Category: Travel

We have been trying to get to Bryce Canyon National Park for awhile now. We finally made it, and I’m happy to say, it didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, our visit was limited to one day.  

Bear, our hiking manager, selected a nice 3 mile loop through the area known as the Amphitheater. The hike starts at the highly visited Sunrise Point, descends into the Queens Garden, and exits through the Navajo Loop to Sunset Point. 

 We had planned to exit through the loop that goes to a feature called Wall Street. That area, sadly, was closed due to rockslide.  

Despite that tiny hitch, the hike was amazing. The starting view is spectacular, both Sunrise and Sunset points overlook the amphitheater, an expanse of multicolored hoodoos and thin rock walls called “fins.” The hoodoos are formed from the fins and the landscape is constantly changing. 

As you descend through the layers of limestone, you end up on a sparsely vegetated valley with smooth rolling hills. It was a pretty wild view. After a nice meandering walk, which includes a few tunnels, it’s back up through the hoodoos.  

On the way up, Bear and Bunny dusted Goose and me. We ended up hiking next to a mother daughter team. The daughter sounded American, and probably in her 20s, and her mother spoke a different language. As she climbed I could her her talking to her daughter. Goose, though a strong hiker moaned the whole way, “I’m tired… my legs hurt… I’m exhausted… I can’t do this”. The daughter laughs, gestures to her mother and says, “She’s saying the same exact thing!” We got through it, and it was worth every step!

Although, I’m happy we finally made it here, I wish we had more time to enjoy this amazing place. I could have easily spent a week here.? Ah well, always good to leave wanting more.

This past week brought us to Las Vegas.  Neither Bear or I  are into gambling, and we didn’t want to spend too much money, so we spent only one day on the Strip.  Bear had to fly back to California for a weekend of work so the girls and I took the opportunity to do chores. 

For our day on the Strip, we wanted to give the girls a slice of Vegas, so we did a 5 miles walking tour.  (Not an official one or anything. ) We knew the girls, especially Goose, would be amazed by all the glitz and glam of the casinos and shopping malls.  We took them through The Venetian, and they loved the ceilings. “It looks just like Hogwarts!” 

We tried to get to the Bellagio for their fountains, but they were in maintenance mode.  I wish we had known that before we trekked all the way out there, especially in my plastic sandals!  Ouch!  

We finished the day at Circus Circus which has a great indoor amusement park.  Goose and I went on the Canyon Blaster, which included a double loop and double corkscrew along with a tunnel.  After the loops, I took a look at Goose, who, poor thing, was on her first big kid roller coaster.  I shouted at her that she was going to live through it and it was almost over, I don’t think it helped as after the loops came the corkscrews! At the end she was in good spirits, but informed me she was never doing that again.  Thank goodness for good sports!  

While we were enjoying (?) that ride, Bunny was planning out the next rides for us.  Her first choice was The Road Runner, which is a standard cart goes around a circle ride.  Forward, backwards, and forwards.  I was regretting my lunch at this point.  The girls were having a screaming good time and Bunny was making me laugh by excitedly screaming, “I planned this, I planned this!” We did a few other rides and it was time to head back to Jolly.

The next day was pretty boring, but important.  Both girls needed new jeans and Goose has had a growth spurt.  Also, we were out of food.  Shopping day!  

Bear left the next morning, and I decided to surprise the girls with a trip to the Seaquest Aquarium. This neat spot is located in The Boulevard Mall and has a ton of interactive stations.  We got to feed fish, stingrays, and sharks.  (Little ones). We also got to pet iguanas.  There was a bird feeding station, but I was the only one who took advantage of that.  It was a bit overwhelming.

After that, it was time to get to work.  The girls helped me make space on their upper bunk with a decent toy reorganization.  I cleaned and polished the interior and got it as about as clean as she can be, without emptying her.  So here’s a quick tour while she’s clean.

The Master Bedroom:

The Bunk Room:
And finally the Kitchen, Dinette and Living Area:

It was back to normal in a day.  Now, fully stocked and cleaned, we’re headed back into Utah for a visit to Bryce and Capitol Reef!  Happy trails!

If you appreciate high rises of canyon walls, amazing views and seeing a variety of ecosystems in one package, Zion National Park should be added to your “must visit” list. The park is great for casual tourists, hikers, back packers, canyoneers, and advanced rock climbers.  
This was actually our second trip to the park. Technically, we were all here before, but Bunny was still cooking! Goose was about two years old and I was five months pregnant. This time around, both kids walked, and I didn’t have to hike in my maternity office clothes! 

We stayed at the Watchman Campground, which is located right by the Visitor Center. It’s a pretty campground, with a good amount of trees and passing wildlife. The crown jewel of the wildlife sightings was a California King-snake that wiggled by! 

