Our much awaited vacation started at 2:30am on Thursday, July 9th. We love to get up early and get on the road. It makes our travel days much more enjoyable for everyone in our family. Our kids get super excited when they know we will be leaving at 3am. They crawl in the big van, also known as Cooper, and get curled up before going back to sleep. We got on the road at 3:20am on Thursday to head to Colorado, our first stopping point on our trip. Thankfully, our first leg went without any issues. We drove through Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and then into Colorado. The kids sleep, read, and watch movies throughout the drive. We have learned over the years that 19 hours on the road is our max. Today our drive time was 15 hours which meant about 17 hours on the road. Josh does almost ALL the driving. It is his preference. The one nice part about traveling during this pandemic, is that we brought our house, food, bathroom and all with us on the road. The only stops we had to make were for gas. I brought along a roll of paper towels and our Sol-U-Gaurd disinfectant, which is from the company I have been a part of since 2004. Their disinfectant has proven to kill the germs found in COVID, so that was a relief to me. We used the paper towels and disinfectant to clean the gas pumps before we used them. This gave me a little peace of mind with traveling. We arrived at our first stop in Lake Meredith Reservoir in Colorado. We found our stop by using the website #campedium. They are a great source of information when camping and looking for places to camp. They give you all kinds of information including cell service for the area. Lake Meridith was okay, but not our favorite. It was somewhat dirty and as the night wore on many campers came in with jet skis, lots of cars, and toys. It is a hot spot for locals to play on the water. The reservoir is HUGE, but very shallow. We spent the night and then went on our way. It wasn’t all that restful because the camper next to us ran their construction generator all night as well as played loud music until 2am. We were definitely glad to head out on Friday morning.
Friday, July 10, 2020 - This morning we headed toward Great Sand Dunes National Park. We brought along our cheap sleds to see if we could do some sledding. I know you can rent them there, but we are trying to minimize any contact with people if we can. We are trying to do this trip as safely as possible. The Great Sand Dunes were HOT. We didn’t realize how hot the sand itself would be. Crocs and flip flops were NOT the shoes to wear. We did make our way out to the Dunes and tried sledding but it was not working well. It didn’t seem like anyone was having much luck actually sledding. The dunes themselves are HUGE and look like a painting. My pictures don’t even compare to the actual beauty of the area. We spent an hour or so before heading on to Mesa Verde National Park where we would spend the next two nights. We pulled in to Mesa Verde in time to find our campsite and get settled in for the night. The campground was BEAUTIFUL and EMPTY. It was so nice. There were maybe 3 other campers in the entire campground.
Mesa Verde National Park was a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it is beautiful. The scenery is mountainous and rocky. There are TONS of mule deer. They have been all over the campground and through our campsite. Our first evening we took an evening drive and caught the sunset. It was beautiful. The pull out that we stopped at was one of my favorites because of the way the rocky cliff curved. It was a nice evening.
We drove to check out the many cliff dwellings within the National Park on Saturday. You cannot tour any of them right now due to COVID and one whole section of the park is closed due to COVID and fire danger. We took a road tour while listening to a podcast about the cliff dwellings and the Ancestral Pueblo people. The history of this area is unbelievable. We got to walk around the Far View house and village. It was truly amazing to see the different buildings and kivas. Kivas are very reverent within the Pueblo people. We learned so much. We saw Cliff Palace from across the valley and also up close. We also saw Square House and Balcony House. We headed back to the campground for dinner and relaxing. We love to take evening drives to look for the local animals. We saw LOTS of mule deer and a coyote. We got the Airstream all ready to pull out on Sunday morning to head to our next stop - Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah.
Sunday we took the 5 hour drive to our next campsite at Dead Horse Point State Park. We are staying at Dead Horse Point State Park because the campground at Arches National Park is closed right now. It was a blessing in disguise because Arches National Park campground does not have electricity. Dead Horse Point does. With the high temperatures between 95-100, the AC in the Airstream is going to be super helpful. We plan to hike early in the morning and late in the evening in Arches and Canyonlands National Park to avoid the heat. On our way to Dead Horse Point, we stopped at Arches National Park to get the guide and maps. We then proceeded to our campground and got set up. That evening we headed to Canyonlands National Park to get the map and guides as well. We ended up doing a short hike of a 1/2 mile to Mesa Arch before heading back to the campground. Dead Horse Point State Park campground is VERY nice. It is SUPER quiet, very clean, and has a covered picnic area for each site. We spent the evening planning out our next few days in Arches and Canyonlands National Park. Arches is about a 20 minute drive and Canyonlands is about a 10 minute drive, so Dead Horse Point Campground is a perfect spot for us to land.
