Southwest parks in 5 days.....Ready.....GO!

It is a blustery, rainy day in So Cal, and David has just been whisked off to Korea for the week. It's a perfect day to curl up in a blanket, drink hot chocolate, and tell the tale of our epic national park adventures of yesterweek. Please forgive me for posting a bajillion pictures in the telling of the tale. The Southwest is just a seriously beautiful place.

I feel a timeline will best capture the insanity...

DAY 1: Leave after work and drive straight to David's Aunt Jane's place in St. George. Thanks to ever-reliable LA traffic, we made it there by 1:30am. And thanks to Aunt Jane, we got to sleep in a bed instead of having to set up camp in Zion.

Of course, we couldn't resist taking a drive down the strip as we passed through Vegas...

DAY 2: Zion National Park. I should say now that I have never before been to any of the parks we visited on this trip. It's kind of an embarrassment, given how close I was to these places all though college. But I've done what I can to make it right.

We took a little jaunt through a portion of the Narrows, because we're crazy.

The Narrows is 16 miles of river. So you're basically walking down a river on slick bowling ball-sized rocks. Given the season, the river was quite fast. And quite cold. And also magical.


We probably only did 1/2 of a mile of the Narrows. After all, we had to save our energies for the race the next day...

DAY 3: Canyonlands half marathon in Moab. David has done this particular race 9 or 10 times. It was my first. Which is the only explanation I can come up with for why he totally rocked the race, while, I, running by his side, was completely destroyed by it. I also blame my sissy sea-level lungs.

That said, sometimes I took a moment to look around, because the view was actually pretty spectacular.


As I mentioned before, we're crazy. Which is why, before the day was over, we popped on over to Arches National Park and hiked up to Delicate Arch.


DAY 4: Get up to see sunrise at Mesa Arch in Canyonlands. On the way out, get sidetracked by Negative Nancy at the front desk who tells us it's useless to try because it's foggy, and besides, the power is out. (Still trying to figure out why we would care about having power for a sunrise.) Start driving toward Canyonlands, then turn around once the rain starts and the wind picks up. Sneak past the front desk, and back to bed.

DAY 4 (second attempt): Back to Canyonlands. It was still foggy, and once we got deeper into the park, it started snowing. Undeterred, we kept driving along anyway to see some killer lookout points. When we got there, we were tickled that we could see this much:

And by the time we left, we could see THIS much!!




Next stop: Monument Valley in Navajo Country. This trip was a constant race against the clock in reaching our next destination in time for sunset, or before it got cloudy, or whatever. We made it again for this one:


We had planned to camp in the valley that night, but it was so bitter cold (there was a snowstorm that followed us for most of the trip) that we wimped out and found a hotel nearby. Same thing happened the next night. Frankly, I feel great about the decision.

DAY 5: Canyons. The first set was of the Antelope variety, outside of Page. This is upper Antelope:




And this is Lower Antelope - you literally crawl down through a crack in the earth to get there.




After that it was a quick jaunt (and another hike) to Horseshoe Bend...

...and then we were on our way to the next destination. Remember all those summer trips to Lake Powell? Turns out, all these things are right outside of Bullfrog Marina!! We were going to take a picture standing next to a Bullfrog sign, but we had places to be. (Remember that sunset deadline!)

Next stop: The Grand Canyon!

Please note the little bits of snow you see here and there along the rim. I was literally wearing 8 layers, with handwarmers inside my gloves. And I was still freezing. I feel kind of ignorant for not knowing it snowed at the Grand Canyon. Apparently it's not that atypical.

The plus side: nobody likes to hang out at the Grand Canyon right after a snowstorm! Much of the time, we basically had the place to ourselves.

DAY 6: Get up to watch the sunrise at the Grand Canyon. This time, we were not foiled by the clouds.





After that it was just a long drive back to home sweet home, all the while scheming about when we can hit up another national park. We may or may not already have the next trip scheduled. It seems we've got the bug.

:)