I made it out alive!! Not one bear sighting! I’m not sure if I’m disappointed by that or overjoyed, I was so certain I was going to encounter a bear while trekking around the wilderness that I had myself quite worked up over it. I literally spent days reading about bear attacks on the internet and what to do in case you do come face to face with one. (by the way, did you know that you don’t actually play dead? Nope, you are supposed to make a lot of noise, avoid eye contact, and make yourself look big by waving your arms and holding a jacket out wide, all while walking slooooowly backwards and out of the way) See there, my extensive research may have just saved your life! 
While we were away I posted a few snaps on my instagram and facebook feeds. I also started getting a bunch of messages from friends who are interested in taking a similar trip and wanted to know the details of ours. Instead of messaging everyone one by one and repeating the same information, I thought I’d do a rather extensive (long) blog post about the trip and what we might do differently next time. Can you believe I said “next time”? This city girl is ready to go back. Who knew!!
We started the process by sitting down at the computer with the map in our hands and a rough idea of what we wanted to see. We also started this process at 9pm which is something I don’t recommend you do. Since it took us several hours to decide upon our route, search hotel options, book plane tickets, hotel rooms, and rental car, we ended at close to 1am and we were exhausted. Also, because of the late hour, we made some questionable decisions that we later kind of regretted. (more on that later…)
Here was our plan: Thursday- fly to Salt Lake City and look around. Friday- Drive to Cedar City for the night. Saturday- Zion National Park and drive to Kanab for the night. Sunday- Grand Canyon and drive to Page for the night. Monday- drive to Cortez and stop by 4 Corners. Tuesday- Mesa Verde National Park. Wednesday- Arches National Park and drive to northern Utah. Thursday- drive to Cody Wyoming. Friday- Yellowstone National Park. Saturday- more Yellowstone and the Cody Rodeo. Sunday- drive back to Salt Lake City. Monday- fly home
okay. So all of that sounds simple enough, right? What we didn’t consider at midnight when our brains were hurting was the fact that we were driving from southern Colorado to Northern Wyoming in 2 days. We also didn’t consider that most of the trip would be spent winding up and down mountains and we were stuck going 30-40 mph. Needless to say, two 10+ hour days in the car were a bit taxing! And, once we got out of Utah, it was all wide open spaces (cue the Dixie Chicks….) and flat land. Which translates into….nothing to look at!!! And to make matters worse, zero! and I mean zero!! cell service. So I couldn’t even play on my phone to pass the time. (first world problems!) But you know what, all of that was okay after all. We had some nice conversations and lots of quiet time to think and we were all pretty content just to be together. So, perhaps our late night planning wasn’t so bad after all. But I will say this, I missed my Toyota seats in a massive way after 20 hours in the car!!!!
How about I stop rambling and post some pretty pictures now. And as my friend feared, there are lots of photos of orange rocks. I tried to narrow them down a bit but the sky…..it was so gorgeous and blue and big! I couldn’t resist!
no trip is complete without the cliché cloud photo! And those are the Rocky Mountains on the right with snow on the peaks.
After our 4 hour flight we drove around in search of food. Joey thought it would be good to take me to the salt flats since that is one SLC sight I wanted to see. I didn’t realize it was a 2 hour drive from the city center one way. We were well on our way when I found out so we quickly aborted the mission and turned around. (disclaimer: I had 3 hours of sleep the night before, we got up at 4am to leave for our flight….I was a little bit tired and 4 hours in the car didn’t sound good) but I did take a few snaps from the car
On Friday we went to Temple Square. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was on the road so they had an organ recital every day at noon. This organ has 11,623 pipes. It was pretty amazing! (my 15 year old says that I’m officially old now)The organist played the song I walked down the aisle to so that was pretty special, and well….I think Emalee might be right.
this is the face your husband makes when he realizes that he parked in the $10 parking garage instead of the cheap garage. I think the tabernacle looks like Disney World in this picture. I keep expecting Mickey and Minnie to come out and say hello!
it was hot! Well over 100 degrees. I know it is a “dry” heat but man oh man, it was toasty! In the food court at the mall there were fountains everywhere. I had to resist the urge to walk through them!
how about this food court view? amazing!
