowhere, 2 miles off of that road, and hiking another 100 yards beyond that. Dinosaur Trackway north of Moab, is one of the few places that you can actually see both sauropod and theropod tracks in the exact spot where they actually occurred. According to paleontologists, both an apatosaurus and allosaurus made the racks we saw today. Standing on the hilltop, we could see the rock bed that formed the waterfall and stream next to an enormous gorge. 

Sometimes I don't have words for how a place makes me feel. Standing in the footprints of 65 million years ago was one of those times.

Ninety-eight degrees in the Utah desert didn't agree with Yoda, so we soon headed back to the van. To quote Rico, "Utah is little bits of breathtaking, punctuated by vast expanses of who-gives-crap." He's sort of right. We drove for hours with no gas stations, no cell service, and nothing but dry, rocky bluffs to keep us company.

Our Holiday Inn Express in Richfield, Utah was a welcome sight, and it was here, where another one of those little road trip wonders occurred. In the hotel pool, for the first time ever, our water-phobic-since-the-day-she-was-born third child, finally let go and swam alone with her floaties. The look of pride on her little face was another one of those moments, where I just had no words. But she did. "I feel a feeling in my heart that feels like excited, and I think that it's called proud."