Redwood Nat’l Park, Northern CA

So we didn’t make it to Oregon today. We decided to take a day off from driving and camp two nights. We went for a great hike today in praire creek state park (redwood nat’l park is odd, to me at least, and has many state parks near/in it) we’re not far from the Oregon border. Portland is about 360 miles away. We plan on driving there tomorrow and staying two nights. We’re getting so close to Seattle!!! I can’t wait to see our first highway sign for it. We found out that our Corp housing is in Seattle, near the space needle. We’re relieved that it’s in the city. So excited that we’ll be there soon!

The redwoods are very cool. We actually drove through one yesterday:-) I think sean is gonna post a video eventually.

xo

LA Lady

Wow! I’ve been a blog slacker!

Quick catch up….

I spent a very relaxing birthday in Sedona and was treated to an amazing massage at our hotel. I’d love to go back to the area again.

As Sean mentioned we had a lot of fun in Vegas. I love love loved LOVE! I HIGHLY recommend it. It’s worth the cost of the tickets. The ‘cheap’ seats are great, there really isn’t a bad seat in the house and like Sean said the sound was soooo amazing. I definitely go see it again.

We had a lot of fun catching up and sight seeing with Deb and Jeff. They were amazing hosts! Thanks you two. xoxo. It sooo comforting to know we have friends on the west coast especially when we feel like making a phone call in the evening (it’s gonna take a while to get used to the 3 hour time difference!)

The morning we left San Diego I got sick. I thought I was going to die on our way to LA. Guess it was a 24 bug or something! Yick!

We’ve been VERY much enjoying our time relaxing with Dan, Debbie, Matthew and Leah. Doing nothing and eating home cooked meals has been awesome. (And we have clean laundry again. Yay!!) Matthew and Leah are oh so cute and lots of fun! We went and saw The Hangover. Very funny. We emptied out Kolby (our car) and he went for a much needed car facial and massage (cleaning). I think we’re going to have a hard time getting back into drive mode after the past few days. We’re 6 days away from Seattle at this point! We can’t wait to be there.

On Wednesday I headed solo into LA from Topanga to spend a couple of nights with my best girl Giselle! Apparently the freeway knew I was coming so it slowed things down a bit for me (also known as rush hour traffic) I thought Jersey drivers were bad but they pale in comparison to the nuts out here so I didn’t mind traffic moving along bumper to bumper at 40 mph.

LA (sans Sean) highlights

Thai dinner with a Thai Elvis serenading us.

Shopping at the Beverly Center.

Lunch with friend and BMG co-worker Deborah Keegan. We went to Houston’s for lunch. For a brief moment it felt like the good old days on 28th street. It was VERY nice to see her smiling face!

Driving on Santa Monica blvd with the windows down/moon roof open cranking Full Moon Fever.

While jogging in the very nice residential neighborhood near Larchmont I passed Molly “superstar” Shannon on the sidewalk.

Going out to Giselle’s local favorite watering hole and danced to Michael Jackson all night.

Now I’m back in Topanga again and we’re still trying to figure out what our next move is. Looking like up the coast to San Fran. We’ll have to save Yosemite for another time.

We spent a few hours watching Matthew yesterday. Here’s a few pictures:

Sean manhandling I mean babysiting:

Matthew seeking revenge.

Playtime with Leah

Las Vegas, NV, San Diego, CA, and Topanga, CA

So while Kate is off partying with celebrities in Hollywood ignoring her blogging duties I guess I better give you all a brief update on where we have been for the last week.

First off, we were in Las Vegas from June 18 – 20th.   And as the commercial says… what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!

The only tibits of our trip I will pass on are: 

1.)  We saw the Cirque de Soliel Beatles LOVE at the Mirage and it was one of the coolest things we have seen.    The sound in the theatre was absolutely amazing and paired beautifully with the visuals from the show.    It was a truly a tribute and celebration through all forms of art and I highly recommend it to anyone (especially Beatles fans).

2.) I am getting GOOD at the craps table!

After Vegas we took a short drive to San Diego, CA and enjoyed a couple fun days with Deb and Jeff in the San Diego sun.    They were the perfect hosts and we where even treated to some of the culinary stylings of Chef Stella.  Thanks guys for hosting us!

