Way Out West (part 2)

 Day 8, Sun. - After worshipping in our room, we loaded up and headed west to Nevada. We had a room reserved about 20 miles north of Beatty. We stopped in town to stock up on groceries, then drove to our "inn". We were shocked! This nice little B&B, that had such good reviews, was a trailer house with small bedrooms to rent. The host was super sweet, but the house smelled like dogs, and the room was barely big enough for our overnight bags...much less the other things we needed. We went back to the car, did some frantic searching (there are NOT many places to stay in this area!), and finally found a room at a hotel right before entering Death Valley. I made our excuses to the lady at the "inn", and off we drove. I'll never live that one down (since I was the one who had booked the room)! The place we ended up staying was perfect for our needs, and even had a couple of restaurants that we could eat at.

view from our desert inn

another view from the inn

sand dunes in Death Valley

mountains in Death Valley

Day 9, Mon. - We got up early the next morning, ate breakfast in our room, and headed into Death Valley. It wasn't at all what either of us expected. It was very interesting, quite pretty in places, and not too hot. The temperatures in the park ranged from 77-97 degrees. We stopped for lunch in Bishop, CA, then took the Tioga Road to Yosemite. That was probably the prettiest drive on the whole trip! We saw lots of snow, and wildflowers were everywhere. They were beautiful! We drove to our cabin in Foresta, which is a private community surrounded by Yosemite National Park. Such a quiet, peaceful place to stay...and even had a washer and dryer that we could use.

Day 10-11, Tues-Wed. - We spent the next couple of days exploring Yosemite. It is a gorgeous place, but the crowds were crazy. We tried to time our outings to avoid the worst of the crowds...didn't really work. Since we had a fully equipped kitchen, we were finally able to do a little cooking to avoid eating at pricey restaurants. Everything out there is EXPENSIVE! I'm really glad that we were able to go and see the sights, but I have no desire to ever return to California.

moon over El Capitan

These guys are everywhere!

Bridal Veil Falls

Day 12, Thurs. - As we were leaving Foresta, a cinnamon colored black bear ran across the road, right in front of us. We stopped the car to watch him, and he stopped at the edge of the woods to watch us. We didn't have time to snap a picture, but it was a real thrill to see him!

Our next stop was Lindsay, CA. When we were making our travel plans, it was the closest town (not including cities, which we were trying to avoid) to the Sequoia National Park that we could find. It ended up being between an hour and an hour and a half to the park. Since we got there so early, we decided to drive up to Kings Canyon in the park. I have never in my life driven on such a curvy road! It was insane! We really enjoyed Kings Canyon though! This was Dennis' first time to see giant Sequoias. He loved it! After a light picnic supper, we retraced our steps down that snaky road back to our motel. When we were a few miles north of Lindsay, we got a really nice view of the valley below us. What a sight! There were orchards and vineyards as far as the eye could see. We also stopped at a fruit stand and picked up some apricots, peaches and plums for snacking on. YUM!

General Sherman

General Grant

3 Sisters

Day 13, Fri. - The next day we found a better road leading to the main section of Sequoia National Park, where General Grant is. (General Sherman was in Kings Canyon.) We walked among the giants and were amazed at their mass. I'm so glad that Dennis was finally able to see these magnificent trees! I had seen them the summer after I graduated high school, but I enjoyed them even more this time around.

Day 14, Sat. - We had seen everything we had come to see in California, so we cut our visit short by a day and headed southeast. For a state that has so many people in it, that section of the state is desolate! We were happy to reach Arizona!

Day 15, Sun. - We worshipped in our hotel room, then headed east for Holbrook, AZ...the gateway to The Petrified Forest National Park. We spent about 3-4 hours driving through and looking at the sights...even doing a little hiking to get a better look at the beautiful petrified logs. We had a late supper, then collapsed in our hotel room for the night.

historic inn

Blue Mesa

Day 16-17, Mon-Tues. - We had a hard day of driving on Monday, making it to Amarillo for the night. On the drive through New Mexico, we saw miles of blooming chola cactus. It was beautiful! I guess we hit it at just the right time, because it seemed as if every cactus was covered in pretty pink blossoms.

Just as it had happened on our way out west, we were met with storms. Amarillo must love it when we come through...we seem to bring the rains with us. Then this morning, we got up early and drove home. I have to say...seeing our house at the end of our long journey was one of my favorite sights of the trip. After 17 days, about 4000 miles, and having visited 6 national parks (and 1 state park), it feels SO good to be home! 

Way Out West: vacation 2025 (week 1)

 Day 1: After a year of planning and anticipation, we finally left home on Sunday, June 8, after lunch. Our first stop was in Amarillo. Easy, right? We thought so, too. We could see a lot of storm clouds and lightening in the distance about the time we got to Childress. Ricky called us, because he'd been watching the weather and saw tornados, high winds, and large hail on our direct route. We stopped at the DQ, had a treat, and watched the weather...weighing our options. We decided to drive south to Paducah and make a big circle south of the storm's path. Boy are we glad we did! We could see it to the north of us, but we avoided everything except a few sprinkles. When we got to our hotel for the night, we saw another vehicle that had its windshield busted out and hail pockmarks all over the driver's side of the car. I'm sure glad we managed to avoid that!

