Family Road Trip - 2015 (Part 4 - Zion National Park)

Day 5:October 19 

As sad as we were to leave Colorado Springs, we were even more sad to leave Ouray.
I mean, with a view like this, who would WANT to leave?

But new adventures were awaiting, so leave we did. 

We stopped at a Walmart in Montrose, CO, to see if they could fix our flat trailer tire. Fortunately, they could, so I took care of purchasing a few perishables while we waited. That stop took longer than we wanted, but it couldn't be avoided. I was successful in purchasing and hiding a birthday cake for Corban while we were there, so that was a triumph.

On our way out of town, through a light rain, we saw the most vibrant rainbow we had ever seen. 

Although Google maps had said we only had a 7 hour day of driving ahead of us, due to our last experience, we knew that would just not be the case. However, we didn't know that the speed limit on I-70 across the middle of Utah had a speed limit of 80 mph. Sheesh. Since we were still plugging away at about 60 mph, our travel estimate was even more inaccurate than the first day. 

At least the scenery was pretty awesome. 

That center section of Utah has pretty spectacular views - but it's also probably the most desolate place I've ever seen. We must have gone 250 miles without an exit with services. No civilization. Nothing. Thank God Grant had the foresight to bring a 5 gallon container of gasoline along (just in case - we had no idea about the stretch of nothing we would encounter) - we actually had to stop and use it or we would have run out of gas. 

Oh, it was at that stop that Annika (8) first vomited.

Poor kid ended up vomiting 5 times before we reached our campsite late that evening.

Was it a stomach bug, coming to haunt us on our cross-country trip to a wedding? 

Or just a bizarre case of car sickness (from the kid who's never been carsick)? 

Time would tell. 

Our nerves were a little worked up about it, as you can well imagine. 

Somewhere in the middle of nothingness, we got to witness our second double rainbow of the day - this one just as spectacular as the first. Made even better with the completely natural surroundings. 

And we got to see another lovely sunset - with hours to go to our campsite - AGAIN. Sigh.

Nothing like setting up camp in a pitch-black campground with crying kids in the car. AGAIN. 

Day 6: October 20

Happy Birthday, CORBAN!! 

Our boy turned 12 today. 

He's 5'6", wears men's size 10 shoes, and is growing into a young man faster than we can grasp. 

He loves skateboards, basketball, swimming, scooters, hiking, camping (real tent camping), Trail Life, nature, reading adventure books  (Ranger's Apprentice series is his favorite), archery, Clash of Clans, and competing with me on our Duolingo Spanish lessons. 

We gave him an autographed book series called The Knights of Arrethtrae that we purchased at a homeschool convention earlier this year - he finished all six books before we got home. 

He was super excited to receive some walkie-talkies for his birthday. They got a lot of use on this trip.

Side note: Annika was feeling great and eating normally all day - no sign of sickness. Hurrah! 

Our trailer/campsite - in the Watchman Campground. That's Watchman Rock in the background.

At $18 per night, it was by far the cheapest campground we visited. It had very nice bathrooms but no showers or water hook-ups. The sites were large and spaced well - and we were actually IN the national park, which was super cool.  

This set of rocks is called the Patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

Seen at the trail head of our first trail. Nice warning. 

Lovely tarantula I spotted on the side of the trail. I don't care if they're "not dangerous" - I'll keep my distance, thankyouverymuch. That's Grant's foot, by the way. 

Couple of cute fawns with a doe we spotted. 

Annika and Marissa

The kids loved playing by the river near our campsite. The river was really muddy due to flash floods a couple of days earlier. Glad we missed out on that!

Ellia and me

Another view of the Watchman Rock. Pretty impressive!

We enjoyed another one of the crock pot soups that night (chicken chili with fritos and cheese) and surprised Corban with his birthday cake and Tillamook huckleberry ice cream (oh man, is that stuff good!). This is the first store-bought birthday cake for any of my kids.  I was a little sad to not get to bake something, but I got over it. 

Corban declared it his best birthday ever. :) 

Part 3: Ouray, CO

Part 5 - California, here we come!

Family Road Trip - 2015 (Part 3- Ouray, Colorado)

Day 3: October 17

We were truly sad to leave our campsite and the Colorado Springs area - there is so much we didn't have time to see and experience.

As I mentioned before, Grant made the run into town to get the battery changed while I fed the kids and supervised showers.

On our way back to the trailer from the showers, we were delighted to run into some beautiful (and very well fed) mule deer just roaming around the campground. They were completely unconcerned about our presence and basically just watched us.

"Never mind me....just grilling some meat here...."  

That was a fun way to start the morning!

Our drive to Ouray was one of the prettiest drives I've ever experienced. The six hours seemed to just fly by. Grant wasn't able to enjoy the scenery as much because he had to focus on driving that trailer through the mountains. He and the Sequoia did an awesome job. I'm sure glad I wasn't driving!

We drove alongside the Gunnison River for a couple of hours. 

Seen at a gas stop - I want one!

At the top elevation on this drive - Monarch Pass Summit. Elevation 11,312 ft.

We got to our RV park (a few miles north of Ouray) in the late afternoon. It wasn't a fancy park, nothing to write home about, but it was inexpensive, actually open in the late fall (most campgrounds in the area were already closed for the season), and boy, were the views fantastic. Here's a look from our campsite. 

The trailer next to us belongs to a permanent resident - fortunately for us, he was out of town for a month and the park owners allowed us to borrow his fire pit. 

Makes me want to move to Colorado. Except for that "snow for seven months of the year" business. I could do without that.  

