Home sweet home!

Obviously we gave up blogging as soon as the driving got boring. Really, there's not much to write about passing through Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Tennessee. (Although we did enjoy our time in St. Louis with the Kerrs and will post some pictures soon.)

But! We are home safe! Unfortunately, my cell phone did not make the last half of the journey with us--it is in Denver. So if you need me, please call Patrick or e-mail me.

We're super glad to be home. I forgot how much I liked my household stuff. Not because it's super nice or anything, but just because I picked it out. Other things we appreciate right now:

- ceiling fan
- dishwasher
- air conditioner
- the ability to make it pitch black in our bedroom while we sleep (the only thing behind our townhome is an overgrown field; no streetlights!
- the sound of crickets at night
- rain (it only rained once our entire summer in LA)
- being in the same time zone as our family
- courteous drivers & interstates that actually have moving traffic
- carpeted floors

Thanks for reading about our trip! We'll continue posting pictures of our various adventures (and of course will update with the last few days of our trip soon)!

Safe in Kansas + Pictures from Day 3 (Arches NP, Rocky Mountains) and Day 4 (Denver, CO & KS)

Hello everyone! We're in for a relatively early night here in Kansas. Today was a pretty boring day--we spent a couple hours in Denver at the REI store and eating lunch, then went ahead and drove to our destination tonight. There is pretty much nothing but farm and prairie between Denver and Salina, so our only exciting pictures are from yesterday.

Like Zion National Park, I also have a billion pictures from Arches! Here is just a sampling of them.

They had some fun bronze animal sculptures. Here's Patrick riding a goat.

Sadly, we did not see a grasshopper mouse, but we still think the animal is awesome.

The rock formations were indescribably incredible. It's crazy to imagine that all this has been shaped by the gentle forces of wind and water!

This area is called the Fiery Furnace, because the formations look like flames leaping from the ground.

You can see Landscape Arch in the left of this picture. Better pictures are coming up.

On our hike to the Landscape Arch, we saw a lizard!

The cactuses were cool.

There's an arch above my head, if you look carefully!

Here are some better pictures of Landscape Arch:

This area was beautiful, with lots of plant life among the red rocks.

At every angle of this park, there was something incredible to see.

We only had time to do the short hike to Landscape Arch, but most of the other arches and formations are visible from the road winding through the park.

Here is Balanced Rock:

Given more time, I would have spent more time in this area (the "Windows" area of the park). Some of those arches you can walk up under.

The drive from Arches to Denver cut through several national forests, with steep slopes, beautiful trees, and a pretty river by much of the drive. Unfortunately, we were too busy enjoying the scenery to take many pictures, and even the pictures we took don't begin to capture the beauty of what we experienced.

This portion of the drive was honestly the first portion of our trip back home that I would consider beautiful. Driving through Utah was absolutely incredible and pretty in its own way, but the mountains, trees, and rivers were truly beautiful. Maybe it's because that's what we grew up with.

We arrived in Denver around 9pm and it was pouring down rain! On the recommendation of my boss in California, Dr. Krum (who had lived in Denver some time ago) we tried out a restaurant called Le Central. We were both very hungry so we ordered mussels as an appetizer, and then Patrick ordered duck, and I ordered trout. It was SO delicious. By the time we finished the mussels and fries we were already full! I'm not too enthusiastic about shellfish but I really enjoyed the mussels. The fries were some of the best I've ever had as well--perfectly crispy. We took most of our duck/trout dinner with us in takeout boxes and then enjoyed it for dinner tonight.

We slept in and decided to just spend a little time in Denver then get on the road. It sounds dumb, but we went to the REI store there, which has its own rock climbing wall and bicycle test path! It was neat to look at all the outdoors equipment. There was also a park surrounding it that was cute.

Since Dr. Krum had not led us astray for dinner, we also took his recommendation for lunch and went to Zaidy's to order the pastrami latke sandwich. It was gigantic and delicious. (Thanks Dr. Krum, if you're reading!)

We then drove from Denver to Kansas, which was mundane. This is what it looked like most of the time:

We were very disappointed to miss the world's largest prairie dog and the five legged cow that the signs told us about for 40 miles. Unfortunately it was closed by the time we got there.

We found a "Tillman" replica in the middle of Kansas:

Tomorrow we head to St. Louis to meet up with friends! We're excited to be headed back into civilization. Three more days until we're home!

Safe in Denver + Pictures from Day 2: Zion National Park

After a half-day at Arches National Park and a drive through the beautiful Rocky Mountains, we're safe in Denver, CO for the night! Here are some pictures of our time in Zion yesterday.

Even the drive into Zion was pretty epic. We got kind of a late start--it was about 11:00AM when we were driving into the park.

When we got there, the park's parking was full! So we had to park in the nearby town and hike in (there's also a shuttle).  We didn't have a whole lot of time to spend since we had six hours of driving ahead, so we had to narrow it down to only a couple things. Of course, this still produced a billion pictures!

I can't remember the names of all the different peaks, but many of them had Biblical names. The giant white mountain you'll see in some pictures among the red mountains is called The Great White Throne.

Zion National Park is in a canyon. There's a bus that runs within the canyon where private vehicles can't go. So even though we didn't have time to hike and climb it all, we did get to ride the bus along the whole loop and get a quick glimpse of all the sights!

 Here you can see the trees that run along the Virgin River, which carved the Zion Canyon.

Our favorite hike of the day was up to Weeping Rock, which is continually dripping with water filtering through the rock. Plants spring up anywhere there is water, so you can see the flowers hanging from the ledge and in every crevice that water falls.

It was surreal how beautiful the red rocks were against the perfectly blue sky.

On our way out we took our traditional picture at the park sign!

The road from Zion to Moab, UT was pretty, too. We passed through everything from mountains to farmland. Most of the drive was super-rural. Sometimes there were 130 miles between gas stations.

Unfortunately, it was mostly dark by the time we got to the canyonlands and the salt flats. The glimpses we got, though, were completely otherworldly. I wish we could have driven through it in the daytime, but at the same time, I'm really glad that we got to spend the time we did at Zion!

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of Arches NP!