Monday, July 13 - We got up and had a somewhat quick breakfast. We decided to do our morning hikes at Canyonlands National Park because it was close. We started our hiking on Grand View Trail which was a one mile hike. It took us to a beautiful overlook of the many canyons below. Josh and I wonder if Canyonlands is similar to the Grand Canyon. The hike was fairly level which was a nice start to our daily hikes. We came back to the Airstream for a cool down in the midday heat and our bigger meal of the day we decided to call “linner.” We headed to Arches around 4:30pm to avoid the heat. I was super excited for this hike - Delicate Arch. This is the iconic arch that is seen on the Utah license plate. It is a 3 mile out and back hike that is moderately strenuous. It has a fairly steep climb up slick rock. It was a great workout for sure. The payoff was AMAZING. As we were hiking we could see storms all around us. It seems like it is a common occurrence around here. Many storms, but not many actually hit the desert areas. The mountains surround us - the La Sal Mountains. We made it to the arch and then headed back down. We threaded the needle of the storms and barely missed them. I am amazed at the diversity of the landscape at Arches National Park. We came back for the evening and settled in for some good rest after 5 miles of hiking today.
Tuesday, July 14 - We planned a very similar day. We got up and had breakfast. Thank goodness for our outside 2 burner grill so we don’t have to heat up the Airstream. The AC wasn’t working properly this morning so we had to turn it off for a bit. Thankfully there was a breeze. Brayden stayed home because he was a little under the weather. We started off at Canyonlands National Park again. Today we hiked White Rim Overlook Trail which is 1.5 miles round trip. It is an out and back hike again. This one was pretty neat as we ended up on a peninsula with 360 degree views. Josh was able to do a little work on the peninsula because we had cell service. The kids found a neat little ledge in the shade to have a little snack while Dad was able to make some work phone calls. While he is on vacation, this is a very busy time for him at work because of the return to school plans with COVID. After we got back, he actually drove into Moab to get signal to do some work. It has been nice to be removed from the stress, but also a little difficult because there is so much up in the air right now. So much uncertainty as the schools are trying to figure out how to return safely. The kids and I tried chilling at the Airstream, but it was VERY hot because the AC wasn’t working. Later in the afternoon, the AC started working again THANKFULLY. We had another “linner” before heading out to Arches for another hike. We hiked Landscape Arch which is a 2 mile out an back. It is one of the longest non-supported arches in the world. It was a beautiful hike. The kids then wanted to head to the Windows trail to see the arches and do some rock scrambling. We were able to see North and South arch, turret arch, and double arch. The kids LOVED scrambling over the rocks and doing their own style of rock climbing. We watched the sunset in the windows area. It was beautiful to see the sun turn the rock so red as the sunset. We came back to the Airstream, switched on the AC and settled in for the night. The kids went to sleep pretty quickly after hiking another 6 miles today. That is about all we can handle with the heat out here.
Wednesday, July 15 - This is our last day at Arches and Canyonlands area. We decided to take the morning off and sleep in. Everyone seemed to enjoy that. Josh did a little more working, the kids read and played Mancala, and I worked on my blog. I also loved sitting outside in the shade and watched the birds and chipmunks. We are going to hike over in Arches later this afternoon. We have a couple more arches to see and then we are going to go get ice cream before coming back to see the sunset at Dead Horse Point and then a fire and smores’. Tomorrow we head to Capitol Reef National Park Fruita campground for the next 2 days. It has been a blast here, but we are always excited for the next new adventure.
