Zion

Zion National Park is officially the second best National Park that I had ever been to (Glacier is the first)! It is amazing beyond words and deserves a lot of time on any itinerary. I can't wait to get back here and would jump at the chance for Nathan to work there. On the first day we arrived, we drove through the Southeast corner of the park, the only section in the South that you can drive (the main road is just for shuttle buses). We saw red, white, and orange scraped hills and drove through an extremely long tunnel that dumped us into a valley with amazing views.

5-27-15 - Typical hills on the Southeast drive

The amazing, sweeping valley at the end of the tunnel.

Nathan

Me

We stayed two nights in Springdale, UT, which is a super-cute tourist town filled with shops and restaurants (we ate at Oscar's twice - it's the best). It reminded me of Medora, ND. The shuttle has stops along the town's main road, which makes it very, very easy to get around.

That first afternoon we took the shuttle all the way to the end of the road, and stopped at about half of the stops to explore.

"Three Patriarchs"

Desert Plants

To break up the shuttle ride, we hiked the Emerald Pools trail, which is across the street from the Zion Park Lodge.

Pool #1

Pool #2

Pool #3

The frogs singing in pool #3 were beautiful.

Our goals for this trail were to see a lizard and not die. Mission accomplished!

One of my very favorite stops in the park is the Weeping Rock. Water trickles out of the rock in a slow waterfall and feeds a variety of beautiful flowers.

Weeping Rock

Then, after viewing the Weeping Rock, you happen to turn around and see this:

It's too much. It's one of the most amazing places I've seen ever. Here's a video:

Here's another mountain:

I loved the experience of staying in Springdale. There were a lot of great restaurants to choose from each night and plenty of fun shops to peruse while enjoying the perfect weather. Plus, you're never really NOT in the park because even Springdale is surrounded by these beautiful red mountains...

La Quinta Inn

...even at night.

Capitol Reef & Escalante

The next stop in our tour of Utah was Capitol Reef National Park. To get there, we drove through Grand Staircase Escalante on a twisty road at the top of a mountain. Much of the drive looked like this:

5-26-15 - Awesome Views in Escalante

There was a great cafe in Boulder, Utah where we had lunch (Hell's Backbone Grill) and finally we arrived in a land filled with huge red mountains:

Capitol Reef National Park

"Twin Rocks"

Chimney Rock

"The Castle"

Capitol Reef also has petroglyphs from the Fremonts and Ancestral Puebloans, easily accessible from the main road.

Petroglyphs

We only had time for a short trail, so we did the popular 2-mile Hickman Bridge trail, which takes you out to a big arch. The scenery along the way is not bad either. We saw this baby sheep right at the beginning and then Nathan and I got separated ("I was looking at a bird") and never found each other again until we met in the parking lot.

Hickman Bridge

We spent the night in Torrey, Utah and left bright and early the next morning for Zion National Park. I thought nothing could top the drive through Escalante, but there were some incredible vistas on this road too, including more red rocks and a lush, green valley that we drove in by ourselves for what seemed like hours.

First view of the green valley

There is no place like Utah!

Cedar Breaks National Monument

To celebrate our 10th Anniversary, Nathan and I dropped the girls off at Grandma's house and took a weeklong trip to Utah. I was expecting the parks (Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, and Zion) to be neat, but what I wasn't expecting was how incredible every single piece of Utah really is. I got absolutely no reading done in the car because every inch of our drive was amazing and so different from the preceding mile. We flew into Las Vegas and drove through a desert sprinkled with Joshua Trees, then tree-covered mountains, snowy hills, and finally, all in the same day, ended up in Cedar Breaks National Monument, an orange, snow-covered canyon erupting from the side of a mountain range with dark storm clouds on the horizon. I'm glad we started with Cedar Breaks because it was impressive, but things just got better and better as our trip progressed. We only spent an hour or two in Cedar Breaks, but it was a good introduction to one of the most impressive states I've ever visited.

5-25-15 - This marmot greeted us as we parked our car.

Cedar Breaks Canyon

Me: Enjoying Day One

Many of the signs throughout the park warned about lightning strikes and with a storm rolling in (and the fact that the only jacket I'd brought was a thin fleece, which didn't hold up well at 10,000 feet), we decided to quickly head to Bryce Canyon National Park, our second stop of the day.

Farewell Dakotas

The epic journey has begun and instead of starting with a single step, we decided to start with an 8.5-hour drive from Medora, ND to North Platte, NE.  This was the single longest drive of the entire trip and it took Alison and I a mere 12.5 hours to complete.  Did we bite off more than we could chew?  Of course!  Will we make that mistake again?  Nope...not with a 5.5-month-old, anyway.

On Tuesday, the weather in North Dakota had warmed to 50 degrees as if to convince us that Medora was not as inhospitable as we might believe and that maybe we should stay a while longer.  We can't, but we did enter the park to say good-bye and were met with a plethora of bison and gorgeous sun-drenched bluffs.

 2-15-11 - I'm not as quick to shed my jacket in this gorgeous spring weather as Alison was

2-15-11 - Bison: Best viewed from the car

Keeping a baby sane for 12.5 hours is not easy.  Luckily, we took a route through Rapid City, which allowed me to show Alison the ultimate tourist trap: Wall Drug.

 2-16-11 - Wall Drug!

We made it to North Platte safe and sound, despite driving several hours through the dark Nebraska wilderness in what can only be described as prime alien abduction country.  We'll miss the Dakotas dearly, our home for the past four winters, but are very excited to see what lies ahead in this strange, new Eastern land.