The day after Christmas, we embarked on a road trip that would take us to Petrified Forest National Park, Santa Fe, and Sedona.  It was a lot of driving, but we thought we were up for the challenge.  I had a little scare when I checked the weather forecast one week before and there was a snow storm expected in New Mexico.  Luckily, the forecast cleared up and we were good to go in our Mazda3 Hatch.

During most of the first leg of our drive we were on Highway 40.  The creation of this highway made Route 66 obsolete in many places, as documented in the movie Cars.  However, a lot of Route 66 nostalgia lives on in the small towns and stores that have managed to survive.  We stopped at this Route 66 General Store to get gas.

For some reason, D felt the need to buy Elk Jerky.  Don’t ask.

We drove about twenty five miles past Holbrook, Arizona to reach Petrified Forest National Park.  This was exciting because it is the twentieth National Park that the kids have visited.  In retrospect, I should have had them each hold up ten fingers to commemorate the number.  Oh well.

Our plan was to enter the park through the northern station and explore the Painted Desert area.  We would save the southern section for the next morning.

D has not switched to dabbing yet!

We hiked the Painted Desert Rim Trail, which is one mile round trip.

We made it to the Painted Desert Inn National Historic Landmark just before it closed at 4 p.m.

What a view!

The back side.

A raven, I think.

A mini rainbow.

The road less traveled.

The kids received fitness monitoring watches for Christmas.  After sitting in the car all day, they were anxious to get their steps in by moving their arms.

When a friendly woman offered to take our family’s picture, she had to tell n, “Honey, you have to stop moving your arms!”

The Painted Desert is certainly an apt name for this area.

The clouds were crazy on our way back to Holbrook.  We had a reservation at Days Inn.

I thought the room was ok, especially given the cheap rate.  The pillow formation cracked me up, though.  D was not impressed.

We ate dinner at a restaurant in town that seemed to be frequented by locals.

Despite the positive Yelp reviews, the wait was excruciating and they ran out of some key ingredients, such as chicken and shredded beef.  D and I ordered a couple of dishes with green chile, since that is the popular dish around that area.  (The kids stuck to the Navajo taco).  We thought the food was pretty good and also had a sopapilla for dessert.

Well…fast forward to about midnight and D was not feeling well.  He managed to go back to sleep, but by 2:30 a.m. he was throwing up.  I followed suit about a half hour later and continued about four times after that, into the morning.  (Sorry if that is TMI).  That was the worst night I have ever had while on vacation!  Was it food poisoning? Altitude sickness?  I am just grateful that the kids were not affected!

We spent the night in Moab at ACT Campground.  There was a moment of panic when I tried to check-in and the person at the front desk said he did not have any record of our reservation.  He eventually did find it, and fortunately there was still a campsite for us.  Unfortunately, it was down a little hill from where we parked our car, which made it somewhat difficult to pack up quickly the next morning.  Despite the lost reservation, I would still recommend this place due to the nice shower facilities and community kitchen.

After packing up, we returned to Arches National Park in order to hike to Delicate Arch.  This is probably the most famous arch, which is featured on the Utah license plate.  I think this may have also been the first hike that our family has been on with a “difficult” rating.

There was definitely some climbing involved!

Silly n trying to climb under a tiny “arch”.

We ended up following some hikers on a wrong detour that made our hike a little more difficult than it had to be.

Eventually we made it to this cliff.  This hike is exciting because you cannot see the arch until you round this corner.

Too bad the sun was on the wrong side of the arch for pictures.  I am glad we did the hike early in the morning for the cooler weather though.

D and the kids are to the right under the arch.

I kind of like this candid photo of k next to the arch.

After our hike we returned to the visitors center so the kids could be sworn in as junior rangers.  Then it was time for our long car ride back to Henderson, Nevada.

We packed up our camp early and quickly and drove to Canyonlands National Park, which is about three hours from Torrey.

We saw some wild turkeys on our way out through Capitol Reef.

I made use of the provided tripod and our camera’s timer to take this family photo.  We visited the Island in the Sky section of the park, which is the most accessible.