Thursday, July 16 - Today we packed up and headed to Capitol Reef National Park. Ella is super excited because as part of their learning this spring, I had each of the 4 kids research a National Park that we were going to. Capitol Reef was Ella’s park to research. When we finally had signal on the drive, we pulled up her presentation that she had saved on my Prezi account. She took screen shots of all the slides so she could tell us all about the park on our drive. We arrived in the campground early afternoon. Josh checked out the visitors center to get the kids’ Junior Ranger books. The kids love doing them at all the parks especially the younger two. We headed to our campsite. This campground was a little different than other National Park campgrounds. It had beautiful views of the red rocks, but had a more state park feel. There were a lot of tent campers. We had plenty of space between sites, but it wasn’t our favorite feel. We prefer a more secluded feel. There were LOTS of mule deer in the campground and the orchards. We stayed at Fruita campground which is in the Fruita historic district. This area was inhabited by Mormans who were trying to hide from persecution. They created a village in the valley with tons of fruit trees. The National Park now maintains the orchards. You can even pick the fruit when it is in season. The mule deer seemed to love the orchards. We got settled and took a drive to Torrey to check things out as well as drive the scenic drive. We stopped by the Gifford House to pick up pie and ice cream. The Gifford house sells homemade pies each day made from the orchards fruit. We bought 3 to share after dinner. We bought cherry, apple, and peach. I will admit, they were delicious. Torrey is a super cute little town 7 miles from the campground. Josh found the perfect little coffee and ice cream shop so he was super happy. Then we stopped by the Panoramic Point drove to Sunset trailhead and hiked the 3/4 mile round trip to watch the sunset. It was a pretty hike. Most of the hikes in Capitol Reef didn’t tickle our fancy, but Josh definitely wanted to check out the sunset. Then we drove the scenic drive to look for animals. We also drove Grand Wash Road. Seeing the old Uranium mines was crazy. We didn’t see any mountain lions, but had fun seeing the park. We made it back for bedtime. Micah slept in his tent and Ella and Emerson borrowed Brayden’s tent for the night. It was cool sleeping weather so we didn’t mind no electricity.
Friday, July 17 - We woke up this morning and took it easy. We wanted to go into Torrey to get cell service for a couple things. I wanted to check on my mom who had an angiogram this morning. Everything was good! And we wanted to check on camping at Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. It is on the way from Capitol Reef to Bryce National Park. We thought we might leave a day early and head toward Bryce and camp along the way. After finding a pretty promising spot on Hole in the Rock Road, we went back to hook up the Airstream and head out. Capitol Reef was pretty, but we were ready to head out. We hooked up and headed down State Highway 12, Million Dollar Highway, but only after we stopped at a super neat highway burger joint called Slacker’s Burger Joint. We had decided not to eat out because of the pandemic, but this place was perfect. It was all outside, walk up window to order, everyone wore masks and gloves. They were some of the best burgers I have ever had. I even ate the bun! SHOCKER! We hit the road down highway 12. It was a VERY scenic and beautiful drive. My favorite was Boulder Mountain. It wasn’t super easy towing, but we did it with the skilled driver Josh. :). We arrived at our campsite. It is a BEAUTIFUL middle of nowhere campsite, my favorite. It is located off Hole in the Rock Road. Hole in the Rock Road is a 57 mile rock road that leads to some pretty neat trails. We won’t be hitting them because they are mostly slot canyons and I will admit I am a little claustrophobic. ;). We headed into Escalante, UT after unhooking to pick up some maps and get gas, then back to the Airstream to relax for the evening. Everyone is enjoying some downtime as we usually pack in the fun pretty heavily when we vacation because we have limited time. This is a welcomed break. We are boondocking, so Josh has the new solar panels charging up our battery. I am looking forward to the sunset over the mountains that we are overlooking.
Saturday, July 18, 2020 - We got up this morning and packed up slowly. We are about 1 1/2 from Bryce. Of course on the way to Bryce Canyon we found a cute coffee shop for Josh to get coffee. He has been on a mission this trip to find all the cute coffee trailers and shops to get lattes. It has been fun. This time he found Bryce Canyon Coffee. We pulled into Bryce in the afternoon. We are looking forward to a little reprieve from the heat as Bryce Canyon NP is at a much higher elevation. It is between 8,000-9,000ft above sea level. The campground was beautiful. It was nestled in the Ponderosa Pine trees. We had a big hill behind our campsite that we walked up at night and looked at the stars. We got unhooked and took the drive down the scenic highway and then stopped at the many amazing overlooks on our way back. I am SUPER excited to do some hiking in Bryce. This one might be my favorite of the Mighty 5. The kids put up their tent and had fun sleeping in it. Tomorrow we are getting up to conquer some trails. We stayed up and watched the stars on the hill behind our site. What a show to see!
