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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Park City

Our main destination for vacation was Park City, Utah. We chose this because there are so many outdoor activities, making it easier to social distance. Also, the temps are more than 20 degrees cooler than home! 

With four kids and not wanting a rushed vacation, we did one activity a day, then spent the other time playing exploring or hanging out. 

Day 1:

The first day we went and checked out the Olympic Park. We saw people practicing ski jumps into a big pool, which was pretty cool. We also realized there really aren't any activities for the little kids. So we went back to the house and I took the older kids back to have fun. The highlight for me and Connor was the zipline. I've always wanted to do one and it definitely didn't disappoint. The highlight for Isla was the alpine slide. The ropes course was a low for all of us, when we ended up needing rescuing by the workers. (insert face palm here!) We went back a few days later and I watched another lady and her kids being rescued on the ropes course and then didn't feel so bad. 

Day 2:

We drove into Salt Lake City to go to the zoo. It was actually a very pleasant experience. I was nervous about the crowds, which really ended up being a non-issue.  You have to pre-buy timed tickets into the zoo. And maybe because it was a weekday, there was not many people there. It was nice to get out and do something that felt relatively normal. 

Day 3:

We went to Jordanelle state park. I originally wanted to walk to the dam, but it was farther away from the parking lot than I thought. So instead we had a picnic lunch, then a small little loop of a hike before letting the kids play in the water. We packed up to leave just as a storm was coming, which was perfect timing. 

Day 4:

Connor really wanted to ride public transportation, so planned an outing for us in Salt Lake City with it. Funny story, neither Ian or I checked out Connor's plan. We just went with it. Well, he drove us way south of the city because he wanted to ride public transportation longer...haha! He mapped for us to go to a coffee shop, then to an ice cream place. Public transportation was basically empty. I don't know if that is normal or covid, but either way, it made the experience that much more enjoyable. 

Day 5:

We took the most beautiful and incredible little hike. Despite what these pictures show, much of the hike was covered in trees, making it a nice and cool hike. Connor passed his time telling ghost stories, Callum went between throwing rocks and filling his pockets with them, Isla collected wild flowers for a bouquet and Willa slept. 

Day 6:

We went back to the olympic park, as the kids really wanted to go back. This time Ian did activities with the kids. I stayed too, as I found a play area when I was there before. It was a little big for Callum, but he had fun. I would say the same activities were highlights for the kids. Connor went on the zipline at least six times. One time Ian took Isla on the alpine slide and Connor rode the zipline four times just in the one time they did the alpine slide. We took a picture with the bobsled track, as I am a big Cool Runnings fan...haha! You can pay to ride down it with a professional bobsledder, but I figured I would probably barf, so I didn't do it. But the younger, stronger stomach, me really wanted to do it. 

While in Park City, we stayed in an airbnb that was just perfect. The place had five bedrooms, which we really didn't need all those. We ended up sleeping in three. It had a hottub...which was the reason we booked it. We used the hottub almost every day. The nice thing about an airbnb is being able to cook all your own meals, though we did pick up take out two nights. After Park City, we headed south to Zion National Park. 

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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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Cabazon Dinosaurs

I grew up in Arizona, but both my parents were from southern California. We made countless trips over to see my relatives and I remember always passing the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs and the weird ufo plam trees actually...which the palm trees are gone now. Anyway. I am sure we stopped at least once in my childhood, but I don't really remember. Given that these dinosaurs were such an iconic part of my childhood and that I am a sucker for roadside attractions, I knew we had to stop. I actually meant to stop with the kids on the way to Arizona, but somehow totally missed the dinosaurs, so we stopped on our way back instead. 

As I said, I am a sucker for roadside attractions. And my kids are suckers for gift shops, so we make a great combination. We hit up the gift shop first, which there ended up being a bigger one inside the museum, but you live and learn, as the kids had already each gotten something at the first gift shop so they were out of luck. After the gift shop, we went into the museum. Though there was a decent crowd at the dinosaurs, we were literally the only people that paid to get in the museum. And to be honest, the museum was way better than I expected. 

In the museum were a bunch of dinosaurs that you walked around and different facts about the various dinosaurs. There was also a huge sand pit, along with the main attraction of climbing to the top of the trex. Now the museum said to head inside first, which we didn't do, as I thought it was just a gift shop and we had already gone in the other one. We ended up going in on our way out. It had a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs to look at that were super cool. It also had some photo opportunities and a bouncing dino you could ride. 

^^ When we got to the top, Connor and Isla actually got freaked out. It was super windy up there. Callum loved it though. And later I got Connor to go back up with me and he enjoyed it a lot more the second time. 

^^ Isla checking out a few of the animatronic dinosaurs

I really enjoyed myself at the dinosaurs. Had I realized how nice the paid part was, I probably would have allotted us more time there. I also would have brought a snack or meal along, as there were a bunch of picnic tables inside and plenty of space for the kids to roam and play. Sometimes I wonder who loves some of this stuff more, me or the kids! 

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