Hike to Mills Lake (RMNP)

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

We went back to Molly Bs for breakfast and then connected with Ang's aunt in Iowa. We made plans to have dinner with them and stay at their house tomorrow night, so that meant we had time to explore Rocky Mountain National Park a little more before heading out. We chose a hike that went past Alberta Falls to Mills Lake. It was almost three miles one way with a significant gain in elevation. The girls were getting a little tired on the way to the lake but seemed to regain some energy at the lake itself. The hike back was mostly downhill, and they did better with that. It was a truly beautiful hike. I think we've agreed that we prefer the mountains that have trees and lakes the best. We were really proud that they made it nearly six miles on our hike. Attie was asleep before we even pulled out of the parking lot after the hike.

We are currently driving now and plan to hopefully get part of the way through Nebraska tonight before finding a hotel to stop in for a little rest. Tomorrow we will do the other half of the 12 hour drive to Cedar Rapids, IA where we will enjoy some time with family. Bob and Lois have invited us to spend the night at their house and have dinner with them so we plan to do that. We will get up early on Friday morning to head home. We miss family and especially our puppies, so we are looking forward to getting home after what has been a wonderful but long vacation. We are very grateful to all of you who helped take care of the dogs and our garden while we were away. If we can ever repay you, we hope you won't hesitate to ask.

Loveland and biking

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

We woke up at Estes Park Campground. In the morning we had breakfast at a place called Molly Bs. It was sooo good. There was a parade in downtown Estes Park that we watched and then we walked around the downtown area and got some homemade taffy...yum. We then headed in to Loveland to April's house. The girls and Ang spent the day with her. They had lunch and swam and mostly got caught up on over two years of updates!! Scott finally found a mountain biking trail (Halls Ranch) he really enjoyed near Lyons, CO. After a full day we had a really nice dinner at an Italian restaraunt in Estes Park and got ice cream on our way back to the campsite.

Off to the Rockies

Monday, July 7, 2014

We drove most of the day and entered Rocky Mountain National Park around 7:30. It was so much cooler here, and we were relieved to get some relief from the 100+ degree weather in Utah. We gained so much elevation there was even snow in some spots. We made our way through the park and found a camping spot in Estes Park campground. We then went and had some barbecue for dinner and then headed back for a good night's sleep at the campground.

Moab and Arches

Sunday, July 6, 2014

We woke up in Moab.  Scott woke up early to ride the Slickrock bike trail before it got too hot.  Scott enjoyed the bike trail, but it was too hot to ride for long (and he was too out of shape).  Mom and the girls slept in and eventually walked into town for breakfast and checking out the shops.  We met up again closer to noon.

After Scott grabbed a bite to eat too, we headed to Arches National Park.  The girls signed up for the Junior Ranger program there and we began checking out the rock features.  It was 100 degrees so we liked the shaded areas most and limited our hiking.  However, the last hike we did was Sand Arch (?) and it had 50+ foot rock walls with alleys between them with soft sand floors.  It was like a cool sand playground in the shade surrounded by tall rock walls.  We climbed the rocks and walked around in the sand barefoot.  A few spots were narrow and didn't get much sun so the sand was nice and cool.  We also checked out the hidden arch at the end, but the whole area was pretty awesome.  This was everyone's favorite.  We then had to return to the heat to get back to the van.

We swam when we got back to the hotel so everyone was cool again.  Eventually we grabbed dinner and some ice cream and returned back to the hotel to settle down for the night.  Although there are many cool rock features, we may decide to escape the 100+ temps.  Colorado tomorrow?

Moab

I posted some pictures of Zion, Bryce, Grand and Antelope Canyons in a previous post if anyone is interested.

Today we got up and decided we would go a little out of our way to stop at Four Corners Monument so we could add New Mexico to the list of states we've been to.  We then headed to Moab Utah where we plan to stay in a hotel for two nights.  It has an outdoor pool and is right in town so Ang and the girls can shop, swim and relax while Scott checks out the mountain bike trails in the area.  Everyone is looking forward to the next few days.

We found a sushi restaurant for dinner that was excellent and the girls and Scott swam for a little bit  before heading off to bed.  We do plan to tour Arches national park while we are here and possibly do a whitewater rafting tour down the Colorado river.  On Monday we will start making our way back with a stop in Loveland to see April for a night and Iowa to see Bob and Lois.  We hope to be home by the 11th depending upon how many miles we are able to put on in one day through Nebraska.

Arizona - Antelope and Grand Canyon

Friday, July 4, 2014

Mom went for a dip to cool off.  We packed up and headed into Page for our Upper Antelope Canyon tour.  The trip to the slot canyon was reminiscent of the prior days route...lots of sand and bumpy.  Once at the canyon, we were led to various viewpoints and photo opportunities.  The canyon was really beautiful and hopefully we have a few photos that capture it.

