Birthday trip to Moab

A few days before Christmas, we loaded up the cats and took off for Moab to celebrate Drew's birthday.

The Book Cliffs and Moab had just been dumped on.  This is the whitest I've seen the desert along Highway 6 and I-70.

The snow made for a gorgeous backdrop to our hike to Corona Arch.

Along the way there is a cool contact spring.

I think this is technically an arch. It is formed when the tool rocks in a large pothole finally erode the pothole deep enough to break through an overhanging ledge.  Pretty cool.

And I think these are volcanic pebbles littered on top of the slickrock.

Drew chose his birthday dinner as sushi in the desert, so we tried the one and only sushi place in town.

The next night, our friend Cathy treated us to dinner at her house. It was yummy and we had a nice visit.

But we headed back a day early to avoid an incoming storm. We planned it so that we were coming through Spanish Fork after dark so we could drive through the park and see all the crazy lights and Christmas decorations in the park.

Frog

 It takes about 15 minutes to drive all the way around the park.

The park broadcasts Christmas carols over loud speakers; you can tune your radio to a certain channel and get the tunes piped into your car.

 Many of the displays are animated.  This one is bears fishing.

 So cheesy. So fun.