 

The sites have electric hook ups and there is water and a dump station available on site. My only complaint was their ground cover for the sites. It was very pretty and matched the landscape well, but holy orange. Everything was orange. The kids were orange, the adults were orange, Jolly was orange, and of course the dogs were orange. We took them to a groomer after this trip and they wanted to know if we lived on a baseball field.  

The park has a few distinct sections, the most visited being the Valley. During the high season, and shoulder seasons, driving into the park is limited to guests of the lodge. The remaining guests can park at the visitor center and take the shuttle bus in. The shuttle bus has nine stops, including the visitor center, and each stop has something worthwhile to see. We limited ourselves to The Emerald Pools, The Human History Museum, and the Riverside Walk. The Riverside Walk is the gateway to the Narrows, a canyoneering hike which is mostly walking through the Virgin River. We have not yet been able to do this, first we’ve never been there at the right time of year, and second it’s not terribly safe with smaller kids.

 

Throughout the Valley, you can find a variety of treasures. In addition to the rock formations and geological features, there are weeping rocks, hanging gardens, and a variety of plant and animal life. Occasionally, it’s possible to spot climbers scaling the steep canyon walls!  

On the Riverside walk, the animal life consisted of the most aggressive squirrels I’ve ever seen. This is what happens when people feed the squirrels. They were completely fearless of people and even chased Bunny for food. It was not a pleasant experience. A fellow hiker lent me his hiking pole to try and dissuade a particularly annoying squirrel away from my pack. I tried slapping the ground near it to no affect. After that spectacular failure, I tried to gently push it away with the pole… it just rolled over! Lesson here, don’t feed the wildlife.

Another great hike in the valley is The Watchman Trail. The trailhead is walking distance from the campground and visitor center, and if you don’t mind a bit of a climb, it’s totally worth it. We were treated to the flowering desert plants, which were just amazing. I slowed us down by taking a picture of pretty much every flower I came across. The viewpoint gives sweeping views of the valley below.  

 

An under-visited part of the park is the Kolob Canyon/Terrace. We did two hikes in this region, Taylor Creek Trail and Northgate Peaks. Taylor Creek is a more popular trail which winds through a canyon, passes a couple of log cabins, and ends at the Double Arch Alcove. The Alcove is a really neat spot and the kids loved discovering their echoes. If undertaking this hike, bring warm layers, the deeper into the Canyon you go, the colder it gets. Sturdy foot wear that can stand up to water is a must as the trail crosses the creek about seven hundred times.

Northgate Peaks trail is an easy four mile (ish) trail which meanders through high plateau meadows and forest. It ends with a great view of Zion Valley, Northgate Peaks, and the Pine Valley Mountains. We stopped right at the first big viewpoint, but we saw a lot of hikers go further to more adventurous spots.

The Eastern Section of Zion is worth a visit as well. We skipped it this time for a few reasons. First, we had a bit of hiking/sight seeing fatigue and just never got around to it. The other is that to get to the Eastern section, you must drive through the Zion-Mt Carmel tunnel, which is an attraction in it’s own right. For regular sized vehicles, it’s a free tunnel trip, but for oversized vehicles, including our dually, it’s a $15 fee. The tunnel has to be shut down to one way traffic when larger vehicles need to go through, so it’s a fair price. This section has beautiful sandstone formations and not too many trails(if any). There are still a good amount of unofficial walking areas and we’ll have to visit it next time.  

Our timing in this trip was great. The weather was cool, albeit windy, the wild flowers were in bloom, and best of all, we were there at the same time as another family with kid about Goose’s age. They hit it off immediately and the kids spent their time playing at our site or theirs. It’s always a treat when we find some kids for ours to play with, and even more so when we like the parents too! Now we have some new friends to visit when we pass through their stomping grounds.

 

Zion is a real treasure, and it’s no wonder it’s our third most visited park. We look forward to coming back and we’ve left ourselves a few jewels to discover. I look forward to returning and climbing Angel’s Landing, exploring the Eastern Section, and hiking through the Narrows!
Now, here are some of the flowers!

Hello from Colorado!  We just spent 4 days in the Colorado National Monument.  

We were able to snag a spot at the Saddlehorn Campground inside the monument itself.  The campground is gorgeous!  Packed with juniper and amazing views, it was a great spot.  Except, the spots are nowhere near level.  We had to use five leveling blocks per tire. We have 10 leveling blocks and two tires, and the wheels can only handle steps of two levelers at a time.  See the problem? Thankfully, I have a degree in mathematics! (And an extra block of wood)

After we worked that issue it was smooth sailing until we realized our refrigerator was warmer than it should be.  It turns out, our refrigerator doesn’t work so well over 5,000 feet.  We were able to work that problem too and hopefully none of us will get food poisoning!! As I mentioned to a friend starting out in the RV world, the trick to enjoying the RV life is to expect everything to fail, and be happy when it doesn’t.  

