(July 23rd – July 26th)

The weather was SO nice at Yellowstone. At night it was in the 40s, but during the day it was in the 70s and it was perfect.    Grandma Priscilla, Grandpa Tom, Uncle Erin, Aunt Betsy, and cousins Tristen & Elizabeth met us at the KOA, and it was great seeing them.  It was definitely more stressful for us when we are with family because Gabriel is a lot more hyper and impulsive when there are others around, but all in all he did pretty good.  Here we all are, and me with my crazy hair!

 

 

This was at Artist’s Paint Pots Trail.  Yellowstone preserves the largest collection of hydrothermal features on the planet.  Below are a fumarole, a mud pot, and a geyser.

 

This was one of my favorites.  

 

 

This was a waterfall on the way to Firehole Swimming Hole.  

 The kids had fun swimming in the river.  Tristen and Gabriel were cute going in together.

 

 Cousins!!

Gabriel found a secret area and he actually wanted me to take a picture of him. 😊 

This was on the hike behind Old Faithful.  

 

 

 

 My favorite! It looks like a pice of abstract art. 

 

This was at Yellowstone Lake. The kids found a log that they were going to take to the island behind them. The fun ended when Ali got up from the water and fund small leeches all over her legs. Opa was able to flick them off pretty easily, but she was still traumatized, as I would have been.  

Old Faithful! 

 We didn’t see much wildlife.  We saw one bison but the picture came out blurry so I did not include it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been wanting to get the kids involved in some sort of community project, so I thought I would start by crocheting some hearts while riding in the truck and having the kids hang them at various locations during our road trip.  If you haven’t heard of the Peyton Heart Project, you can read about it here. The project is named after a 13 year old named Peyton who committed suicide after years of getting bullied.  Here is part of the description on the site:

“These delicate yarn hearts, each one made by hand and each one representing the delicate heart of a life lost to suicide, have inspiring quotes attached to them. They are placed in public places around the world for people to find during their everyday lives. We hope the hearts cause people to stop for a moment and reflect on a young life lost to suicide, on bullying and on the fact that everyone’s life matters. We want to leave people with a feeling that there is still good out there in the world and we would like to inspire others to join us on this mission of kindness.”

The kids are enjoying leaving the hearts along the trails for people to find.  Even Shaun has started reminding me to bring the hearts when we go somewhere.  We hope it spreads a little bit of love and hope.  Especially these days when there seems to be so much hate.  

 

(July 18-21, 2016)

Although Grand Canyon was more breath-taking, Zion is beautiful and significantly more kid-friendly.  We hiked the Emerald Pool trails and the kids had a lot of fun playing in the water.  They caught and released some tadpoles and tasted the water from the natural ponds.  Gabriel loved it and wanted to do the same hike the next day.  

 

 

This was along the Pa’rus Trial along Zion Canyon.   

  

 

The waterfall from the upper pool.  I learned enough from my online photography courses to set the camera to a faster speed to catch the detail of the moving water. 🙂

 

 

Can anyone tell me how I captured that rainbow-like thingy in my photograph? 

 

 

Yay, another rock to climb!  Like I was saying, Zion was way more kid friendly.  You couldn’t climb anything at Grand Canyon without the possibility of falling to your death!

 

 

 

 

 

No, this picture does not need to be rotated to the right, that’s the actual slope.  Nana would have been freaking out watching them climb up there.  Now she just gets to see a picture after the fact and know that they didn’t kill themselves. 🙂

 

Below is the Great Arch and the tunnel along Mount Carmel Highway.  The drives through Zion National Park were so pretty.  

A few people told us to spend less time in Grand Canyon and more time at Zion because of the kids so we changed our plans to spend more days in Zion, and I’m so glad we did.  Thanks Brett and Doug. 🙂

We’ve been living in our camper for 11 days now and have visited parks in 3 different states, and it’s been wonderful.  I have so much to be grateful for.  But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it’s going to be nice to have some privacy again and be in a room where I can’t hear the kids screaming while playing video games.  Or be able to sleep and not get woken up when someone gets up to go to the bathroom because the whole camper shakes.  But I’m not complaining.  Really. 🙂  It’s been amazing.  

 

 

 

 

 

It was spectacular.  It was everything I’ve ever heard about it, but nothing does it justice until you see it for yourself.  Ali said it was the prettiest thing she has ever seen.  Gabriel thought it was cool but was bored after the first day and wanted to go back to the last park to play. 🙂

 

 

Shaun is a bit skiddish around heights (to put it mildly) so he enjoyed the sights a lot more from the truck.  I asked him what he liked the most about the Grand Canyon and he said “going back to the camper”.  Ha!  It was INSANE how close you could get to the ledge. Even some of the paved trails were way to close to the unguarded cliffs.  Then add an impulsive/ADHD child to the mix and you quickly become stress/anxious/agitated.  But it was still amazing!!

 

 

 

 

The picture of us above makes me laugh.  The poor kids with no sunglasses trying to smile and keep their eyes opened. The one below is much better. 🙂

 

 

I wish I would have had more time to learn to take better pictures.  I’m grateful for the ones I have though.  It was my favorite spot so far.

 

 

And off to Zion National Park we go!

 

 

 

This was our favorite park so far.  The site was nice and shaded, the kids had fun fishing at the lake, and the weather was perfect.  I randomly picked this park on the way to Grand Canyon and totally lucked out.

Below is the scenery right outside our campsite.  They hauled their stuff up there to hang out and relax.  This is what camping is all about!  I love watching them play together.   Especially when they aren’t fighting. 🙂  Seriously though, I’m so glad they have each other when we go on vacation.  I hope they stay close as they get older.

 

I’m not sure why they like fishing, but they do!

 

The picture below is grainy, but at least I’m in it!  I bought a tripod for taking landscape pictures, but I can also use it with the timer to jump in the pictures.

 Off we go to the Grand Canyon.  I can hardly wait!!!

Davis Mountains State Park (July 10-13, 2016):

Well, Roadtrippers was pretty accurate on the estimated time it would take us to drive to Davis Mountains State Park.  7 hours, and the kids were great.  Movies on the iPad are the best! We also played travel games, and took naps.  It was a pretty small park, but it was very nice and you are surrounded by mountains from almost every angle.

A few of the highlights:

• The McDonald Observatory was very cool! We went to the Star Party on Tuesday night and we were able to see Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars on their telescopes.  They have an outdoor seating area where the guide points to the many constellations in the sky. The observatory is about 15 minutes away from the park.
• It would cool down to the 70’s at night.
• I took the kids to Balmorhea State Park where they have a freshwater pool built around the springs.  Ali loved the diving board and Gabriel spent most of his time trying to trap fish into his water bottle, with no luck.  This was a 35 minute drive from Davis Mountains but it was totally worth it.

• Gabriel and Shaun bonded while hiking for an extra hour after us girls decided to head back.  He ended up with over 13K steps that day, and he was pretty happy with himself! He loves his time with Opa.  He was so happy when he got back.