The kids were laughing at the squatty potty sign…and there actually was one next to the pit toilet.  I’m not sure why anyone would use that given the choice!

We watched the video in the visitors center but I let the kids skip the junior ranger program since our time here was very limited.

We did do the .7 mile hike to Mesa Arch, though.  (The only reason why I was able to take a picture of the arch without people is because there was a somewhat pushy European tourist right next to us who yelled for everyone to clear out so he could take a picture!)

The view beyond the arch is was what impressed me the most.  This picture does not capture how spectacular it was!

D and his girls.

Five years ago in April, we went to Zion and Bryce.  This year we tackled the rest of the “Mighty 5” national parks in Utah: Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches.

As we drove along from Las Vegas to Utah, we lost an hour crossing a time zone, but we gained views like this:

We stopped in at Austin’s Chuckwagon Deli in Torrey, Utah to pick up sandwiches for lunch.

A little more driving…

We split our pastrami sandwich and a chicken melt in front of the visitor center with this view:

The kids started on their junior range booklets before we watched the movie at the visitors’ center.

After watching the introductory movie, we drove along the scenic drive to the Gifford House.  Capitol Reef is a unique national park in that they have preserved some of the historical buildings to show how people lived on the land.

I was relieved to see that there were still pies left in the pie cabinet.  We opted for mixed berry.  We also tried two small cups of homemade ice cream for $1 each; 1 strawberry and 1 vanilla.

I am pretty sure that I enjoyed the pie the most.  As I grow older I find myself becoming more of a pie person than a cake person.

Our only hike in Capitol Reef was the Hickman Bridge Trail.

The trail is 1.8 miles RT and starts out along the Fremont River.

We were not sure what these “burnt” rocks were, but they looked like charcoal.

The weather was not too hot, but this shady resting spot was still nice.

There’s the bridge.  Because there is rock right behind it, it is difficult to photograph.

View from the other side.

On our way back D spotted this little guy.  He was only a few inches, but I zoomed in so he looks bigger.

On our drive back to the Visitors Center we stopped to see some petroglyphs.

During the summer you can pick your own fruit in the fruit orchards!  That would have been fun, but I am glad we visited in the spring for cooler weather.

This was the Mormon settlers’ schoolhouse.  Can you imagine?

Double-checking their junior ranger packets.

Because they were “severely under-staffed”, there was a group swearing-in ceremony.

We did the quick trip back to the town of Torrey to check into the Thousand Lakes Campground.  When we pulled in D commented that it was not very “luxe”.  Umm…I am not sure what he expected for $25!  The tent sites were super close to each other, but the privacy walls were appreciated and we conveniently parked our car right next to our site.

I usually prefer to camp inside of the national parks we visit, but Capitol Reef’s campsite was first come, first serve.  Since we did not arrive early in the day, I did not want to risk it after our debacle at Great Basin.

There was some nice scenery with the red rocks in the background.

Dinner was at nearby Red Cliff Restaurant.  This place needs a serious makeover, but the service was very friendly and the pizza was good.

We devoured one large combination pizza.  D said we needed to consume a lot of calories so we could keep warm at night.  Mission accomplished!

There was a small playground where the kids were able to play.  There was only one toilet and sink for the women, but there was a portable heater in the bathroom, so that was nice.  The overnight low was around 40 degrees.  The elevation was 6,800 feet, but it did not seem to affect any of us, so that was a relief.

At the very end of last year, we took a quick trip to Arizona to visit Saguaro National Park (pronounced Sa-wahr-o).  The drive took about seven hours, so it is just like our drives to Northern California.  The park is divided into two parts, and Tuscson is in the middle.  Our first stop was the west side, known as the Tucson Mountain District.  Warning: there will be A LOT of pictures of cacti from this trip!

On the 10 freeway, we passed this notable exit:

The visitor center had nice southwest architecture that blended into the environment.  We picked up our junior ranger booklets and did not have to pay the $10 parking fee since we had k’s 4th grade pass.

We watched the introductory movie.  It had a great ending, but I will not ruin the surprise!

