Kind of pink sand dunes

(June 16)

When we did our last major road trip to the States in 2010, one of our most memorable stops was White Sands National Monument in New Mexico where we went sand-sledding. Jaxon still talks about the time Gerry and Muppet slid down the dunes in the sled together, wiped up royally, and ended up with sand in both their mouths (especially poor Muppet).

So when we heard you could go sand sledding in Utah at Corral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, we were ecstatic and added it to our must-see list. Unfortunately, the sand dunes, while kind of pink and cool, weren’t nearly as impressive. Also, our sleds kind of sucked. We got a few good runs in, but it wasn’t nearly as awesome as we hoped. The sand was incredibly soft though, and we quickly abandoned our sandals and walked barefoot up and over the dunes in the desert.

The campsite, right in the state park, was large and gorgeous, with a fabulous view of red rock mountains in the distance, and the dunes in front. And in the evening, Aiden chopped the firewood for his first time, Jaxon built the fire, and we roasted marshmallows. Any day that ends around a campfire is pretty spectacular in my view.

Wordless in Zion

(Written June 15)

When we first got sight of Zion National Monument a couple of days ago, our jaws all dropped and a series of “wows” came from each of our mouths. We remained pretty much dropped-jawed and in awe for the rest of our visit.

I can’t even begin to describe the beauty of the area. The canyon walls are a mix of creamy white, hypnotic crimson, mystifying black, and calming greys. There are juts, crevices, mounds, and overhangs carved out of the rock. If Red Canyon was almost cartoonish, Zion is perfectly, elegantly chiselled.

Near the entrance, there is a tunnel originally carved when Model –Ts were the norm, and RVs hadn’t yet been thought of. Oversized vehicles, including ours, must pay an escort fee. The ranger shuts down traffic from the other direction so that you can drive through the tunnel safely, straight down the middle. It’s a long tunnel too—it took probably two minutes to get all the way through—and there are no lights, aside from the occasional opening for sunshine.

After supper the first night, we did the leisurely Riverside walk, a paved path that, as you might expect, runs along the river. At the end of the path, we continued on to another trail, The Narrows. This trail isn’t paved. Instead, you must actually walk in the river, sometimes up to knee-deep. The cool water was refreshing, and the canyon walls continued to get closer as we walked further. It was a lot of fun, and a good touch of adventure after the easy paved path.

Yesterday, we did another hike in the morning, this one leading up the canyon walls, with a series of three small pools along the way. The first pool was my favourite, because the path went behind a small waterfall and the mist was refreshingly cool. The other two were also gorgeous, and worth the uphill climb in the heat.

Afternoons here get unbearably hot, perfect for playing in the pool or reading indoors where there’s air conditioning—which is pretty much how we wrapped up our second day in Zion.

 

 

Red, red rocks

(Due to spotty wifi, I couldn't get the pictures to upload, but there are some over on our Facebook pages.)
After a few days of having extremely limited wifi and cell phone connection, we finally have good enough wifi to do a blog post (ironically, or perhaps appropriately, in the least scenic campground we’ve stayed in yet, behind the Best Western just outside of Bryce Canyon).

We left Mountain Home for Red Canyon, with a stop at the world’s first Atomic energy plant, just outside of Atomic City, Idaho. It was a long day of driving, but the kids were troopers, and never complained once—they’ve been awesome travel companions.

We spent a night at a gorgeous campground in the heart of Red Canyon. What’s really fabulous about the area is there’s a relatively flat, paved, long bike path that runs along the highway and leads to numerous hiking trails. When we got there, we rode over to the visitors’ centre, then to the start of a hiking trail and went for a short walk before it started to rain just a bit. It rained most of the evening, which made us a bit nervous, considering one of our biggest fears was that it was going to be unbearably hot the whole time.

The next morning, we got up and went for another hike up a trail that started at our campground. It led to the top of a hill that gave us an amazing view of the whole Red Canyon area. With an invigorating morning hike done, we drove the 20 or so minutes to Bryce Canyon, set up camp at the famous Ruby’s Inn, and booked a horseback ride for the afternoon. When we booked it, I mistakenly thought it was for Bryce Canyon, when it was actually for Red Canyon, but we decided to go with it anyway.

I’m glad we did. The horseback ride is probably my favourite thing we’ve done so far on this trip. The weather was sunny, but with a cool, refreshing breeze. Our horses, Warpaint (Jaxon’s), Target (Aiden’s), Frosty (Gerry’s) and Buddy (mine) were mostly content to meander along, but if there was space between them and the horse in front, they’d break into a quicker trot to close the gap. We spent about three hours blissfully trotting along, enjoying the vibrant red hoodoos jutting out all around us, the smooth, exaggeratedly rounded hoodoos and spires reminding us of a scene out of The Flintstones.