Enough about our misadventures, let’s get to the park itself.  It’s a small park with some terrifyingly awesome views.  You can see every layer from Precambrian to Burro.  We had a lot of fun trying to identify which layer we were hiking/driving through.  I’ve decided I need a mnemonic to remember the order.  Any suggestions?

We did two hikes while we were here: The Serpent Trail and the Black Ridge Trail.  The Serpent trail is an old road and you can start at the bottom or the top.  It’s wide enough that it felt completely safe with the kids.  We started at the top, hiked most of the way down and turned back after lunch.  The Blackridge trail starts right by the visitor center and had some steep parts, but not terrifyingly so.  Both trails had a great array of wild flowers and, of course, spectacular views.

Our best sighting was the herd of Big Horn Sheep.  We’ve spent a lot of time in Sheep country, but we’ve never actually seen them.  We see signs of them, scat and tracks, but never the actual animal.  This isn’t unusual, they’re pretty elusive creatures.

The girls earned another badge, but I think their favorite part of this trip was the amazing playground we found in Grand Junction.  It had about 4 play structures, an exercise structure for adults, two swing sets, and a mini zip line.

The monument isn’t big and you can get a lot from just driving around it.  It’s close to two cities, so it’s a comfortable spot to spend a few days.  Just remember, if you’re bringing an RV to the campground, bring your leveling blocks!

This week finds the Jolly Crew at Dinosaur National Monument.  This park has it all: great sweeping vistas, petroglyphs, homesteads, and of course – fossils fossils fossils.  

The park is split between Utah and Colorado in the Uinta basin.  This park has one of the most abundant fossil beds ever discovered.  About 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, a severe drought hit the region.  Many dinosaurs died near the river bed.  Eventually, it rained and floodwater carried the bones of over 500 hundred dinosaurs to what is now called, “The Quarry.”  Buried in sediment and exposed thanks to erosion they were eventually found and preserved.

The Quarry is on the Utah side.  It has some great specimens displayed in cases, a selection of historical photos (my favorite is the girl in pigtails), but the big attraction is the wall of fossils embedded in sedimentary rock.  

Some of the wall is open for the hands on experience.  

There is also a Fossil Discovery Trail, but sadly, it’s currently closed due to flood damage and is scheduled to reopen in September 2017.  

We did four hikes while we were here.  The first was Desert Voices, which was a great starter hike.  It’s pretty short, maybe 1.5 to 2 mile loop around some pretty features.  We came at a good time as many of the flowers were in bloom.  My favorite aspect of this hike was the signs.  Designed by children for children they were sweet and informative.  

Hog’s Canyon was our second hike, named for Josie’s pigs.  Josie was a woman, who after raising her children and getting divorced, decided become a homesteader in 1913.  She kept her pigs in one of the two canyons near her home.  Her home is worth a quick visit, you can walk through her home and the surrounding grounds.

  The dirt road to her home passes through some rock faces absolutely covered in petroglyphs left by the Fremont People.  Please be respectful, stay on the trails (I watched some moron trail break to save some time down, let’s say he nearly had the super fast short cut) and don’t touch or add to the art(yeah we saw graffiti too).

On the Colorado side, we hiked out to Harper’s Corner.  The drive alone was worth it.  There are a number of scenic pull offs and I strongly encourage any visitors to make their way here.  The hike was pretty easy, but scary with kids.  There were a lot of steep drop offs and Bear and I kept a pretty tight hold on the girls.  The nice part is, the end is wide and fenced with absolutely spectacular views of the confluence of the Yampa and Green rivers.

Our final hike was the Sounds of Silence trail, which is right next to the Desert Voices trail.  This may have been my favorite hike of the bunch.  It is rated moderate/strenuous.  Although I think it was easier then that.  I’d imagine it’s a hard trail in the heat as there is no shade.  The trail follows a wash and then takes you up and over the rolling hills.  The land here is multicolored and striped and it’s great fun to watch the soil change under your feet.  

We also took a side trip to Vernal, Utah for the Utah Field House of Natural History State park.  This museum is worth the visit if you have the time.  It boasts a great amount of fossils and casts and is chock full of information about the natural history of the area.  You can even spy in on their lab!

The girls earned another set of JR Ranger badges to add to their collection and we found another park to fall in love with. It is an amazing place, jam packed with treasures of land, history and nature.  The park is also very accessible, many of the treasures can be seen with little or no hiking.  Of course, if you’re able and willing, the hikes are great too.