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!
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| an interesting plant at Bryce Canyon |
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| View from our front porch in Tropic, UT |
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| 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!).
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| 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!
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