Bodie State Park

This is another one of those stops that was made because it's in the middle of nowhere and one wonders when they will find themselves in this particular part of nowhere again. Bodie State Park is a ghost town that was abandoned mostly intact. What remains is actually only 5% of what was originally there. It was a town created because of gold mining. It is 12 miles off the highway and the last 3 miles aren't paved. Not paved! The park worker said it is to get you in the spirit of 100+ years ago, haha! 

It was actually pretty neat to look around. The schoolhouse, which stopped operating in the 1940's, still remains pretty full inside. Most of the buildings were not. For instance, the post office had some cubbies and things inside, but was mostly empty. Connor was excited to show us the site of a murder...actually marked for people to visit. Callum picked up a stick off the ground and played with it for a while, before getting in trouble by a park worker for it being an "artifact". That one cracked me up. He got it off the middle of the road. Sometimes I wonder why workers at places have to be like that. It just makes kids not want to go when they can't even play with dang sticks on the ground. To each his own, I guess. It was still a neat place to visit and wander around. 

^^ Callum holding said stick...and in the picture below, he is playing with it in the dirt.

^^ The mine that cost more than the amount of gold that was found and what appears to be the reason the town was abandoned. 

^^ The site of a murder. I'm assuming only one ever happened in the town, given it was marked. 

We went here on our last day of driving home from vacation. So, that's the end of our road trip. In case you missed my other road trip posts - we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats, stayed in Park City for a week and stopped at Zion National Park for two days. 

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Zion National Park

Our original plan for this summer was to utilize Connor's fourth grade national parks pass and do a road trip hitting up several national parks. Alas, covid changed things. But, we did decide to go to Zion National Park on our "way" home...it was a couple hours out of the way. But the thing is, when you are on a road trip, you wonder if you will ever be back there, so stopping is always a good idea. 

Ian planned ahead and booked us shuttle tickets at Zion. Part of it is only accessible via the shuttle. Well, you can bike it too, but that wouldn't be happening! The shuttles are severely limited in capacity because of covid. We chose a "hike" that apparently is the most popular one in the park. I struggle even calling it a hike because it is completely paved and really only had one small spot with even an incline. Maybe calling it a walk would be more appropriate. It was a hot day at Zion, over 100 degrees. Thankfully we got there early, around 9am. Also the hike-walk was mostly shaded, making it bearable. But, there is no air in the shuttle and it is about a 40 minute ride each direction. I'm pretty sure that's what did the kids in! 

After the hike, we were going to stop at another shuttle stop, but after waiting for the shuttle, then riding on the shuttle a bit, the kids were grumpy. So, we went back to near our car and had a picnic lunch. Then we grabbed ice cream to cool off and drove the road through Zion. I was taken by the unique landscape and how it changes as you drive through the park...it's only like an 11 mile drive or something. But this made me decide I wanted to come back later. 

So, after dinner, we headed back into the park. The sun wasn't high in the air anymore, the temps had cooled off a bit. We drove until we found a good place to park and get out and play. We spent two hours throwing rocks, climbing logs and just enjoying ourselves. This was definitely my favorite part of the day. It made it totally worth keeping the kids up past bedtime. In fact, they were in great moods, enjoying themselves so much. And driving out of the park just as it was getting dark was rather fun. 

These next pictures are from when we went back into the park in the evening. 

^^ Isla said these rocks looked like shells. With their layered lines, they really did. What was crazy is they were almost like a sand material, so if the kids threw a rock, it easily busted when it hit the ground.

If you have never been to Zion, I highly recommend it. Judging by the parking situation, it seems it was WAY less busy than normal, due to covid. It still felt plenty busy and I think would have been an unpleasant experience had we gone at a normal peak time for the park. Also, if you can go offseason when it isn't so hot, I recommend that...because it is hot, hot, HOT there. 

In case you missed my other road trip posts - we stopped at the Bonneville Salt Flats and stayed in Park City for a week. 

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Bonneville Salt Flats

We just got back a couple days ago from a week and a half long road trip to Utah. One of the highlights for me is basically a piece of land in the middle of nowhere, the Bonneville Salt Flats. It is just such a fascinating place unlike none I have ever been to. 

So I knew I wanted to stop at the salt flats, but was unsure how exactly to. Everything I could tell online is that there is an amazing rest stop on I-80 west bound. It has access to walk and drive on the flats, as well as foot washing stations. Unfortunately we were headed east and would not be coming back the same way. And it would be a huge backtrack to turn around for the rest stop. Well, after reading one thing online on a forum, it seemed we could just drive to the flats ourselves via exit 4. But again, I had no clue what to expect. Even the map on our iPhones could not comprehend what we wanted to do and was saying it was going to take over 2 hours to drive a couple miles. Anyway, in case you ever do this yourself, just follow the road off the exit and it dead ends into the flats. But another funny story about that...

