As you may have guessed from the crickets chirping on the blog, our family was away on vacation for two whole weeks. It was truly epic. We flew out to Denver, spent a week in Colorado hanging around with Cute W’s family and hiking in the mountains, then went on our own for a few days in Moab, then a drive by Bryce Canyon and to the Grand Canyon, then a last day at Zion before flying home from Las Vegas. We had an amazing time and completely exhausted ourselves. Just as an example of our crazy pace of awesome fun, on our last day we woke up early in our tents along the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, invested $6-worth of quarters so that we could each take a 6-minute shower, drove a couple hours to Zion National Park and hiked, then frolicked in the river, drove a couple more hours, stopped to eat a ridiculous amount of Mexican food, drove along the strip while trying to explain Las Vegas to our children, then returned our rental car and took an 11:30 pm flight into Chicago followed by a delayed flight to Albany that finally, finally got us home in time for a late lunch the next day.
So there will be more details and funny stories and such, but I just wanted to check in. Cute W took literally thousands of photos, and the girls and I took a bunch, too, but here’s one of each of the girls.
Here’s J at a lake in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. She and Cute W hiked 12 miles round trip to reach this lake, where there was still snow, as you can see to her left. Over the course of the two weeks we determined that J and Cute W are definitely more outdoorsy than M and me. On this day, for example, Cute W and J started their hike before dawn while M and I chose to sleep in and take the poky-puppy hike, and later, I was already sitting out on the deck and well into my second vodka tonic before Cute W and J got back down the mountain. Truly, J was a superstar, and I’m glad Cute W was up for the hike, because I sure as heck wasn’t.
Here’s M at Canyonlands at sunset. It was unbelievably beautiful. We basically dragged ourselves there because we were super-tired that evening, but I was so glad that we went. The girls perked up and had so much fun splashing in puddles together and taking “artsy” pictures of each other and themselves with all of that dramatic lighting. We loved Moab so much.
But it’s good to be home! Hope you’re all having a terrific summer.