This morning, we got up early and got the free shuttle bus from our campground to Bryce Canyon Park. After a stop at the visitor’s centre, we settled on doing the Navajo Loop trail, which took us to the canyon floor and back up. Red Canyon was gorgeous, but you know those paintings you see of red and white spires and hoodoos jutting up from canyons? That’s what Bryce Canyon is.

Just as we were finishing up our hike, we started to hear thunder, so we made sure to catch the next shuttle back to the campground, just in time for lunch.

We’ve settled into a nice routine: hiking, biking or some sort of activity to start the day, then driving or playing board games in the afternoon, when it tends to be hottest (or raining). So far, the rain hasn’t stopped us from doing anything, and has mostly just been refreshing.

Last night, when we were in the hot tub (yes, last night’s campsite was awesome, especially after a horseback ride), we found out that school has been out here since last week, which was earlier than we expected. We thought we had a couple of weeks left when we didn’t really need to worry about reservations, but are realizing that’s not quite the case. We are booked for tomorrow and the next night at Zion National Park, then have laid out a rough itinerary past that.

 

 

 

On our top 10 campgrounds list: Lava Flow campsite in Craters of the Moon

Our campsite

(Written June 9)

As I write this, I’m sitting in my Tshirt and shorts, sipping a cold glass of white wine, listening to the boys giggle in bed and the crickets singing their night song, and watching the dog sigh and shift contentedly in her crate outside, right beside me so she can keep guard if something sneaks up on us.



We’re camped for our second night in Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho, and this is possibly the coolest campsite we’ve ever stayed at. There’s no wifi or phone service, which just makes it seem that much more surreal and other-worldly.

Our motorhome, seen from the visitor's centre.

There are giant boulders of volcanic rock all around us, right inside our campsite, splattered black icing across the earth’s surface, like Mother Nature puked up tonne after tonne of rock from deep inside, and never bothered to tidy up. From the visitors’ centre, where we watched videos and checked out exhibits about the history of the volcanoes here, you can see the tents and campers peeking out from the rubble, tiny against the giant black landscape.

To my right is a tiny mountain, a hill really, with short green shrubs dotting it, topped by a wall of rock. The boys climbed it by themselves our first afternoon here, the pride virtually bursting out of them when they came running back to camp to tell us about the “ruins” they could see from the top.



The boys climbed to the top of the tall peak in this photo.

In front of me is a slightly taller mountain, a smooth mound, also freckled with short green bushes. The boys, armed with walkie talkies, water, and hiking poles, summited it by themselves last night. Gerry and I sat in our campsite and watched their ascent, then cheered over the walkie talkies when we saw them reach the top, mere specks jutting out from the top, arms raised high.

Our fearless adventurers.

This morning, we did a seven-mile loop on our bikes, stopping to see, hike, and explore various attractions along the way—fissures, cones, tubes, spatters, and our favourite: caves. There was a tiny one, only a few feet deep that I hunched and scrambled into. Then a bigger one, with three wings to explore and vaulted ceilings, some of which had collapsed, letting the sun shine in.



By noon, the sun was beating down, and we were relieved to make it back to the RV, refill our water bottles, and devour lunch. We spent the afternoon lounging around, trying to stay cool, playing board games and reading.

Oh, and we made the boys write in their journals. It is a school day, after all.

Stop before this: Mountain Home, Idaho where we went for a bike ride on their fabulous paved trail system, and stopped in a park to watch the ducks.

Tomorrow: driving as far as Provo, Utah where we’ll stock up on groceries, do some laundry, swim in the pool, and connect a bit more to civilization again before heading to Bryce Canyon.

 

 

What more do you need?

After our first day of driving, we stopped at Lake Easton campground, south-east of Seattle. It's a nice little spot, but the best thing is it has a pool, which was perfect after being cooped up in the RV all day.

The boys and Gerry went for a long swim, while Muppet and I went for a walk along the lake.

And supper? Hotdogs over the fire, of course.

Just in case we hadn't already tired out the kids, we all went for a bike ride. A rough, bumpy bike ride darting through the trees lakeside and ducking to avoid branches.

The dog and the kids are all in bed, utterly exhausted. I think we broke them. Oops.

