Park City to Moab Spring Break: Sprinter, Rafts, and Real Numbers

Park City School District spring break is reliably late March or early April. That timing is perfect for one place specifically: Moab. Any earlier and the desert is still cold at night; any later and Arches has reservation-only entry windows and the campsites are a knife fight. Our window is the sweet spot, and we have it on the calendar before the school year even starts. The kids know we are not flying anywhere for spring break, and they have stopped asking, mostly because the alternative is rafting and they are river kids before they are anything else.

We drive the Sprinter. We take the rafts strapped on top — both an inflatable kayak for me and a 13-foot raft Tyler rows. The boat (the actual boat, the fishing boat) stays home. The rafts are different gear, lighter, and meant for moving water. Liam at nine is just old enough this year to row a portion of a flatwater stretch under Tyler's eye, which is the kind of small Hatch family milestone we'll remember forever.

Where We Camp: Castle Valley

Town Moab in spring break season is a circus. We don't camp in town. We camp in Castle Valley, about 25 minutes northeast on Highway 128 along the Colorado River. There are BLM campgrounds along that whole corridor — Big Bend, Hal Canyon, Hittle Bottom — and they're first-come-first-served at the early-spring shoulder. We've never been turned away if we arrive by Saturday afternoon. $20 a night ish. Pit toilets, no water, fire rings. The river is right there, the red walls go straight up around you, and the kids fall asleep to the sound of the Colorado moving past camp.

If those are full, we go up onto the BLM dispersed land off the Castle Valley Road — free, no facilities, but the views of the Castleton Tower spire are the kind of thing you stop trying to photograph after a while.

Arches with a 5-7-9 Spread

Arches is the obvious thing to do in Moab and it deserves the hype. The trick with our age range is matching kids to hikes:

Park Avenue — easy, flat-ish, jaw-dropping for everyone including Beck. Out-and-back is two miles. Best done in the morning before the sun is straight overhead.
Delicate Arch — three miles round trip, 480 feet of climb, exposed slickrock. Liam (9) and Ava (7) and I do this one. Tyler stays back with Beck and they do the lower viewpoint, which is a quarter-mile flat walk and gets you a long-lens view of the same arch. Don't try Delicate with a 5-year-old in the heat of midday. Ask me how I know.
Sand Dune Arch — half a mile, deep sand, kids think it's a beach. Beck loves this one. Always.
Windows Section — short loops, lots of arches per mile, good for tired kids on Day 3.

Arches now has a timed-entry reservation system in peak season. By spring break you usually want one. Book ahead. They sell out.

Rafting

Spring break is also the start of rafting season — water levels depend on the snowpack, but we usually get either a low-flow Daily on the Colorado (the stretch from Hittle Bottom past Onion Creek to Take-Out Beach) or, if levels are right and Tyler gets a permit early, a one-night Westwater. Westwater is a Class III-IV stretch and not for our kids — we trade off, one parent goes, the other stays with kids. The Daily is mellow flatwater with a few small wave trains and Liam can row most of it. Beck rides in the front of the raft strapped in and yells at every ripple.

If you don't have rafts, Sheri Griffith and Adrift Adventures in town both run good half-day Daily-section trips with kids. Spring break is a great time for it because the water isn't pumping yet.

The Burger Ritual: Milt's Stop & Eat

We do not eat in restaurants much on these trips. Milt's Stop & Eat is the exception. It's a tiny old-school burger shack on the south end of town, grass-fed beef, hand-cut fries, milkshakes that are bigger than Beck's head. We go on Day 2 always, after the first big hike. The kids understand this is the meal. Moab Diner is the breakfast spot — green chili over everything, get the kid pancake plate. Also Quesadilla Mobilla, a food truck on Main, for cheap fast lunch.

Cost Breakdown vs. Flying

Last year's full spring break: gas there and back ($180), six nights of camping ($120), groceries ($220), Milt's and Moab Diner and one Quesadilla Mobilla day ($90), Arches entry ($30), raft permit ($20). Total: $660 for five people for seven days.

Compare to flying five of us anywhere — the closest beach is San Diego, and even budget flights for five plus a rental car plus six nights of lodging is north of $4,000 before food. The math is so lopsided I have a hard time understanding why anyone with rafts and a Sprinter would do anything else. I get the appeal of a beach. We'll get to the beach when we drive the Sprinter to Mexico for summer fishing — that is the actual plan, more on that in another post — but spring break is for the desert.

What We Pack That Other People Forget

Long sleeves and pants for the morning — Moab is 30 degrees overnight in late March.
Two pairs of shoes per kid — one closed-toe for hikes, one sandals for water and sand.
A real first-aid kit. The desert has more pointy things than you remember.
Way more water than you think — we carry 10 gallons in the Sprinter and refill at Moab city water.
The kids' fishing rods, even though we're not fishing — Liam will find a way and the Colorado does have fish.

If you grew up flying for spring break and the idea of camping in the desert with three kids sounds like a punishment, I'd push back gently. The kids will be filthy. They will also be calmer than they've been all winter, and they will sleep nine hours a night instead of seven, and you will come home into Park City just as the snow is melting on Jupiter Bowl thinking about river season. That's the timing of this trip — Moab is the bridge from winter to summer for our family, and after the Sprinter is back in the driveway I start checking the Provo River gauges. Rivers are coming up. That's the post I really want to write.