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!

Day 1 Photos

We're safe in our hotel near Arches National Park! Here are just a few photos from our first day's travels (Saturday). I'll keep it short because I'm sleepy!

On our way out of LA we drove by Watts Towers because we wanted to see it and never got the chance. But it was super cool, so I'm glad we did.

This set us behind by an hour or so. I'm not sure whether it was a controlled burn or an accidental fire, but they had blocked a portion of the interstate to put it out.

Driving through the Mojave we got to see some Joshua trees, which I was super excited about since we didn't get to see them at Joshua Tree National Park.

This means we're close to home, right?! (For those unfamiliar, Clemson's stadium is nicknamed Death Valley.)

Nevada had a boring state line sign.

This is Lake Mead, which the Hoover Dam created.

Here's the power plant in the Hoover Dam, about 50 stories below its top.

Here are some more Hoover Dam pictures:

We drove through a few miles of Las Vegas just to say we had been.

The sunset was pretty in the Nevada desert.

This is my attempt at taking a picture of the Utah state line sign. It was too dark.

Hopefully I'll have time tomorrow to post our pictures from Zion National Park today!

Safe in Utah!

...but very sleepy! We were up late last night and up early this morning packing, and thanks to LA traffic the driving time was longer than we expected. Today was our longest driving day besides the one we go through Kansas.

Tomorrow you can look forward to pictures from:

- Hoover Dam

- Watts Towers

- Lake Mead

- Las Vegas

Until then, good night!

Weeks 10: San Diego (again)

I've been working on this post for a few days but as I write, we'll be leaving on our cross-country journey in about an hour! Patrick is still asleep so I'm letting him get as much rest as possible before we embark. Week 11 will have to wait--we'll try to keep daily updates for the trip back home then catch up on the rest of our LA posts when we get back.

Patrick spent most of week 10 weeding through dealer e-mails to find the best price. We finally settled on a dealer in San Diego, which is about two hours away. It was a bit of a drive but the price savings were significant, between what the dealer offered and the lower tax rate in that particular city.

Because we were planning on trading in Patrick's car, we took it to a car wash--in particular, the El Segundo Car Wash. This was the best car wash experience ever. In addition to a squeaky-clean car, we got to enjoy the statues within the car wash, and the colored soap and scrubbies. It was our source of entertainment for the evening. Seriously. If you're ever in El Segundo, do it.

We got Patrick's car appraised at CarMax and made the happy discovery of Randy's Donuts, a LA landmark. At the cashier's suggestion, I tried the buttermilk doughnut. Now, typically, I am a Krispy Kreme loyalist, but this doughnut was on par with Krispy Kreme, although completely different. It was like someone had taken buttermilk biscuit dough, deep fried it, and glazed it. It is one of the most delicious things I have ever had. If I thought they could be preserved for a week, I would bring several dozen home. So good.

We had planned to go to San Diego early on Saturday morning, but by sheer luck, our company had reserved a hotel room in San Diego that no one was staying in, and at 7PM on a Friday, our project assistant called and offered it to us for free! The person had canceled last minute and they couldn't get the money back, so it was going to go empty without us. Although it was late, we decided to take the adventure. We thoroughly enjoyed the night's sleep in a plushy bed with air conditioning.

That morning came the saga of the screwdriver. We needed to transfer our SC plates to the new car, but after we had driven it off the lot due to the fun combination of CA and SC laws. Luckily there was a Target near where we were staying. Unluckily, they did not sell one single Philips head screwdriver! (They had fancy ones with changing bits.) We were unwilling to spend $10 for a one-time use screwdriver since we have a billion at home. Luckily Patrick found one in the dollar section. Cost us $3, but at least that's better than $10.

We then bought our car (as previously blogged). This took four hours for no good reason. We were hungry and grumpy by the end. So we headed in to town to enjoy a Panera Bread picnic. It was nice to sit in a grassy courtyard and enjoy our sandwiches (grass is a rarity here).

When we visited San Diego over Independence Day, our Seaworld ticket was valid for a free second visit that we didn't use. So we decided to spend the remainder of our afternoon in Seaworld! For the record, to really enjoy the park, go ahead and take the two days--we hit most of what we wanted to do the first day, but were exhausted afterwards, and the second day gave us time to do a couple things that we missed. In retrospect we probably should have just spent two shorter days.

We finished up our evening with dinner in San Diego at Pho Point Loma, which was delicious, probably some of the best pho we've had. We also tried the Vietnamese iced coffee which was made with condensed milk. This is what Frappuccinos dream of being.

All right, off to packing our last few things!