Sunday, July 19, 2020 - We have decided we are not SUPER early risers camping. We got up and had a quick breakfast and headed off to hike Peek-a-boo trail. It is 5.5 miles. It is a 1.1 mile hike down into the canyon, 3.2 mile loop in the hoodos, and then 1.1 mile back out of the canyon. I know it doesn’t completely add up, but it is close to that. This hike was NOT easy, but was AMAZING. There was a LOT of elevation change and many switchbacks, but the payout was HUGE. This was by far one of my favorite hikes. I LOVED being down in the hoodos and seeing the amazing rock formations. We were pretty beat after that hike, so we were happy to find some ice cream as a treat. We had contemplated hiking Navajo look at night, but after Peek-a-boo we were all pretty beat, so we decided to save that one for tomorrow. We did head to Bryce Point to watch the sunset and look for the Neowise comet. The stars at Bryce are pretty amazing. Unfortunately , there was a cloud back in the way of seeing Neowise. We had fun sitting out on the point for a bit and watching the stars for sure. We have seen lots of stars, shooting stars, meteorites, and satellites as well as the Milky Way. That is Josh's favorite thing to see out here.
Monday, July 20, 2020 - We had a slow start this morning before heading to Mossy Cave. This hike is a little bit of a drive from he campground, but we wanted to check it out as it had a waterfall. Apparently the gorge was carved by people to bring water to the area. This is a one mile hike, but we hiked both to the waterfall as well as to the Mossy Cave. There were several people at the waterfall, but we were able to play in the water and still stay away from other people. I have been very relieved at how well we have been able to socially distance while on this trip. With having our house on wheels with us, we have limited exposure so much. It has been a blessing for sure. We headed back for lunch and a rest before heading out to do Navajo Loop. We decided not to do Navajo Loop at night as there is no moon here this week. It is a new moon, so it is very dark at night. After our afternoon rest, we hiked Navajo loop. Navajo Loop is a 1.5 mile hike. Definitely much shorter, but still lots of elevation change and switchbacks. Once again, this park and the views are breathtaking. We came back to the Airstream for dinner and packing up to head out tomorrow to Zion. Bryce is definitely one of my favorites!
Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - Today we head to our last of the Mighty 5, Zion National Park. I am a little sad to see our trip coming to a close. It has been nice to be a little removed from all the social media, talks about school resuming, and COVID. We have been keeping up with it, it has just not been in the forefront of our minds everyday. It has been a little more difficult for Josh as he has had to do some work remotely to help keep their school plan on track. Unfortunately, the Board of Education didn’t pass the return to school plan in Plainfield last night. Now we are waiting for a revised plan and the uncertainty of how school will look in the fall. That is a little tough when we have a Senior in high school this year as well as an 8th grader. I’ll get more into that later. Our trip to Zion took a little longer so we could enter on the south side of the park and not the east entrance. The east entrance has a mile long tunnel that we would have to pay $15 for them to close the road, so we could drive down the middle of the tunnel when pulling the Airstream. We chose to avoid that which gave us a longer drive time. Once arriving in Zion, the views were beautiful. It looks like how I imagine Yosemite looking like. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so spectacular. We were a little apprehensive arriving in Zion because there were a lot of unknowns at this park. Several things were closed and we just played everything by ear. The campground was beautiful. We had a BIG site that backed up to the North Fork of the Virgin River. This is important information as about a week earlier they had found cyanobacteria in the river. They recommended NOT getting in the river because of this harmful neurotoxin. This was disappointing because this was a fun river to normally get in and play around in especially in the heat of July in Zion. There were several, what we think were sharp-shinned hawks, in the tree right next to our camper. That was crazy. After we settled in, we took off for the East side of the park through the tunnel to check out a trail from All Trails. The views at this park are SPECTACULAR. The hike we found was called the Hobbit Hole. It was a little over a mile. The kids loved rock scrambling and hiking through the slot canyon. This was a fun hike for me as our trip to Antelope Canyon was cancelled due to Covid. This wasn’t the same as Antelope Canyon, but definitely fun. The tunnel drive was also pretty cool. We headed back to the Airstream to get all set up for hiking the Narrows tomorrow. We had scoped everything out and felt pretty good about it.
Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - We got all geared up to hike the Narrows this morning. We headed down the Riverwalk trail to the Narrows. We saw several of the same warning signs about the river, but kept thinking it had to be different water at the Narrows. We had spoken with two different rangers about the river and the Narrows and not once did they mention that it was the same river that had the bacteria. I assumed there would be warnings about hiking the Narrows if it was the same water. MAN was I wrong. We got to the entrance of the Narrows and it was the same water. You had to walk BY the Caution signs to get into the water. We chose NOT to do that and skipped hiking the Narrows. We were ALL very disappointed as this was a hike we were all looking forward to, but we were not going to chance it. We have been very careful on this trip to limit our exposure, so there was no way we were going to chance getting a neurotoxic bacteria. 2020 has been crazy enough. We hiked the riverwalk back, had lunch on the grass of the Zion lodge and then headed back to the Airstream. It has been disappointing to say the least, but we are committed to making good decisions and making the best of it. We took a short break and headed toward the East entrance to hike the Canyon Overlook trail. I will admit it was quite surprising. We were all pleasantly surprised. It was a fun hike with beautiful views. We have decided to head home a day early, because there isn’t a ton to do here for us. We definitely want to come back and experience this park when it is more open. There was a also a big section of hikes closed due to a very large rock slide that occurred last year. We had dinner, stayed up and watched the stars and think we saw comet Neowise. We plan to head out tomorrow after getting a good night's sleep.
Thursday, July 23, 2020 - We slept in this morning. Josh made a great breakfast of eggs and sausage while we started packing up the inside for our long trip home. The kids are AMAZING helpers when it is time to hook up and unhook. They all have jobs to do and love helping. We were hooked up and on the road by 10:30am. We stopped by another coffee shop on the way out called River Rock Roasting Company. Josh had promised the kids iced lattes on the way out this morning. Two of them chose smoothies and the other two had iced decaf vanilla lattes. Daddy has made them coffee junkies. :) We are now on the road home. We have reservations at State Forest State Park in Colorado on the way home. That is where we will stay tonight. It is a 10 1/2 hour drive from Zion. Then it is a 15 hour drive home from there. Normally we can do 15 hours in a day, but without getting up super early tomorrow that will be tough. We plan on splitting up that last drive and getting home on Saturday. For now, I will enjoy the sites of the road and conversations with my best friend. The kids are all reading, watching, and just being. They are AMAZING travelers. I had made reservations at State Forest State Park in Colorado on the way home. I was looking forward to spending the night in the mountains and possibly seeing some moose. This park has a high concentration of moose. Moose are my favorite mammal to search for in the parks. I think they are very majestic. At about 6pm, Josh noticed our driver’s side tire on the Airstream smoking. We pulled over to investigate, but couldn’t figure out what was wrong. We weren’t in the mountains yet and were driving on a flat portion of I-70. We limped our way to the next exit about 4 miles before we could find a safe place to park. Long story short, our bearings went bad on one of the tires. Josh went to the store to get parts to replace them, but was only able to find 1/2 the parts. We ended up having to call a very expensive 24 hour trailer repair guy that was able to repair it. He actually took the parts he needed from his mother’s Airstream that was in his shop. We didn’t get it all situated until 3am. Needless to say we didn’t get to State Forest State Park. Instead, we drove an hour to a rest area that had overnight parking. We slept from 4:30am until 8:30am before hitting the road to continue home.
Friday, July 24, 2020 - We got up and hit the road for home today at about 8:30am. We stayed just outside of Vail, CO. It was amazing to drive through the mountains in the daylight. I could easily live in the mountains. They are so peaceful. It was fun to see the Vail and Breckenridge area. I would love to come back to this area to visit and explore. One more trip to add to my list. We actually had a good travel day, but it was long. We ended up driving until 12:30am and made it to Des Moine, IA. We stayed at a Cracker Barrel. We often stay at Cracker Barrel or Cabela’s when we are traveling until we get to our destination. The only issue with staying here was it was hot and humid. It wasn’t super great sleeping weather, but it worked to get us closer to home.
Saturday, July 25, 2020 - Thankfully today we were only 4 1/2 hours from home. It was a boring drive, but we were all excited to pull into our drive way this afternoon. My parents had been watching our dogs and had returned them to our house before we got home. The kids were super excited to see the dogs and the guinea pigs. We backed the Airstream in and started with laundry and unloading the food. We will work on the rest of it throughout the week. I try not to trash the house when we get home. We try to put everything away as we come in. It keeps me sane. As for the rest of the weekend we will be relaxing and cleaning up as well. I will get back to my weekly posts later this week. For now, I hope everyone enjoys our trip as much as we did. If you haven’t visited a National Park yet, I encourage you to get out and see the beautiful country we live in. It truly is amazing!