Arches National Park

(Written Wednesday, June 17, 2009)

Well, I just spent who-knows-how-long typing away at this journal, only to have my computer restart for ‘updates’ and lose everything I just typed. But because I am listening to Facing the Giants where it says “If we win, we praise Him; if we lose, we praise Him,” I am not going to get upset. I’ll just start over and trust that it will be better than before! Of course, it's a little thing that I shouldn't get upset over anyway... I'm just glad for the reminder at the right time.

The reason we are sitting in the car watching Facing the Giants is because it has been raining where we are at, so we took refuge here.

We left Colorado Springs yesterday morning, after an unpleasant experience with our car. We awoke to find that Patton (who we had left in the car due to rain and cold) had thrown up and/or gone to the bathroom all over our car! It smelled awful and I came very near to throwing up myself, though I generally have a pretty strong stomach. We cleaned it up and bought some car fresheners from the campground, then went to Wal-Mart and purchased Febreze. Even with all that, it was quite some time before we could drive without holding our noses or having to stick them out the window.

Before we left, we also stopped at the vet to have Patton looked at. He didn’t look so good and hadn’t been eating much, not to mention all that he did in our car. He got some medicine and thankfully has been fine ever since.

We drove for several hours, past mountains, wide open spaces and the Glenwood Canyons. It was a beautiful, but strange at the same time. It seemed so empty and desolate in spite of the beauty. I got to drive for awhile and I did enjoy taking in the scenery, thinking and praying.

We got to Arches National Park last night around 6:00 pm, only to find out that there were no available campgrounds. We were told there would be some available in the morning, but we would have to be there around 6:00 am! In the meantime, we got a list of area campgrounds and headed off to find a place for the night, hoping for one close by. No such luck. We checked several campgrounds before we finally found the last spot at a campground along the Colorado River. We set up our small tent (not wanting to take everything out, only to pack it up the next morning). It was a beautiful location, but again, it felt empty and desolate and overall kind of scared me. I realized after awhile that I felt claustrophobic from all the cliffs and canyons so close.

Well, because we had to fit five people into a four-person tent, I ended up next to the wall, unable to stretch out all the way. So I slept curled up into a ball. Of course, ‘slept’ might be too strong of a word. I dozed until a strong wind that felt like it would blow the tent over woke me up. I got cold from the wind, found some covers and then started getting wet from some rainwater leaking in! Thankfully, I kept warm and dry in the sleeping bag.

This morning we woke up around 5:30 and headed back to Arches National Park, hoping to find a campsite. We have access to sites for disabilities because we have an Access Pass for Alyssa. Nonetheless, we got here early and were still behind several people. We waited an hour and a half until they opened and we finally got our site!

When we drove up to the site, we met the people who were here last night… a home school family with a special needs daughter named Amy. Alyssa has been best friends with her since they met. It has been so sweet to see.

I need to stop for right now to head to bed… only now we have another problem to figure out. We accidently left a couple windows open in our tent while it rained and poured. So our sleeping bags and air mattresses and everything is all wet. We were looking forward to finally staying warm, being comfortable and getting a good night’s sleep. Now it looks like we may be sleeping in our car. I want to go see if I can figure out a solution. So… I will finish my tale tomorrow!