on our way to Cedar City we stopped for gas and I saw my first (and only) bear
after dinner we drove through a neighborhood on this large hill. It was close to sunset so we decided to hang out and watch the sun set over the mountains. We sat there for about an hour just watching the sun drop and looking at all the huge houses. I’m sure the neighbors wondered what we were doing
It was 103 degrees on the day we went to Zion. The heat index was higher and the UV was max extreme. We were a little ill prepared for the day nutritionally and the altitude was an adjustment. But these views were amazing!
we hiked down to see this waterfall. I took a picture of the sign so we’d know what we were supposed to be seeing. oh by the way, see that frog there on the sign….if I had actually seen that you would have heard me screaming all the way in France. I hate frogs with a passion!
this is what we actually found at the end of the hike. That would be a trickle of water……
it’s hard to argue that all of those orange rocks are pretty amazing!
The weather at the Grand Canyon was a balmy 90 degrees and crazy windy!! I mean, crazy! It was 40-60mph sustained wind with 80-100mph gust. It was a little scary for me, I was certain someone was going to be blown into the large hole in the ground. Those wind gust would literally almost knock you off your feet. After we entered the gate we encountered a large herd of buffalo trying to cross the road.
we visited the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. It is a little less crowded than the South and personally, I liked it better. Not to mention this amazing lodge with chairs to sit in and take in the view. That is where Emalee and I stayed by the way, I was not looking to be the one idiot who blew into the giant hole. We sat in the chairs and enjoyed the view while Joey did a mini hike
before leaving town we had a quick stop at Lake Powell. It was amazingly blue! We took a quick peek at the dam and I snapped a few photos. Apparently birds grab the fish and carry them up to the hillside to feast since there were fish bones everywhere
next stop: 4 corners. Where you are in Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona all at once. Also where they served fry bread! My friend is from New Mexico and she told me before I left to stop for any bread that the Navajo Indians are serving. Since I have Navajo in my blood line I knew I would for sure stop and try it out. It was super yummy by the way!
Mesa Verde was one of the stops on our trip that I was looking forward to. Indian dwellings built into the cliffs thousands of years ago and perfectly preserved. We were able to hike down to see one of them but the main sight named Spruce House was closed because they’ve had some rocks falling and it isn’t safe. We were able to see it and take photos though. Truly amazing!
also on tap in Cortez…..laundry!! even on vacation mom duties have to be tended to.
because we had a long day in the car ahead of us, we did a quick hour at Arches National park. We were afraid that because it’s the 100th anniversary of the National parks that it was going to be super crowded everywhere we went. Zion was crowded and getting into Arches was crowded. After that, everyone kind of dispersed once inside the parks and it wasn’t too bad.
balanced rock and delicate arch
when you drive with these views you just have to stop and take a photo!
hello Wyoming!
11 hours in the car. You tend to get a little stir crazy
Yellowstone National Park, you are a true beauty!
this sign was on the napkin dispenser. It didn’t help my bear phobia!
Old Faithful. Emalee was not too impressed and she was really not impressed that we waited an hour to watch “water spurt out of the ground”
I wouldn’t mind this view outside my window
The grand prismatic spring. This Emalee was excited for! A bacteria pool!! That’s okay, it is pretty cool!
that one time we got too close to a buffalo…
Yellowstone Lake, you are so lovely!
after an 11 hour day inside Yellowstone, I couldn’t go back again the next day. I was tired! All the travel had caught up with me and I needed to sit in a hot tub and swim in the pool. Joey took off with Emalee’s camera and he saw some amazing waterfalls. He didn’t do too bad photographing them either!
however, when he returned I was rested up and ready to attend my first rodeo. I loved it!! Who knew rodeo’s were so patriotic?!? It was a great evening, even though Joey wouldn’t let me ride the mechanical bull. In his defense, I’m not the most graceful or coordinated person, so it was probably for the best.
Our vacation had finally come to an end. This poor rental car took a beating! 3100 miles driven, thousands of dead bugs on the front of the car, 5 states, 5 National parks, lots of laughs and memories….. priceless!!!
if you’ve hung on this long and you’re still reading, here is what I’d change. I would reconsider the Wyoming part of the trip. Not because Yellowstone was a waste of time, but the drive was brutal! Although in hindsight it’s hard to say I’d change anything. It was all pretty great and all that time in the car unplugged…..it was rejuvenating and a tad relaxing. Plus, all those miles traveled…we saw a ton of this amazing country. So, you can’t really call that a waste can you?