Water, trees, hot dogs, fire, bikes, walks, family and a good friend--what more do you need in life?

The next big adventure

In 2010, Gerry, Jaxon, Muppet and I went on an incredible, five-week trip in our camper van. It was awesome.

Not an exact replica.

So awesome, that for the past five years, we’ve been trying to figure out how to do it again and see areas we didn’t get to see the first time around.

And so, we traded in our camper van for a larger motorhome, closed our eyes, crossed our fingers, sprinkled fairy dust, and somehow, the stars magically aligned. I’m totally ecstatic to be leaving Saturday for another five-week adventure, this time to Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.

And, because things are more fun when you share them with friends, we’re bringing along one of Jaxon’s oldest buddies, Aiden. I anticipate a lot of Minecraft talk.

Here’s hoping this trip once again brings stories of cauliflowers, white-out blizzards, and Deliverance-style campgrounds. Or not.

Homeward Bound

We’ve been slowly inching our way back towards home and to reality the last few days. It’s hard to believe our trip is almost over already and we’re both back to work on Monday.

Determined to continue to enjoy our vacation while heading home, we took a detour off the highway in California to drive along the coast for awhile. After a series of narrow, windy roads, we ended up on an even narrower, windier road that had our van just kissing the edge of cliffs. While the detour added on about five hours to our ETA, it was completely worth it. There were hardly any other vehicles on the road and the views were magnificent. Huge waves splashed against giant rocks jutting out from the water with mile after mile of whitecaps and rock cliffs.

We spent a night at an…interesting RV park. I cannot tell you how many times Gerry and I have arrived somewhere, looked around us, looked at each other, and started humming the song from Deliverance. This was one of those times. The mobile home for the owners was nestled in behind several rusty pickup trucks, an abandoned hot tub, several garbage cans, a huge mound of 20 or so garbage bags, a half-inflated rubber dingy boat and a collection of various tools and scraps of wood and metal. There were also a couple of shacks that teetered precariously on the edge of a cliff and looked like they’d keel over with the next big gust of wind. The place was full of campers and RVs but none of them looked like they’d been used in the last 20 years or so.

We should have just turned around and kept driving, but we didn’t. What kept us there was the view. We backed up into our spot, five feet or so from the edge of a rocky cliff. From there, we could look out at the endless ocean and down at the jagged rocks with the waves pounding against them (there was also part of a fence dangling over the edge five feet from us where land had once been—I ignored that). The view was worth having to cringe in the bathroom that looked like it was used more for flicking cigarettes and ashes into than anything else. For the sake of the view, I closed my eyes to everything else around us and just soaked it in.

And in the morning, Jaxon excitedly came and grabbed me from where I was washing dishes “Mommy! Hurry! You’ve got to see this!” When I got outside, I was shocked. Looking down from our cliffside, I was delighted to see a group of seals lazily sleeping away on the rocks below us. So cool! Yeah, I can hold my breath in a disgusting bathroom for this.

Last night was another memorable RV park after a day of driving through the Redwood Forest. This one was on the site of what used to be a drive-in theatre. Every Saturday, the owners hook up a projector and show movies still, but only for guests at the RV park. We were disappointed that we were there on a Wednesday and not a movie night, but still thought it was neat to be able to stay there. Since it was St Patrick’s Day, they had a free dinner for everyone with corned beef and cabbage. While we were at the dinner, one of the staff members mentioned that we should keep Jaxon up late because they were planning on showing Cars that night. It seems they also thought it would be a great treat for him.

So last night we cleaned the windows on our van, snuggled up with our pillows in our bed, and watched Cars on the drive-in screen. It was a great way to end the day, even though it did make for a very tired and cranky little boy for today’s drive.

Tomorrow we’re planning to hit the outlet stores in Seattle and then be home in time for supper and sleeping in our own beds again. It’s been an incredible adventure and I’m sad to see it coming to an end already. We made some incredible family memories and had a lot of really special times.

Every night at supper, we talk about what our favourite things have been on our trip. Here are some of them:

1. Disneyland (of course), specifically, getting wet on the rides at Disneyland.
2. Sand sledding at White Sands National Monument (and all the times we wiped out and rolled down the dune).
3. Our first bike ride of the trip where we stopped to look at the cacti up close.
4. Stopping on the side of the highway to climb a mountain (where Jaxon and I both landed on cacti and screamed in pain).
5. Indoor skydiving.

Now we just need to figure out a way to win the lottery so we can quit our jobs and do this traveling-around in a van thing fulltime. Hmm…any ideas?