The road just ends. It ends with a big circle area for you to turn around and there were probably five cars parked there. So, it seemed one should stop there. But, there was a car in front of us and said car just flew out onto the flats. So we followed. And ohmygosh it was so fun. So freaky. So freeing. At this point, we had not gotten out of our car, so I was freaked out that we might sink or something. Spoiler alert, we didn't. 

When we finally stopped and got out, I could feel that the salt flats were totally hard. It was such a strange feeling. It's such a vast space of emptiness. Even cars driving that I would consider nearby were hard to hear. It was as if the vastness just ate up the sound. 

The kids got such a kick out of all this. They ran on it. They tasted it...it tastes way saltier than normal salt, if that's even possible. They looked at it through a microscope...because everyone happens to have a handheld microscope on vacation with them. There also was some beyblade playing on the salt. 

When we went to get back in the car, salt was stuck to everyones shoes and made such a MESS in the car. Like, I don't even know how that much salt could be on shoes. But the same for the car tires. We drove another 2+ hours to our airbnb and our car still spilled salt out all over the garage where we were staying. 

This was definitely one of those once in a lifetime stops on the side of the road, but was so worth it and so cool. I saw later online that there is an aqueduct that goes through the salt floats with brine water and people float on it. That looked fun too. This was just a great way to start our trip. 

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Nashville

Wow, it's been a while since I have blogged. But, I'm not ready to give it up just yet, so here I go again. Ian, Willa and I went to Nashville for five days at the end of September. A lot of people have asked why. Ian and I were trying to remember how it started. We think it started with the idea of an anniversary trip, then the end of September became the first time that worked with childcare....thanks mom! Why Nashville? Well, it seems like everyone and their mom is talking about it and we wanted to see what the hype was all about. So now you are about to get my take on Nashville. 

The good - I don't know if I have ever been to a place with so many good restaurants. I didn't notice chain restaurants many places. Mostly just really good local restaurants. I'll list my favorites in a minute. The locals were amazing. We talked to so many. They really seemed to enjoy wanting to get outsiders takes on Nashville and to discuss how the city has exploded in growth. Nashville is rather compact, so taking Uber around was easy and not pricy. I highly recommend walking out on the John Seigenthaler pedestrian bridge in downtown Nashville. It gives you a beautiful view of the city. I was surprised how few people were on it, actually. Also, if you decide to take a tour of the Ryman Auditorium, spring for the backstage tour, as its full of interesting tidbits. And don't skip the video at the beginning of the tour, as it's really well done. All the cool murals around the city are super neat. So many businesses have them on the sides of their walls too. It creates such a neat vibe.

We ate at more places than this, but these were definitely great and ones I would certainly go back to:

Five Points Pizza - I ate possibly the best pizza of my life here

Bar Taco - make a reservation, as this place gets busy

Las Paletas - unique popsicles

Five Daughters Bakery - because who doesn't love donuts?

Dozen bakery - Best muffin of my life. It was apple something and it was life changing.

Martin's BBQ - get the brisket tacos and thank me later

Coffee shops:

Barista Parlor

Well Coffee House - they are a non-profit that builds wells in other countries!

Crema - amazing avocado toast! This is also where all the trendy, hipster people were...haha. 

The bad - I could not get over the humidity. It was SO HUMID. I felt like I was always covered in sweat. Also, what's up with no sidewalks outside of the city center? So weird, annoying and unsafe. And the lack of public transportation in a city of that size just blew my mind. Also, I never knew Nashville was nicknamed "Nash-Vegas". Bars and drunk people all over downtown. We were pretty much the only people around with a child out, even during the day. So that was kind of weird. Well, and drunk people wanting to hold Willa. But, outside of the city center, we did encounter other families. 

One thing I found funny is literally every Uber driver we had asked us if we were planning on moving to Nashville. The city has doubled in size in something like 10 or 15 years and is definitely growing faster than it can handle. Every local we talked to loved talking about this and how unhappy they were about it. There definitely seems to be an us vs. them mentality about people moving to Nashville. 

After we did everything we felt like doing in the city center, we rented a car for our last two days. We stopped in Franklin, walked around the downtown, which truly is something out of a tv show, and got coffee at a great place. Then we continued on into the middle of nowhere to visit the Jack Daniels Distillery. Besides it being in the middle of nowhere and food options being super limited around it, the tour itself was super interesting and entertaining. We also went to the Belle Mead Plantation on the outskirts of Nashville. It contains such a dark part of our country's history, slavery, but something I think shouldn't be ignored. 

All in all, Nashville was great. Just very different than I expected. Spending five days with Ian with only one child was amazing and dare I say, easy.

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Copenhagen

When we started planning our trip last year, we knew we were going to go to Scotland for sure. Then London with Ian's family came to be. So for our last bit of time, I knew I wanted to go somewhere we had never been before, but didn't necessarily know where. One day while listening to the radio, they were talking about this cool lego place in Denmark, the home of lego. Now the cool lego place ended up being more than three hours outside of Copenhagen, so we didn't go visit. But that was what started me looking at Denmark, thus deciding on Copenhagen. 