There is a loop for cars that is fairly rough and gravel-y.  However, all of the hiking trails we took were fairly level and some were paved.

The weather was quite mild and pleasant.  I would hate to be here in the summer!

Saguaros have so much personality.  I can see why they are often depicted as people.  It takes around fifty years for them to develop an arm!

The junior ranger packets were no joke.  We had to finish them up that night at the hotel.

There was a little elevation gain on the Valley View Overlook trail.

Saguaros as far as the eye can see!

I’m not sure why n is making faces in so many of these pictures.  He was not in a bad mood, but just not in the mood for pictures, I guess!

Don’t get too close, D!

Barrel Cactus

Teddy Bear Cholla

This trail was notable for the petroglyphs in the rocks.

A Palo Verde, the state tree.

I told n to pretend to look scared–ha!

This portion of the park took us about three hours to explore.

After Glacier Point we headed back to the village.  I asked D to pull over at one point because the scenery was so pretty and fall-ish.

We tried to find parking around the village, but it was packed with people and cars.  Frustrated and tired, we ended up parking the car at our campsite and took the shuttle.  In hindsight, we should have done this the day before as well.

I had to take a picture of the kids with this phone booth at the campsite since they are so rare these days.  They were quite surprised when they heard an actual dial tone!

Shuttle Shenanigans

I saw this woman outside of our shuttle sorting her climbing gear.  I was so impressed I had to take a picture!

The kids completed their junior ranger packets and were sworn in.  At Yosemite, you have to pay a little over $3 per packet, but it is worth it because you get a patch and wooden pin (as opposed to plastic).

We bought this reversible jacket for n from Target right before our trip.  Not sure what the face is about.

Watching the kids try to catch the falling leaves were some of my favorite moments from our trip.  When there was a little gust of wind there were some many leaves falling at once–it felt magical!

We checked out Curry Village (now known as Half Dome Village) and agreed we would rather sleep in our own tent than risk Hantavirus.

We ate dinner at Pizza Patio in Half Dome Village.

We split a garden salad and a medium pepperoni pizza.

We also split this soda that we had bought earlier in the day to keep our sandwiches cold.  This orange mango flavor was really good!

D was wearing his hat really high to avoid a headache.

After dinner we returned to our campsite and made s’mores.

The next morning we headed out fairly early because k had to be back home for a girl scout meeting.  We went through the Wawona tunnel one last time.

‘Twas nice to visit you in the fall.  Maybe next time we will visit in the spring!

Once we made it out of the park we stopped at a nearby McDonald’s for breakfast.  It was neat that there were all of these cool photos of Yosemite on the walls.  D said that he did not even notice–haha!

The drive to Glacier Point from Yosemite Village is nearly an hour, closer to the entrance of the park.  I felt kind of bad that my plan to see it on Saturday had us backtracking, but I also know that we would not have had enough energy after driving for six hours.

I was also glad that we saved it until Saturday because the earlier you can arrive, the better.  By the time we left, the parking lot was jammed–and this was the off-season!

We were trying to take Christmas pictures, which is why I have so many shots with these two paired up.  You will have to wait to see the one we chose!

We had a little trouble finding our campsite with all of the roadwork going on.  It was pretty dark by the time we set up camp and cooked our hot dogs.  The overnight temperatures were in the 40’s, but the kids and I enjoy the challenge of bundling up and keeping warm (D, not so much).

We were looking forward to having a hot breakfast from Degnan’s Deli, but alas, it was closed for remodeling.  Big sad face.  We ended up having to buy yogurt for breakfast and sandwiches for our lunch later at the village market, which was not too impressive.

We were able to see this early morning rainbow in Upper Yosemite Falls though, so that was cool.

Our first hike of the day was to Sentinel Dome, on the way to Glacier Point.  This ended up being our favorite hike of the trip. I believe it was 1.8 miles round trip.

The dome is in the background.

The kids had fun scrambling up the rock to get to the top of the dome.

We made it!

The winds were a lot gustier up on top.

This raven was making crazy sounds in trying to get our attention for some snacks, but we did not share.