St. George to Moab Utah
By Svara Jayasinghe
On the second day of our trip the plan was to drive from St. George to Moab to visit Arches National Park. The plan was to spend two nights in Moab. We woke up at around 7:30 and grabbed some breakfast that the hotel provided to go, and ate in our room to stay away from people. Because of COVID, the hotel breakfast was very limited and mainly had items that people could take to go. After breakfast we packed up our things and after mom taking a ridiculous amount of pictures, started our drive. Before we got onto the freeway we stopped at a gas station to grab some drinks and get a converter to charge our electronic devices in the car using a cigarette lighter power outlet. We started driving north on Interstate 15 to get onto the I-70 East. A little while into our drive we saw snow scattered on the ground and coating the mountains in the distance. As Californians we never see snow so we got extremely excited and demanded that we stop at the nearest rest stop. We got some wonderful pictures but underestimated how cold it would be and ended up only staying there for a couple of minutes because we were freezing to death. Of course no one thought of taking out our winter jackets from the back of the car. We continued driving for a long while, listening to music and talking. Although the scenery was beautiful the drive was long and boring.
(Image by the Jayasinghe Family)
We stopped at an overlook on I-15 to stretch our legs. This time we did put on our thick winter jackets. The view was stunning and we took a lot of pictures and walked around for a bit. Back on the road, we stopped at a Love’s, (a gas station with a built in store,) to get some gas and grab some snacks. Then it was straight on to Moab.
When we arrived at Moab at around 4:45 the first thing we did was go to the Visitor’s Center at Arches National Park. It was closing in ten minutes so we ran in to get some advice on what to do at the park. We talked to a park ranger for about fifteen minutes, who gave us some maps and told us that the park never closes, and that we could come and go whenever we wanted. That was some good advice. Before going to our hotel, we stopped at the City Market to buy food and snacks for the next day’s hikes at Arches National Park. We headed to the hotel, (Hampton Inn) checked in, and just relaxed in our hotel room watching The Christmas Prince.
An hour later at about 9 P.M. and halfway into our movie, my sisters, me, and our dad left the hotel to go to Arches National Park to stargaze. This area is considered to be an international dark sky park. This is a place recognized for the quality of its night skies. To read more about this, you can visit the website at darksky.org. We had read that the night sky at Moab is really beautiful and we wanted to see what it was like. The drive in the park at night was a little scary. It was pitch black and there were no streetlights. We drove up to the Balanced Rock parking lot, parked, and looked at the night sky. It was beautiful, but sadly Kiran could barely see the stars because of her terrible eyesight. There were a good number of stars in the sky but I think it was less than what we could have seen because of the bright moon. Perhaps we could have gone up a little bit earlier when the moon was a little bit lower on the horizon. Our dad and Simran took pictures and we hung around for about half an hour looking at the stars before heading back to the hotel. We finished The Christmas Prince before going to bed and resting for the long day of hiking ahead of us.