The one thing I did not know about Copenhagen until we arrived was how insanely expensive it is. The exchange rate certainly wasn't in our favor. Plus, you have to even pay for tap water at restaurants! Think $5 for a pitcher of water. The food situation definitely created a huge sticker shock. And though the train getting from the airport into Copenhagen was super convenient and easy, I didn't find public transportation convenient, at least where we were staying. So, we did a lot of walking because, well, taxis be crazy expensive there too! Ian and I can handle the walking, but it was hard for the kids with the warm humid weather and the walking. But let's switch gears to some good things about Copenhagen. 

Obviously Tivoli was a highlight. Over a month later, my kids still bring it up all the time. Also, there was an epic park right next to the building we were staying in. I don't even know how to begin describing the amazingness of this park. It had several play structures. But there were also toys out during the day for kids to play with. Tons of different bikes that you could ride by yourself, or many even had seats to ride others around too. Also, there were so many trees. Which sitting under the trees with a little breeze, the heat wasn't even a bother. During the day, there was also a building that sold snacks, most notably popsicles. It was just a really great park. One that was visited more than once a day every day we were there. 

For the touristy stuff in Copenhagen, we walked Stroget, a super long pedestrian only street that is full of shopping and charm. The kids weren't super into it, well except for the neat lego store. But I thought it was a fun experience. Then we went to Nyhavn. Nyhavn is absolutely beautiful, and colorful, but to be honest, there really isn't anything to do except eat there. Well, it is also the start of boat tours, if one is going to do that...being stuck on a small cramped vessel with my children for a decent amount of time wasn't a priority of mine, so we didn't do one. I had seen on Pinterest months ago that there was a place that had trampolines in the sidewalk. I really, really wanted to go, but literally couldn't find anywhere that listed where in the city they were. I finally found someone mention what hotel they were across from, so we hunted them down. Callum absolutely loved them. We had to drag him away. Isla enjoyed them. And Connor was just hot. But they are right next to the waterway. It really was a beautiful setting. It would have just been more enjoyable if there were some trees and it was a little cooler out ;)

Another day we took a corny little train tour of the downtown area. I enjoyed it because it let us see quickly a few of the highlights that we really were skipping because the kids can only take so much. I should mention that there were also several coffee shop trips, because Ian was there. 

^^ proof that I was actually there

^^ Our airbnb was actually someone's primary residence. This was the first time that has ever happened in all the times we've stayed in airbnb's. It was sort of weird, but also super nice because there were SO MANY toys to play with. Including a swing installed in the ceiling and a jungle gym bar coming from the ceiling too that Isla totally loved.

^^ at the cool lego store on Stroget

If we went back to Copenhagen, I would definitely rent bikes ahead of time...they have cool ones all over with buckets on the front for kids. It would have made getting around so much easier. And I think having just known that every meal was going to be crazy expensive in advance would have helped with my sticker shock as well. Oh, and not having our departing flight canceled a couple hours before we were supposed to leave would have helped too. But those are just minor details...well the flight wasn't, but that's another story. 

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Tivoli in Copenhagen

Remember back, oh 5 weeks ago, when we were in Copenhagen? Yeah, I almost don't remember either. But here I am, finally getting around to posting about it. I'll be honest that I don't do tons and tons of research when we travel. I have a general idea of what I'd like to do and sort of fill things in as we go along. Our first full day in Copenhagen we went to Tivoli. I thought Tivoli was like Central Park in NYC, but with a few rides at it. No, Tivoli is more like a miniature Disneyland. And it was pretty dang amazing. 

Tivoli is 175 years old and is where Walt Disney got some of his inspiration for Disneyland from, which you can definitely tell as you walk around. Like, say, the striking similarities of a ride that looks like the matterhorn or it's a small world. The big difference, in my opinion, is there is much more beauty and green space, less characters and way, way less crowds. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day. 

Since I was expecting something like Central Park, I thought we would spend a couple hours there, then move on. Nope, we spent all day long, until it was bedtime, there. Isla got more brave with the rides as the day went along, but she spent the first bit of time in the park riding the carousel 6 or 7 times. Which, admittedly, it was a pretty dang cool carousel. Connor was adventurous and went on 3 different rollercoasters, riding a couple of them many times. Believe it or not, almost none of the rides had age/size restrictions if you had a parent with you. So, Ian took Callum on one of the rollercoasters with him and Connor. He took some video where Callum looks totally freaked out, but Callum says he had fun. So, who knows.

The kids had so much fun there that they have asked over and over when we can go back. Especially Connor. He asks every couple days when we can go back to Tivoli. I'm glad it's something we sort of stumbled upon and I'm glad we were flexible enough that we could spend the whole day there because it really was a good day. 

Tivoli was definitely the highlight of our time in Copenhagen, but I will get around to posting the rest of our time in Copenhagen eventually...like maybe before the baby arrives ;)

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