We had a nice lunch and then loaded up for the Grand Canyon south rim.  We checked out the views and took many more pictures.  The cameras had a good workout today.

We returned near Page late.  We headed back to Utah to nearby Big Water for the only hotel we could find for the fourth (as of several days ago).  We were happy to clean up and get some cool rest tonight.

Bryce Canyon

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Scott woke up early and hiked part of the Fairytale trail down into the canyon.  There were many awesome features (fins, windows, hoodoos).

We packed up camp and headed to Sunrise Point to check out the view.  We then moved on to Sunset Point to do a morning hike.  We hiked the Navajo loop.  It had many switchbacks as the trail climbed back between the cliffs.

We then took a "shortcut" on an unimproved road.  We got to check out another bridge feature and lots of cool scenery and even saved some time.  Mam hated it and it was a bit rattling at times, but mom would definitely do it again :-)

We arrived at our new destination near Page, Arizona.  We setup camp at Lake Powell where it was again in the 100's.  We headed to the beach and quickly learned about the thorns along the beach and in the sand at the campsite; keep shoes on.  After we cooled off a bit, we went into town to get groceries for grilling.  We had a good meal and then settled down.  It was too hot to sleep, but eventually we fell asleep...mostly.

Zion National Park

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Hiked the narrows at Zion National Park.  Temp was 108 so we took the trail that followed a creek and eventually allowed hiking into the narrows via the creek.

Once we finished hiking we traveled to Bryce Canyon National Park and setup at North campground.  We were happy to discover that it was much cooler at Bryce Canyon.  We then went to the Bryce Canyon Lodge for dinner.  The food was amazing and the lodge itself was pretty neat.

This is the Zion hike we did through the narrows where the girls could swim to cool off

This is Bryce Canyon where we hiked down steep switchbacks

This is the 56 mile "short cut" Scott took us through...

This is Antelope Canyon in Page AZ

This is the Grand Canyon South Rim

July 1st--Great Salt Lake and Zion National Park

Today we got up and drove to Antelope Island State Park just outside of Salt Lake City.  We had been warned ahead of time that the lake might be smelly and covered in flies, but we weren't about to pass up an opportunity to float in water 13 times more salty than the ocean.  The smell was actually not bad at all, and the tiny flies were a little gross but they didn't bite and they moved in swarms on the ground when you walked through them.  We spent about an hour swimming and floating before we showered and got ready for a long drive to Springdale, Utah (7 hours).  We only stopped for a quick lunch and one scenic drive to see Kolob canyon before getting to our motel in Springdale at about 8:00.  The outdoor pool was only open until 8:45 so we quickly got in our suits to cool off a little.  It is in the 90s here with projected temps in the 100s for the next few days.  Then we went to a really cute outdoor restaurant for a late dinner.  We were surrounded by beautiful red mountains on all sides and stopped for ice cream on the way home.  This is by far one of the most charming little towns and motel we've stayed at so far.  I think we would be happy to stay here for a few days but after touring Zion National Park tomorrow, we are planning to drive an hour and a half to Bryce Canyon to find a camping spot for the night.  The girls are enjoying the pools and the ice cream.  They do miss all of you.  We haven't had an opportunity to send postcards yet, but they are thinking of you all and looking forward to seeing you soon

Monday, June 30, 2014; WY -> ID -> UT

Monday, June 30, 2014

Only Scott slept in the tent last night since the girls were afraid of getting eaten by bears.  However, all woke up well.  We took a bunch of pictures of the lake and Teton mountains before leaving our campsite.  We then started our drive to Salt Lake City.  We went up the teton pass to Idaho.  We had a "world famous" square ice cream in Swan Valley, ID...it was good.  We grabbed lunch in Idaho Falls and bought an atlas so we could trace our route.  Eventually we entered Utah and found a hotel in Salt Lake City.  At the hotel we did laundry, swam, and ordered tasty mexican food for dinner.  Time to catch up on some rest.

Sunday, June 29, 2014 Tetons

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Scott and Attie woke up in the tent while mom and Audra woke up on the van.  We had to rush but made some oatmeal for the drive.  We made it to Jenny Lake in time for the ranger hike to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point.  We took a boat ride across the lake to the hiking trail.  At the dock a grey fox ran across the trail...it was a good start to the hike.  We climbed up the trail to see the lower falls and climbed some more to see the hidden falls.  The falls were awesome!  We then climbed some more to inspiration point.  We saw ground squirrels and marmots but we didn't see the black bear people warned us about.  The ranger talked to us about how the mountains formed and how the park became protected.

Once at the top we could go our own way.  We hiked back down from inspiration point and then hiked the whole way back to the Jenny Lake ranger station.  It was 3 miles but felt like forever even though it was beautiful hiking between the lake and the mountains.  After our hike, we went into Jackson to have lunch at Genevive's.  The food was really good and we could sit on the patio.