That brings us to Topanga, CA where we are having some much needed R&R with family.  We really haven’t done much in the past 4 days but watch TV and catch up on email.   Turns out we are going to stay a little later than we planned but the blog will be back in full force in a few days as the trip goes into its final leg through northern california and Oregon. 

So heres a question:  Big Sur or Yosemite?  Should we go North through the mountains or up the coast?   We are taking input now because we haven’t come up with a final plan yet. 

Let us know your thoughts!

Hiking the Grand Canyon

So before we set off on our hike of the grand canyon we were bombarded with tons of stories of horrible deaths at the grand canyon and how it is one of the most grueling hikes you can do (see the warning picture below).

Anyway, Kate and I were prepared for the worst, woke up at 5 am ate a hardy camping breakfast and prepared to hike a few miles down the South Kaibab trail.

As you can guess, we are still alive.  Luckily we had a really cool day and the hike (as long as you don’t try to go all the way down to the river) is not all that bad.  The way back is a steep uphill the whole way but doable.  I think hiking down a bit give you such a better perspective on the canyon and also gets you away from the obnoxious crowds at all the touristy lookout points.

We really want to try to plan an overnight camping trip down to the bottom of the canyon one of these days, but apparently there is a lot of red tape so we’ll need to plan ahead.

A few notes about our adventure:

- Waking up at 5 am doesn’t lead to the best thinking.. Kate forgot to check the battery on the camera (yes it was Kate’s fault) so we don’t have too many pictures from inside the canyon

- The weather at the rim the canyon was actually cold and rainy!  Who would have thought?  I thought the grand canyon was in the middle of the desert.  But its not really! Its actually surrounded by a lot of forest land and its at a really high elevation.   We figured Arizona = desert  but thats not really the case.  We have been really off with all of our climate predictions…Damn public school education failed me again!

Here are a few highlight pics

Bryce Canyon, Utah

Sean and I give Bryce Canyon two enthusiastic thumbs up. It was worth driving a bit off course for. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. We camped the night at Bryce Canyon Pines about 6 miles from the park entrance. It was a great little campground. It was pretty chilly unless you were in the sun during the day. The climate varies sooooo much from place to place even if they’re close to one another. We were pretty high up in elevation. I love tenting it on cold nights though. I always sleep well in my snuggly sleeping bag (even though we were on an incline.) We heard a pack of coyotes crossing through as we were falling asleep. Pretty cool. On our way to grand canyon now (Monday the 15th – there’s usually a delay in posting due to internet/picture upload issues) From what I’ve seen so far on this trip the grand canyon has a lot to live up to. Then again they don’t call it the grand canyon for nuthin!

Zion National Park, Utah

We were both very happy to make the 8.5 hour drive to warm Utah after Wyoming.  Just before we arrived we saw a rainbow.  It was so beautiful.  It was the full arc and had all the colors.  I’ve never seen one like this before.  The picture (taken in the car from the highway) doesn’t really capture it.

We arrived at the Saint Georges Quality Inn about 30 miles from Zion Nat’l Park, Thursday night, did laundry, hit the hot tub and then crashed for the night.  Fun times!

We spent two days at Zion.  We’re both in agreement that this is our favorite park that we’ve been to so far on this trip.  We set up camp just outside the park in a town called Springdale and then headed into the park for a 3 hour hike.  A view on the drive to the park.

Because it was late in the day we decided to forgo the popular Angel’s Landing hike and did the Hidden Canyon trail.  I’ve never had so much fun on a hike before.  Here’s a few pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a good nights rest, we got up, broke camp, parked our car in town and took the shuttle into the park to the Temple of Sinawava which is where you pick up the Narrows hike.  This hike was amazing.  It’s the largest slot canyon in the world.  With special shoes & socks and a good walking stick, you hike your way through a river into the canyon. It was awesome.  Of course, I slipped and fell, twice.  At the deepest we had to wade through about 3.5 feet of water.  It was all about finding the best and shallowest course.  The current was pretty strong in places and the rocks could be really slippery (hence the two falls).  After about 2.5 hours in Sean got a freaked out when it started to rain so we turned back.  (You have to be wary of flash floods in the canyon.)    We were also pretty tired.  Here are some pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

None of the pictures we took could do it justice or really give you a good perspective of what it was like.  I’m glad we did it even though we’ll be feeling it tomorrow. I highly recommend Zion National Park, I wish we had a day or so more here to check out some of the other hikes.

