Thanksgiving Day

Since we were in Moab, we had several options when it came to Thanksgiving Dinner. Most of them involved ridiculous amounts of money. Lots of local restaurants were serving some variation of a turkey dinner, but they were very fond of their fare; it would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $80-100 smackeroos for our family to enjoy any of their offerings.

We weren't paying that much to watch our girls eat a small helping of turkey and mashed potatoes and a roll. Not that that's all the restaurant would offer them, just that that's all they'd want to eat. And Anya wouldn't even eat the potatoes.

What we discovered, as we were sitting around our hotel room that morning, wishing each other a Happy Thanksgiving, is that if you're not at home cooking a turkey and all the stuff that goes with it, enjoying the smells that fill the house, or heading to someone else's home to enjoy that same bounty, it really doesn't feel like Thanksgiving. It just kind of feels like a generic Saturday.

Except it's Thursday.

That's not a bad thing. I mean, we were already LOVING our getaway in southern Utah, having a great time together, perfect weather, beautiful scenery, wonderful stuff to do. It just didn't feel like Thanksgiving.

So we decided to really think outside the box. What if we didn't have turkey at all? That narrowed our options. Fast food places were all closed. One sandwich shop was open, and of course Denny's, which I don't think ever closes. We were actually on our way to Denny's, when we saw that this place was open.

Huzzah! We all love Chinese food, and what better way to thumb our collective noses at tradition than to get food from a completely different continent. They were offering a more reasonably priced turkey dinner, but later in the day, and besides, who wants to go to a chinese restaurant and have turkey? We stuck to the asian cuisine.

It was a great choice. Incredible meal. I'm salivating just thinking about it again.

Having loaded up on rice, veggies, chicken and beef all simmering in various delectable sauces, we headed back into the park to hike to Delicate Arch.

We were pretty surprised at the number of non-traditionalists like us who were forsaking the usual Thanksgiving activities and spending it on this trail. Those little dots trailing up the slick rock are fellow hikers.

Quite a few fellow hikers.

We were a bit worried it might be crazy crowded when we finally reached Delicate Arch, but it was only mildly so.

As always, we snapped and climbed.

Those two little ants under Delicate in the previous picture are Em and me. That arch is stinkin' big!

We ended the day with a loaf of crusty sourdough bread, cheese, popcorn and chocolate, while we watched the DVD of Charley's Aunt together and annoyed our motel neighbors with our laughter.