After lunch we looked for a place to ride horses.  We ended up going to Teton Village (where the Jackson Hole ski lodge is located).  We did a 2 hour horseback ride in the hills and around a prairie.  Audra looked forward to this for a long time and was quite happy...although silent during the ride.  The horses sure liked to stop and eat grass, but this was good practice for us to guide the horses.  Once we got off the horses our knees were a bit sore.  I guess we weren't used to horseback riding.

On the way back to Summit campground we stopped to pick up steaks at the Dornan store (a popular and nice place...and reasonable prices).  We went back to our campground and checked out the picnic area on the lake, but it was full.  We cooked back at our own site.  The charcoal took a while so we added twigs until we could get a good fire going.  The steaks liked the additional help and tasted great.  We then went to check out the sunset again, but it wasn't as cloudy this night.  It was still beautiful though.  It was then time to get some sleep for the next day.

Saturday, June 28, 2014 - Yellowstone to Grand Teton

Saturday, June 28, 2014
We woke up in West Yellowstone bright and early so that we could pack our bags to leave.  We wanted to get an early start to our day to save our self a camp site.  Then we drove through the park and saw lots cool things like a waterfall, geysers, and a bald Eagle

Then we drove to Grand Teton National Park.  When we got out we were at a nature preserve. We got a junior ranger booklet to become junior rangers at this park as well. It didn’t take us too long to find a campsite about 20 minutes away from Jackson, WY.  After setting the tent up in the rain, we headed into Jackson for an early dinner.  We ate at a place called Thai Me Up and had yummy Pad Thai and Curry.  We walked around town a little and watched a reenactment of a shoot out out on the street by a theatre company.  We found a park near Snow King with a climbing wall that we climbed and then went back to our campsite.

Attie and Scott found a trail to the lake and watched the sunset on the Teton mountains.  We took LOTS of pictures because the clouds lit up super bright pink and orange around the mountains.  We went back to get mom and Audra but the sky show was ending.

We are going to bed early because we have a hike we want to do in the morning and we plan to horseback ride in the afternoon.

6/27 - Zipline and Yellowstone

Friday, June 27, 2014.

Today we had breakfast in West Yellowstone.  It was raining so we decided to find some rain jackets for the girls, including mom.  We were directed to a variety store and found full rain suits for the girls.  They looked like the twins in The Great Outdoors :-)

After breakfast, Scott, Audra, and Attie headed towards Big Sky, Montana to do a zipline in the Gallatin mountains.  Angela stayed in West Yellowstone to do some shopping and relaxing (and avoid scary ladders high off the ground).  The girls were very brave and had a great time on the zip lines.  Only one bridge was a bit scare, but the girls did great on that too.

Angela picked up subs so we could head back into Yellowstone for the evening.  We headed to Old Faithful and had just over an hour before the next eruption.  We hiked through the geyser valley and saw lots of cool thermal features.  Some of our favorites were Castle Geyser, Beehive Geyser, and lots of colorful pools.  We then returned to Old Faithful and saw an amazing eruption.  We continued on to Biscuit Basin and Firehole Drive to check out other awesome features.  One was a beautiful blue pool with lava lamp-like bubbles coming up and eventually erupting a bit.

Just when we thought we were done, we saw a moose on the way out...one of the last animals we hoped to see in the park.  Then we saw a rainbow that practically touched the ground in front of us.  The evening proved to be a wonderful time to check out Yellowstone.  Now it is late and we are preparing for an early start tomorrow.  We hope to check out a few more things in Yellowstone, get Junior Ranger badges that the girls earned, and then work our way towards Jackson Hole, WY.

6/25 - Cody to Yellowstone

Wednesday, June 25, 2014.  
Today the girls went for a swim while mom went for a jog and then Scott went for a mountain bike ride.  The bike trails were a bit muddy so Scott spent lots of time by the water cleaning his bike, but he loved the one fast downhill with lots of cool rocks.

Leaving Cody we decided to take the scenic route to Yellowstone.  We drove through Beartooth Pass which winds into the sky.  There were still walls of snow by the highway over 10 ft tall in some areas (see picture) and one area on the top had a tow rope and people skiing.  Mom didn’t like the road-side cliffs, but we all enjoyed the views.  Lots of neat icy lakes too.  Hard to believe it was almost July.

