​I feel like such a cheater but I just can't pick one most memorable moment in Arches NP.  I guess maybe instead of a memory from our trip,  I have a favorite feeling that Arches brings me.  When I visit Arches I am overwhelmed, many times, with a feeling that is hard to describe.  I feel like my chest is expanding beyond what I can sustain.  I feel at once tiny like an ant and enormous like I might fill the space all around me.  I am significant and simultaneously superfluous.  Sometimes it happens in a wide open space like the time we all were walking across a huge sandstone fin with the desert landscape stretching away all around us.  It also comes over me in tiny secluded box canyons where we discover an arch that seems it had been waiting just for us for ages!  I felt it when we were crossing from one group of sandstone to another across a desert prairie of bunch grass waving in the evening breeze.  Or even along "Park Avenue," surrounded by other visitors, as we stare in wonder at the cliffs soaring above us.  I want to say that maybe it is a desert thing but the fact is, I haven't felt it as strongly or consistently in any of the other Utah desert parks.  Additionally I have felt the same feeling sitting on a beach in the Dominican Republic, staring out to sea.  I can't explain it but I crave that feeling.  I seek it and when I find it I revel in it.  I felt it in Arches in my teen years and many years later, in my adult life, I was still longing to go back.  I was thankful that the feeling still found me all those years later.  I'm not sure I can name it.  Can you?  What is that feeling?  Where have you felt it before?  Tell me so I can go there too!

By Logan McAllister (10)

​One of my favorite times in Arches is when we went to see one of the arches and the path was sandy. It was about a quarter of a mile to the arch. You could see the arch from the path and when we got to the arch there were two slopes, one on either side of the arch. You could climb to the right or the left of the arch. I enjoyed being up by the arch but then had to leave. There was a little side trail that my two brothers and I followed. It was a long little trail but it finally bent around a corner and we saw a huge cut out in the cliff we were following. We searched and saw a bunch of snake holes. We searched around a little more to the left and found a little cliff. My brothers and I climbed it. Then our mom took pictures of us then we climbed and hiked back to the car and left.  

By Harley McAllister

Next we headed off to Aztec Butte, a short drive away.  This hike is less frequented and we basically had the place all to ourselves.  We chatted about various things as we found our route through the sandy washes and up over the butte to the location of an ancestral Puebloan granary hidden in the rocks.  This created a cool sense of discovery as we imagined the lifestyle of the people who built this structure, and then we continued on to the next location which was their dwelling.  This part of the hike got a bit more challenging, involving more route finding and scrambling up some fairly steep rock faces and outcroppings.  Tavin eats that sort of stuff up, and I got a kick out of watching him tackle the challenge.  

By Abby McAllister

​Although Zion National Park offers stunningly deep canyons, famous peaks and terrific hiking, canyoning and climbing, my favorite moment came one evening after dark.  It is probably my favorite because it was totally unexpected.  I like to be surprised.  I like a moment when my breath is taken away by unexpexted beauty.  When that happens, it feels like a special gift.  When it occurs in nature it feels like I am blessed beyond measure to be in the right place at the right time to take in a sight that will never be repeated in exactly the same way.  In Zion I had one of those once-in-a-lifetime gift experiences when we came out of the lodge after the evening ranger program.  It was late, the baby had fallen asleep on my lap and I was just expecting to head to the car, get all the kids buckled in and head back to the campground.  As we exited the lodge and walked across the big lawn towards our car we happened to look up.  Directly across from the lodge the full moon’s glowing light was reflecting off the sheer cliff walls that make up the peaks of (insert mountain names).  They seemed to be the face of the moon dropped in our laps.  They rose dramatically into the black night sky that is only found so far from cities.  We all stood mesmerized on the lawn that dark fall night and just drank it in.  Somehow the dark of the night and the light of the moon had transformed the peaks that seemed so rooted, so grounded each day, into something ethereal.  I don’t know how long we stood there but I remember I never wanted to leave.  We tried to capture the majesty with our camera but all attempts failed.  Sometimes you just have to be there.  I guess that is why we go to national parks, why we take our kids.  Photos in books and online, videos and movies-none of those can compare to being there.  

By Kaden McAllister, 14