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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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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The Trek Home

In case you missed the other posts from our road trip, here's on our way there, Salt Lake City, Durango and the Grand Canyon. Technically the Grand Canyon was on our way home, but I felt like it was significant enough to warrant a post of its own. 

^^ Everywhere we went, the kids were obsessed with the maps they give you. 

^^ It's been a while since I've been out in the south-west, and I was constantly in awe of the beauty of the land. 

^^ I'm glad we stopped at four corners. Connor in particular really enjoyed it and has talked about it numerous times since. But it was so incredibly hot. There was no shade, or breeze for that matter. And you had to wait in line to take a picture. We asked a lady to take our picture and she did a totally horrible job. Whomp, whomp, whomp. 

^^ I looked up Horseshoe Bend on the internet. It is actually pretty far north of the Grand Canyon, but I kept thinking about when would we ever be over here again, so we decided to detour and go to it. It was 108 degrees out. There is no shade and huge signs warning of heat exhaustion at the trail head. But, we decided to go for it and see what happens. The way there went surprisingly well. A couple minutes after we got to the overlook, the wind picked up and before you knew it, we were in a sand storm. If we didn't have the kids, I probably would have waited it out. But, we had to make the mile trek out of there (uphill) with the sand whipping us and the kids heads covered in blankets. I wore Isla in the ergo on my back and half lead/half drug Connor, while Ian drug Callum in the stroller. It felt pretty miserable. But, it was a beautiful sight. I just wish we could have enjoyed it more.

^^ I think my hair and the kids covered faces do a good job telling about the wind! 

^^ We stopped at Flintstones Bedrock City. It is about 30 minutes away from the Grand Canyon. The reviews of it online are mixed. Sure, it's a bit rundown, but it really is a fun place and the kids totally were into it. 

We travelled just over 2500 miles in 10 days. Though we had our journey mostly mapped out, we did plan our stops while driving. I looked for things online that looked quirky and cool to stop at and Ian was always down for whatever.

The one thing about traveling so far with kids is bathroom breaks. Often, we would find ourselves out in the middle of nowhere with no safe place to stop for miles and a kid would say they need to use the bathroom and we would be begging them to hold it until we could stop. My personal favorite were the poop breaks that happened at least twice with us sitting on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Easy and good food was scarce, so I was particularly excited when we got back into the land of the living (i.e. California) where In-n-Out and Chipotle is all over.

I noticed in pretty much everywhere besides California, people were rather chill drivers. It was pretty funny because literally the minute we passed back into California, defensive and crazy driving was all over the road again.

The kids did really well in the car. Especially the older two. They really didn't do much complaining at all, as long as we kept them fed and stopped for them to go the bathroom. Callum, on the other hand, would max out at about 8 hours of travel a day and then nothing, I mean nothing, could keep him from letting us know his displeasure in still being in the car. Thankfully that really only happened a couple times.

This trip was really good for me. It scratched my wanderlust itch a bit. Though, me being me, I am already planning out the next big adventure I want to take. Seriously, I am a bit addicted to travel. It's just so fun for me to get out there and experience different things. Different people. Different foods. Different everything. And I really hope our kids grow up loving to travel and experience new things as well.

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