Once we started to come down the mountain we saw a cool waterfall.  We soon arrived at the NE entrance of Yellowstone.  We stopped where a bunch of cars were parked and were able to see several mountain goats on the cliffs across the field.  We saw a bunch of buffalo close to the road too.  Near Roosevelt Tower we saw a bunch more cars stopped, so we got out too.  We saw three black bear cubs playing on a tree stump with their mom nearby.  We started to get hungry and it was getting late, so we mostly drove through the rest of the park to get to our motel in West Yellowstone.  We ate at a spanish restaurant where the girls tried tapas style meal for the first time.  We ordered a bunch of small plates of food that we shared.  We even shared a few desserts.  Then it was time to get rest for a full day of Yellowstone.

6/26 - Yellowstone

Thursday, June 26, 2014.
Today we went to the grocery store so we would have food while spending the day in Yellowstone.  We entered the park and within minutes noticed people stopped, so we got out and saw two bald eagles perched on a tree.  After watching them for a few minutes, we went and had breakfast by a river and then spent the rest of the day in Yellowstone.  The highlights today were the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, an elk with HUGE antlers in the park that we could have touched, and dozens of awesome geologic geysers and pools.  Attie had a hard time with the really sulfuric ones.  She is very smell sensitive.  We did do some souvenir shopping.  Audra picked out a stuffed animal today...a wolf which we’ve heard are active in the park this year.   Attie got a neckace this time.  We were back in town after a full day (8 hours) in the park and ate at a local pizza place.

We decided to keep our hotel room here for one more night.  We are going to do a day trip to Big Sky tomorrow to do a zipline tour.  Ang is not sure that she will participate because there are lots of heights, but the girls and Scott seem excited.  If we have the energy we will try to do some of the route towards Old Faithful so we can head out of the park at a reasonable time on Friday morning for Jackson Hole.  We hope to find camping there and ride horses (the event the girls are most excited about).

MN --> SD --> WY

We've had a busy couple of days.  We left Alexandria on Sunday morning to head towards South Dakota.  This was a long day of driving...nearly 9 hours including our stops.  Our main stop was the Corn Palace which was covered in artwork made out of corn.  The theme this year was remembering the past.  The girls got to do some shopping and even picked up a chocolate and peanut butter popcorn ball for a snack.  Our destination was the Cedar Pass campground in the badlands, and we all agreed that we had never camped anywhere quite as unique as this place.  We got our camp set up just before dark and didn't have much time to explore, so that is what we did most of Monday morning.

Monday we hiked a number of paths through the badlands.  Attie and Scott even hiked the steep Summit Pass trail to look from the top of a peak.  We left around lunch time and our next actual touristy stop was Wall Drug where the girls did some souvenir shopping.  Attie ended up with a stuffed fox (we saw one cross the road the night before) and Audra picked out a necklace made out of some local rock.  We then made our way towards Mt. Rushmore and decided to tour Wind Cave on the way.  We took scenic route 16a which had lots of twists and tunnels and bridges.  There were lots of surprise views of Mt. Rushmore in the distance framed by the tunnels.  The girls did their first official cave tour which took us down several stories underground in the longest set of underground caves anywhere in the world.   We got to see Mt. Rushmore so many times during the scenic drive to the cave that we decided to put some miles on instead of actually going to the monument.  We ended up in Gilette Wyoming last night at about 10:00 and had trouble finding a hotel so we set up camp at a local campground.  Scott loved this.  Ang and the girls were really looking forward to a real bed and shower.

Today [Tuesday] we made our way from Gillette to Cody Wy.  The drive here was beautiful and we stopped several times to just view our surroundings.  We are planning on a traditional Rodeo tonight, and the girls are swimming in the hotel pool as I type this.  I will have them each add their favorite thing before I post this.
My favorite part was climbing on the Badlands because I love seeing rocks. -- Audra
My favorite part was climbing [in the Badlands] --Attie
So I guess it is unanimous...hiking in the badlands was definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far.

Tomorrow, it is off to Yellowstone...
[We'll update this with photos later]

MN for Alex and Keri's Wedding

Yesterday we began our day with a trip to the Mall of America.  We have never been there and thought it was cool that it had Lego Land with huge lego statues. We also got to go through a mirror maze which made us a little dizzy.

After the Mall of America, we went to our hotel in Alexandria MN to get ready for Alex and Keri's wedding.  The weather was beautiful and we really enjoyed watching the ceremony on hay bales covered in quilts.  We had a small scare with some fireworks that had a mind of their own, but ended the evening with cake and dancing.

Today we are off to the corn palace, Wall Drug and camping in the Badlands!!

We are off!

Today we went to a motel. It took a while.  We stopped in Wausau and had sushi and then made it to a Motel 6 in Menomonie.  Our hotel room smells like smoke. --Attie

Packing

Today we spent lots of time out side we also spent a lot of time packing and preparing for our trip.  Then we finally finished packing.  what a relief.  I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited for my long long  trip. -Audra

                                                              

                             

Welcome to our blog!

Over the next few weeks, we will try to update our blog with pictures and explanations of some of our adventures.  We thought you might want to follow it:)