CaNeUt Vacation Day 3 - Hiking Bryce Canyon

Day 3!  We woke up eager to explore Bryce Canyon.  We had breakfast and picked a path to walk/hike.

Paul chose Sunrise Point to Victoria's Garden.

The views were incredible.

And it was fairly easy walking, going down.  I did slide around a bit, and I turned my ankle once.  I was wearing Toms, which are totally tractionless on the bottom.

Paul is much more of a hiker than I am.  I'm more of a sidewalk sort of girl.

But the views were spectacular.

Paul and I both had our cameras with us, so we have many pictures of the same things from different perspectives.  Like me and a funny rock formation...

...and then Paul taking a picture of the same funny rock formation.

Or how about these cool doorways?

There were several of them.

Lots of cool rocks, but not much in the way of plants.  It takes some hardy flora to survive the unique conditions that exist here, at Zion, and the Grand Canyon.

So this was the "end" of our chosen .8 mile hike down.  The logical step here would be to turn around here and hike back up, right?

Well, not exactly.  Paul wanted to cross the canyon and hike up Navajo Loop to Sunset Point.

I'm pretty sure this is the last picture I took of him on this hike, because after that, I was not so happy with his great idea.  In retrospect, any "up" would have been less fun than down, but knowing it was half a mile longer made it even worse.

This sign made me laugh.  Stay on the trail.  Or the prickly plants will get you.  It's enforcement by natural consequences.

The flat-ish walking part and especially the shaded part, was pleasant enough.

But at some point, I stopped even seeing the view, I was so focused on the next few steps up.  And it was a long way up.  Paul figured out later that we covered a 600 foot difference in elevation.

See all those switchbacks up the hill?  Now imagine them in the full sun.  That's what we came up.  Needless to say, we were ready for a rest after that.  We took the shuttle back to our hotel and had a nap.

Later that afternoon, we rode the shuttle back to wander around some more.  We got out at Bryce Point for a while.  Sam called while we were there, and gave us some news on where he'll probably be after he finishes training.  We're holding that with open hands, though, since we know things change with the military.  "Semper Gumby," always flexible.

We caught another shuttle to Inspiration Point.

It was getting kind of windy here!  But the views were awesome.

We ended up walking from here back to Sunset Point.  It was a pleasant, mostly downhill walk, and honestly, I think getting out and walking some more helped keep me from getting as stiff as I would have if I had just stayed at the hotel the rest of the day.  My phone step counter indicated that day was seven times my usual amount of walking, so I expected to be more sore than I was then next day.

My feet really appreciated my Cool Azul cream with wintergreen in it!

We also saw lots of cute little chipmunks, and even a few deer while we were there.  

And that's the end of Day 3!  

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CaNeUt Vacation Day 2, Travel and Bryce Canyon

If you missed the start of the trip yesterday, you might want to go back and read that first.  Next morning, after Paul and I left the kids in Nevada, we drove on to Utah, toward Bryce Canyon.

It was lots and lots of this as we crossed Nevada.  No traffic, no power lines, just the occasional shot-ridden road sign and miles of sagebrush.

And then!  We started to see yucca plants.  It was pretty exciting to finally see something different for a while.

We stopped here, at the end of the Extraterrestrial Highway to get cold drinks.

Then later, we stopped for lunch, and to stare at our phones for a little bit.

This was the thriving metropolis of Caliente, Nevada.  It has a population less than the number of my Facebook followers, but still a cluster of businesses and houses bigger than some of the tiny towns we passed through.

Lunch was yummy.  Paul had a burger and curly fries.  I had fish & chips with warm "fry bread," which turned out to be like sopapillas, and was served with honey butter.  Really tasty.  There used to be a little "hole in the wall" Mexican restaurant in Sonoma that my dad and I went to when I was a kid, and they had yummy sopapillas.

The gas station in Fallon used to have one of these funny green dinos out front, and we took pictures of the kids on it in years past.  It seems to have changed hands more than a year ago, however, and there's no more green dino there.  So I smiled to see a green dino gas station and took a picture to show the kids.  Yes, 4 hours in, I already missed them.

Smoke from one of 3 different wildfires we encountered.  A fire in Utah, which we could actually smell from Bryce Canyon in the evenings, a fire we could see from my dad's house in Nevada, and a fire we saw near Sparks on our way home.

Actually, the cemetery above reminds me of a funny story from Day 1.  We'd been in the car for-ev-er.  And hadn't seen anything but tumbleweed for quite some time.  Suddenly, we come to a cemetery outside Austin, NV, and Hannah pipes up with, "Signs of life!"  Cracked me up.

Roadside stop to look at the scenery.

We arrived at Bryce Canyon and checked in to Ruby's Inn.

Then we went across the street to check out the little touristy shops, and found this jail cell.

I missed Eli in the rock shop.  Our family has a rock gene.  My granny had it.  My dad has it.  I have it, and Eli has it.  It manifests differently in each of us, but it's there.  When I was a kid, my grandmother had rocks she'd picked up in various places all over the house.  I remember my dad choosing rocks for the border of our garden in one yard, and specific rocks as part of the landscape in at another house.  Personally, I tend to like touching rocks with a lot of history, like the Great Wall, or an old mine shaft.

There were lots of pretty little things in the rock shop.  I ended up bringing home 3 bracelets.

Being together, without the children, overnight, for the first time since 2010, we went a little wild and had ice cream before dinner.

Then we wandered over to Bryce Canyon to check out the amazing views.  We started at Sunset Point.

We got there as the sun was going down, so most of the canyon was in the shade, but it was still pretty.

We both had our cameras with us, so we got lots and lots of pictures.

Bad lighting, sorry.

The view was spectacular.  You can't really process how incredible it is from a picture.

I bought postcards for Zach, Annaliese, and Sam, and was able to mail 2 of them the next day from the Bryce Canyon City post office on site.

And that is the end of day 2!


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CaNeUt Summer Vacation Day 1

We're home!  Most summers, we go visit family in Nevada.  The last few summers, my kids have also gone to summer camp with my Dad & Step Mom's church there.  This year, we changed things up a bit.  Paul and I drove the kids to Nevada and the next day, left them and our van with the grandparents while we hopped into my step mom's cute little car and headed onward to Utah for a few days while the kids were at camp.

Jack and Paul wore their road tripping shirts for the drive.  We left home at 7 a.m. and got there after 3 p.m.

One of our stops along the way was at Donner.  There's a scenic rest area, and everyone is happy to stretch their legs and go potty.

The views were gorgeous.  We saw snow on the mountaintops in all 3 states we visited.

It was so pretty, we stopped again a little further down the road to take a few more pictures.

That's Donner Lake behind Brianna and I.

 We stopped again, later, at Scheels.  The kids love the giant fish tanks.

Scheels is an outdoors store.  Hunting, fishing, hiking, all that sort of stuff.  It's got a lot of cool displays, too.  This time, there were several presidents on display that give speeches.  It's a little like Disneyland.

One last stop to fuel the van in Fallon before heading out to the middle of nowhere.  We travel along "the loneliest road in America" for a while, before turning off to more deserted roads.  Nevada takes nothingness to an art form.  No traffic, no trees, no power/phone lines, just miles and miles of sagebrush, with mountains in the distance.

It's always so nice to finally arrive.  Good to get out of the car, good to see family, good to be so warmly welcomed.


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