We’re back at the Quality Inn at Saint Georges now (we love this hotel).  We at Taco Bell (terrible, I know, but oh so good), soaked our tired limbs in the hot tub and are now trying to figure out our next step.  Looks like we’ll head to Bryce Canyon for the day, and Grand Canyon the next.

Yellowstone/Grand Tetons

Hey all!

Just a follow up to Sean’s post about Yellowstone & the Tetons.  A few picture highlights.

Old Faithful

Not the best picture, but we saw a bald eagle sitting in its nest.

 

And then there were the bison.

From 30 to 85 degrees in 8 hours

I’m sure Kate will post a really thorough blog post shortly but I just wanted to share a few quick highlights.    First off, we arrived in Yellowstone on Monday afternoon.   It being June and all I was expecting mild 60 ish weather..   Well I forgot to check the weather report…..   shortly after entering the park here was the view from our car window..

Yep.. thats right… SNOW!!   Kate and I only packed a few sets of clothes for the cold weather so we were very unprepared.    We soon realized that that’s par for the course in Wyoming.  The weather is really unpredictable.   We saw both snow and beautiful clear skies within hours of each other.

Luckily it cleared up the second afternoon we had in the park so we spent the whole day exploring.   If you ever get a chance to explore Yellowstone don’t make the mistake we did.  Yellowstone is larger than the state of Deleware so sometimes it literally takes hours to get from one side of the park to the other.  Two days in the park is definetely not enough.   Anyway here are some pics of the highlights..

After two nights in Yellowstone we went to the next door Grand Tetons national park.  We had planned to camp but with the rainy 35 degree weather we opted for a cheap cabin.   Although Kate is a trooper, I’m pretty sure a night of camping in ice rain we wouldn’t be getting our wedding deposits back.

The weather was iffy the whole time so we decided to cut our Wyoming trip short in exchange for warmer weather.  Before we left we did get to go on a great 8 mile hike around Jenny Lake at the Grand Tetons.  Here are the pics..

So after our 1 night stay in Grand Teton we drove a full 9 hours and here we are in beautiful 85 degree desert weather in St. Georges Utah (right outside of Zion national park).

Really excited for warm weather and some serious hiking.   Pictures to come..

Since last we blogged

This will be the third attemp to post this blog. Should be quicker since I know it so well.

We’ve made a lot of progress since Cleveland.

Saturday – OH > IN > IL > IA
Highlights – none really unless you count the worlds largest truck stop off of I80 in IA. Too many 18 wheelers in the highway!!! Drove sean batty with my anxiety over that.

Crashed hard core at a days inn in cedar rapids

Sunday – Day 2

IA > MN > SD
Weather was cloudy and rained on and off. We were pleasantly suprised at how much we enjoyed SD.

Highlights
Worlds only corn palace – of the many silly things posted along I90 that you can stop at, this is the one we chose. We bought the yummiest soft caramel peanut corn there.

Badlands – took a break from the highway and did a badlands scenic loop drive. Badlands are badass.

Mt Rushmore – the one place I wanted to stop. Rolled in at 9 pm. It was raining dark and very foggy. I’ve attached two pictures. 1. The way rushmore looks during the day according to the vending machine picture and 2. What we saw. LOL. They do a lighting ceremony. We saw a glowing blob. It was pretty funny. Some day I’ll go back.

Crashed at a super 8 in rapid city.

Monday day 3
SD > WO
Beautiful drive weather!! Hardly any traffic so I finally did a good chunk of driving while sean snoozed. Wyoming is ridiculous! Who does this state think it is?? It’s just so amazingly beautiful. This part of I90 was incredible. When we got off and took US16 at like exit 9 we drove up through the big horn mountains. Very cool! Then we drove to yellowstone. More on that later.

Let’s hope this post works!!!

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