From March 14th-17th 2012 the 7 Harmon men were able to go on a most excellent adventure to Moab Utah.
Now being of a certain age, oldest 48 and youngest 31, its amazing that never before in our history have all of us brothers ever done anything like this before, why not, who knows? Must have been busy growing up and creating our own families I guess. But believe you me, this will be at least a yearly thing from now on until our hips can't take it anymore!
It would be a really long post and hard to type down everything we did and experienced. But I'll try to sum it up.
We had been planning this trip for several months, getting work time off schedules, getting people from long distance to central Utah, stuff like that. Along with it came the anticipation, at least for me. I was gitty, like a little kid going to Disneyland or something. For Me, Moab is MY Disneyland. We picked Moab I guess for its "we can be like kids and climb on rocks" atmosphere. A few of us have been and thought it would be something everyone would enjoy.
We took 2 campers and stayed at a KOA. The KOA was actually decent. We weren't there except for at night and mornings, it wasn't too far out of town and the plumming was exceptional, especially for 7 men eating protein and carbs!
Thursday morning after eating breakfast we heading to Arches National Park. Wanted to hike up to Delicate Arch, Utah's most famous landmark first thing since the hike is all exposed to the sun and is all uphill, so the heat and climb could be cumbersome. The climb was fun, took us a little longer than most, we had to stop and play on rocks, jump over cracks and try the viral trend of "planking", which is a couple years old, yeah we're like that.
I've talked about Delicate Arch before so I won't go into it, but it is a "must see". One day it will fall, and that is sad, just hopefully not in mine or my kids lifetime. We hung out up top, horsed around, had a snack and enjoyed one anothers company.
2nd activity of the day was the Fiery Furnace. I'm the only one who had been in there before. A labyrinth of slots, rock fins and canyons. I knew the "jist" of the path, lets just say at one point it took us awhile to find the correct fin or canyon to go down. But that was the fun thing, exploring. There was one canyon that we played in that was not on the guided tour I took a couple years back. We climbed, jumped, crawled all over this one area. A couple brothers ended up ripping their shorts and walked the rest of the furnace with taped and hooked shorts. It was quite funny and just had to be there. There were a couple more places we could have explored but just didn't do to time and maybe some obstacles a couple people may not have been able to tackle, maybe next time? We ate lunch in the shade, the nice thing about the furnace, is that we were in there during the hottest part of the day, but your in the shade for most of it. The time of year and the high fins block alot of direct sunlight. The fiery Furnace I think was the best part of the trip. Normal guided tour is about 3 hours long. We played around in there for little over 4 hours I believe.
3rd we thought about going to Devil's Garden, another long hike to see several arches, but we were all pretty spent.
So we decided to check out the "Windows Section". And not all of it, just the coolest part, Double Arch. We hung out there for a little bit then decided to go back and make dinner. I think we had spagetti, it was good.
Friday morning after breakfast we headed to Corona Arch. Now I wanted to see Corona Arch from the begining, and even more so since seeing this video:
The trail was easy, exposed to direct sunlight (hence the early hike) but just massive on arrival. We played around ofcourse, took some cool photos, had a snack in the shade of the arch.
But the fun thing was climbing to the top! There are some videos on how to do this, pansies using rope and wearing helmets. Thinking about it after coming back down it may not have been such a great idea. There was some risk involved, but thinking about it now, it wasn't so bad.
The thing about it, that and climbing around in the furnace, it takes alot out of you. At least it did me. Not sure if its the climate, the heat or what. Climbing uses alot more energy than just hiking/walking. Seemed like I was pooped the rest of the day.
After Corona we were supposed to take a bypass road into Canyonlands National park to see some stuff like Dead Horse Point, Mesa Arch and go climb around Holeman Slot canyon. Well we never found our bypass road. We took another road that would lead us to Canyonlands, but it ended up being closed. I was in charge of logistics so it bummed me out a little bit and I felt bad for not leading my brothers to do the things we planned.
However we found fun in taking the 2 trucks on some crazy roads. We played on some more rocks, we actually went to the bottom of Dead Horse Point, being at the bottom and looking down below to the river canyon was pretty freaky, still really high up. We saw several different rock formations and geography in a matter of miles. That area is so uniquely landscaped, its incredible. From Arches to Canyonlands you see so many different types of landscape in such a short distance. Northern Utah if you drive 30 minutes in any direction you pretty much see the same thing. In the Moab area if you drive 30 minutes in any direction you'll see dozens of different things and geology.
After arriving back in town we started on some epic homemade beef stew, that was some good eatin'. We hung out, had fun taking and taking our turn trying on Greg's one piece pajamas, good times!
Saturday we were suppose to head back towards home, but on the way stop at Goblin Valley and Wild Horse canyon for some more rock climbing and slot canyon navigating. But some bad weather and high winds rolled in. With towing trailers we thought it would be safe to head out before the storm and winds hit us and wreaked havoc on the driving.
Its one thing getting out of town for a few days, enjoying nature and some serious fun. But its another to have family around. Actually getting along, razing one another, sharing common interests, and having a good time. For some reason its actually a rare thing to have a big family and everyone getting along, no drama, contention or hostile feelings toward one another.
I think one of the only things I enjoyed about running was doing runs with family members. Now going to Moab, climbing on rocks with family was EPIC. There's a saying, "The older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young."
Its so true! We did alot of things as family, mostly going camping in the camper or to the cabin when it was built. I thought it would be really sad to see those places go, and it would be. But it doesn't matter where we go to hang out, just as long as we hang out.
It would be really cool to go to Moab or someplace like that with all my siblings, see my sisters scampering around the Fiery Furnace, that would be fun!
Its been over a month since going, and I could have blogged earlier but I wanted to post a couple videos and youtube wouldn't let me because of the songs I used being copyrighted or something. Now that Google Drive is out and will let me embedd videos, whalah!
Preview I posted on Facebook to get myself excited about showing off what we did.
While I was looking though videos I came across a couple clips that a I mashed together for fun here:
Most of all I wanted to show us old kids. Yeah we are getting up there in age, but are still able in both body and spirit to let loose, have fun, be silly and climb on some sweet rocks!
This is just a collection of scenery. Not too many shots with us in it, just focusing on the works of art God made from the dirt.
Just a compilation of of us walking, scampering and hiking through the area.
I probably will make a couple more, but it may take awhile. Finding time is hard, its taken 2 nights to finish this blog.
Anyways, I can't wait for the next adventure. We may do Moab again, Zions, San Rafael Swell, or maybe something else like river rafting, who knows?