That night I made a really simple dinner of chicken bacon Alfredo (boiled the pasta, opened a couple of jars of bacon Alfredo sauce and warmed it with two cans of chicken, then stirred in the cooked pasta), green beans, and garlic bread (frozen loaf, warmed in our itty-bitty oven.)  Super easy but my family felt like they were eating at a restaurant. hahaha!

Day 4: October 18

Morning selfie with the girls to text to the grandparents

I had grand plans for the day - and they most definitely did not include this. 

A completely flat tire on the trailer. One of the three brand new tires purchased right before our trip. Upon inspection, Grant found an enormous screw embedded in the tire and the patches he carries were most definitely not sufficient to mend it. 

To complicate matters further, it was Sunday. All of the tire repair shops we could find within a 30 minute drive were closed.

Well, there was nothing we could do about it. He put on the spare and determined we wouldn't worry about it until Monday, when we could stop somewhere on our way out of Colorado to get it fixed. 

So quick re-cap. 

We're on Day 4 of the trip, and so far we've had the following issues:

• Replace the mass air-flow sensor on the Sequoia
• New front brakes on the Sequoia
• New battery on the Sequoia
• Flat tire on the trailer 

On the upside, we were profoundly thankful that God had protected us through each issue and nothing had really affected us while driving. Everything was getting fixed at reasonable costs and at just the right time. 

So off we went, our packed lunch in the car, meatball soup prepped in the crock pot for dinner, and we were ready to go for a hike. 

That is, we thought we were ready for the hike. 

I had picked the easiest one I could find, one rated extremely positively on Tripadvisor. It was called the Perimeter Trail, accurately named as it circles around the town of Ouray for about 5 miles. We had no intention of doing the entire trail, but that was okay, since there were several places you could leave the trail and go back into town.  

Sounded great. 

The first section of the trail was just basically stairs and a gravelly path that kept going up. It wasn't long before Ellia and Miranda started to look at how high we were getting and the panic set it. They both started crying and refused to go further. With a little persuasion and in Ellia's case, talking her into pretending she was a mountain goat, we managed to proceed. 

Well, the picture doesn't quite do it justice, but eventually the trail became this single-file ledge on the side of a cliff. It was essentially a drop off on that right side. For what felt like 500 feet. Okay, it probably wasn't that far, but it was certainly far enough to be catastrophic if a person were to fall. Let's just say it was mildly terrifying to supervise 5 children on this trail, especially when Annika started to skip. SKIP!! down the trail. That girl has no fear. 

But the views.....Oh the views. You can see why they call Ouray the "Little Switzerland" of America. 

We finally made our slow and careful path to Cascade Falls, which was quite lovely. I felt like kissing the ground when we made it off that mountainside. Seriously.

We had our picnic lunch on the rocks beneath the Falls. 

And then we decided to take our leave of  the Perimeter Trail. There was a trail/road back into town at that point. Isn't this house cute? There were lots of Swiss-inspired cottages in Ouray. 

We celebrated our survival of the trail with ice cream. 

With the rest of the afternoon on our hands, we decided to attempt a journey to Yankee Boy Basin, a popular viewpoint up in the mountains that requires 4-wheel drive vehicles at the very least. Many people hire tour guides with Jeeps to take them up there. 

But not us! We have a Sequoia, remember. 

Since it  was late in the season (ie, very few tourists) and a misty day, we mostly had the road to ourselves. A fact for which I was profoundly grateful. 

See, it's a 2-way road, but in many places, it's just 1 lane. With a sheer cliff on one side. 

To say I was tense on most of this drive is a bit of an understatement. But again, the views were incredible. The first part of the road was just a dirt road that basically any vehicle could handle. Then we came to a section that said "High Clearance Vehicles, 4 wheel drive Only". 

We kept going. 

The road got more technical and extremely slow going as Grant maneuvered the Sequoia over large rocks that could barely be labeled a "road". 

Eventually we made it to the last .5 mile of the "road", but the sign there said, "High Clearance, Short Wheel Base Vehicles Only". Meaning, only Jeeps and 4 wheelers/quads could handle it. We had to stop there. 

It was misty and rainy, so our views were not as far as hoped for, but we had reached an elevation of over 11,600 feet (from the town of Ouray, which sits at 8,000 feet). 

 Our "Toyota commercial" shot. 

We were amidst the same snow capped mountains we could see from afar at our campsite. Alone at the top of the mountains, with the temperature hovering at 45° (20 degrees colder than in town), rain gently falling and the thin air barely filling our lungs, we just stood in awe. 

You can see we had made it to just where the tree-line stops. No more golden aspens up here!

And then took a family selfie with our waterproof camera. 

It was one of the most breathtaking moments of our lives. 

On our way back down the mountain, we stopped to get some photos of a waterfall we had bypassed on the way up. 

Again thankful for the waterproof camera, as it was raining pretty steadily. 

One of the more harrowing sections of the road, simply because of the SHEER DROP OFF on one side, the single lane road, and the fact that you CAN'T SEE if someone else is coming from the other direction. YIKES! (sorry for screaming....but it was scary. To me, anyways.)

One of my favorite shots from the day. I was standing on the edge of a cliff and the water was at least 200 feet beneath me. 

We made it back to the campsite just in time for dinner - our awesome meatball soup (I omitted the zucchini and added a can of cannellini beans). The rain had stopped and we enjoyed our soup around the campfire, soaking in the gorgeous surroundings before the sun set.

Despite the anxiety and hair-raising terror of the day (primarily of yours truly) , it really was one of the best days ever. 

Part 1: Background and the First Day
Part 2: Colorado Springs

Part 4: Zion National Park