My wife is amazing. She packed up for 5 kids and 2 adults and there wasn't even a bad sticking up above the level of the back seat and nothing on the floor. Each of the kids had their own little utility pouch on the seat in front of them with books on tape, books to read, snacks, and for the first day breakfast and lunch.We left at 6:30 AM. Drove through Iowa and hit Omaha around 11 AM. We stopped at Cabela's to get a Camelbak and Backpack to hike with Peter in and ended up staying a full hour there. It was actually a great start to the trip with the mountain of animals in the center of the store, getting you in the mood to go hiking and see what you can see.
We made great time and were in Colorado by 5 PM local time. We got a drive thru dinner and headed to Denver. We went into the mountains where it ended up snowing at the top of the pass. We got to Vail by 9 and thought we should just keep on going to Grand Junction, CO and get a hotel. We weren't sure how far we would get so we hadn't reserved anything, but with gas a $4 a gallon, we figured we should find something with all the reports about people driving for vacation less.
WRONG! Every room in Grand Junction was sold out. We stopped at 4 places and called a bunch more. It was midnight Austin time by now and we had been driving 18 hours and I was getting a bit tired. We got on the phone with the travel agency from work and got phone numbers for eery hotel between Grand Junction and Green River, UT (there are not so many...). Everything was sold out. After much debate, we decided to just head down to Moab and sleep in the van (which we were dreading thoroughly). We called at least 4 places in Moab, all sold out, and were told by a hotel manager that there probably wasn't a room available in the whole town.
After 20.5 hours of straight driving we arrived in Moab at 1:30 AM local time. A sign on the road coming in said "welcome Moab International Music Festival guests" and we figured that yep, we'll be sleeping in the car. However, we couldn't believe our eyes when we pulled along side the "Riverside Inn" and the sign said vacancy.
I went in and woke up the front desk attendant who was sleeping in the back. He said they had one room left, a king bed. I happily took it and went and got the kids and bags. When we got to the room, I unlocked the door but was surprised to find the chain lock attached when I pushed the door open. I tried again and a very groggy but angry sounding voice yelled out. I shut the door and apologized. My stomach sank as I thought, I am on the second floor of this not-so-nice motel with my 5 small children at 2 AM and there isn't actually an available room. Now the kids were all awake and we were going to have to try and get them all to go back to sleep in the van.
However, when I told the front desk attendant, he very sleepily apologized and gave me another key for the room that was actually open (I opened it very carefully - concealed weapons are legal in Utah and I didn't want any possibly armed individuals in the room decideing I was a perceived threat). Luckily, the room was indeed open. Just one bed so the 4 youngest and Dad jumped in the bed while Mom and Connett hit the floor. Micah woke me up at 3 AM (a full hour after we laid down) and said something had fallen on her hand while she was asleep so I switched with her (the floor was actually quite a bit more spacious and comfortable than the bed so I was originally trying to be chivalrous) and got another 4ish hours of sleep before the kids started waking up.
Although we were very glad to get out of the motel, but so glad that we got it in the first place and everyone could stretch out for the night (or a few hours in the night). Day 2 was in the low 70's when I started packing up the car, so I was anxious to get out into Arches and enjoy the day.
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