Day 2: The next day's itinerary was to drive to Albuquerque. I was having stomach problems when I got up Monday morning. We got a later start than we had planned, hoping that I would feel better before hitting the road. Didn't work. It was supposed to be a light day of traveling but ended up taking about 2 hours longer than it should have due to all of the stops we had to make. I was SO glad to get to our hotel room that afternoon. We just snacked in our room and rested up that evening.

Day 3: I felt much better Tuesday morning, so we headed out early. We saw about 6-8 hot air balloons flying over Albuquerque as we were heading out of town. What a treat! Then as we headed west on I40, we saw a beautiful full rainbow. We found a really nice roadside park several miles east of Flagstaff, so we stopped and picnicked for lunch. Then we turned north towards Page, Arizona. We visited the dam at Lake Powell and enjoyed the view, then went back to our room for an early bedtime. Dennis ended up having my stomach bug overnight but felt ok for traveling by morning. 

Day 4: Our next destination was Bryce Canyon. We stopped in Kanab, UT to try to find some compression socks. (My feet swelled after our long day of riding Tuesday.) It took a couple of tries, but we found a pair that fit, and we were off. As we were heading north, we saw a sign pointing to the Pink Coral Sand Dunes State Park. Neither of us had heard of it, and we had a light day of driving, so we decided to go check it out. I'm so glad we did. We saw some pretty wildflowers and the dunes were really interesting. It made a great place for our lunch picnic!

We made it to Tropic (which is where we were staying for a couple of nights) around 3. We settled into our room, then decided to go check out Bryce Canyon. What a beautiful place! We loved it! We had supper at a restaurant just outside of the park, then went back to see Sunset Point. We also saw some mule deer and antelope in the park, as well as chipmunks and ground squirrels. It was a great day and full!

an interesting plant at Bryce Canyon

skittish chipmunk

Day 5: We got up before sunrise (which comes mighty early out here!), so we could go to Sunrise Point to watch the sun come up....us and about a hundred other people. We had to park quite a ways away, then hoof it to make it up to the point by sunrise. This old lady has a had time hoofing it uphill! But we made it just in time, and it was beautiful! Afterwards, we strategized that if we drove to the furthest point in the park and worked our way back to the front that we might avoid the crowds. It worked! When we got to Rainbow Point (elevation 9115 ft), we had the place to ourselves. We really enjoyed it! we checked out all of the viewpoints that we'd missed the day before, and revisited a couple of our favorites to see how different they looked in the morning light. Such a beautiful place!

I love how the sun makes the rocks glow!

As we were driving along some of the mountain roads that day, I heard the brakes grinding and felt a shimmy while downhill braking. When we got back to our room that evening, Dennis checked them out and discovered they were worn to the point that we REALLY needed to replace them before doing any more mountain driving. Our hostess happened by that evening and told us where to find a good auto parts store (about 30 miles away), so Dennis decided to get up early the next morning, drive up there to buy new brake pads, then come back and fix them. So we had another early bedtime.

View from our front porch in Tropic, UT

Hooded Oriole feeding next to our front porch

Day 6: Things went well for Dennis going after brake pads and repairing the brakes, and we left Tropic about 9:30 on Friday morning. It was a short drive to Zion National Park. We were just a few miles in the park when Dennis spotted a herd of desert bighorn sheep. We pulled into a turnout and walked back as far as we could to get a better look. They were coming down the mountain on the other side of the river. We were close enough to them to hear their hoofs on the rocks! It was pretty exciting! 

To get from one end of the park to the other, you have to drive through a tunnel that has been carved out of the mountain. It is 1.1 miles long! There are several windows along the way, which offered an amazing (quick) view of the scenery along the way. It was so cool...and a little scary. We wanted our first stop to be the visitor center, but there were NO parking places left. That place is crazy crowded! So we drove up to the lodge where we were staying and had lunch. We still had about 4 hours before we could check into our room, so we just hung out in the lobby and the plaza outside the lodge...with HUNDREDS of other people. Once we were able to get into our room, the crowds had subsided quite a bit, so we drove back to the visitor's center to get some useful tips from the rangers there. We saw a few mule deer on the way. Then another early bedtime for us (after sitting out on our wonderful balcony!).

view from our balcony

Day 7: We rose early again, had a hearty breakfast at the lodge restaurant, then hiked to the Lower Emerald Pool. The morning was glorious! It was in the low 40's, so a long sleeved shirt was perfect for hiking. We saw some deer along the trail and enjoyed the sights. Afterwards we drove back to where we saw the sheep the day before, and they were there again. We love seeing wildlife! My bum heel was giving me trouble after the walking we'd done, so I rested up all afternoon.

mountains in the early morning sunlight

sheep

deer on our hike

Virgin River (view on hike)

That gets us through our first week. I hope to share many more pictures and memories with you next week!