Roadtripping.

Winter doesn't bode well for our mental state.

We do realize that, as far as that's concerned, we live in the wrong state.

As it is, we found ourselves with a long kidless weekend over the President's Day holiday (which was also attached to the weekend of Valentine's Day) so The Man declared that he needed warmth and sun.  Being as I felt so inclined myself, we planned a trip south to St. George where there was the promise of at least 60 degree weather and sun.

Even if we didn't know what we were going to do down there, we were going, by golly.

I've been toying with a website, roadtrippers.com, for awhile now, and with the plans set to head south I thought I'd plug into that website to see if there were new things that we could see while were on our way down.

Four hours later I had more road trips planned than we'll be able to do in a year, but I also had to road trips planned for our weekend.

One that would take us down to St. George with two stops and one the following day that made a loop, starting and ending again in St. George with four stops.

We invited my parents to tag along on our loop drive.

We headed out mid Saturday morning, having no real agenda to stick to and no plans beyond just following the flow of what we felt like and seeing the stops on our way.

Generally I despise waking up so we didn't set any alarms and let ourselves get the sleep we needed.  We finished packing up our bags and made sure the dogs had plenty of food and water and toys so they wouldn't destroy the house.

And we set out.

The link to this particular road trip (with directions, a map, and description of the stops) can be found here.

Our first stop was the ghost town, Thistle, which was flooded out in the 80's.

We stopped at McD's in Spanish Fork before heading up the canyon to Thistle for breakfast and the mandatory Coke.

At first we couldn't understand why McD's would have a half fence.  And we didn't understand why they would hang a sign up asking if we liked it.  And why would they want us to tell them we like it for a free coupon?

But then we looked just beyond it and realized that the fence was just enough to block the displays of the windows in the adult shop that had been built next door.  Being a happily married couple, we're not against adult shops, but being a family type of folk we completely appreciated McD's efforts at keeping their establishment "family friendly."  So we told them we like their fence.  Because we really did.

And they really did give us a coupon for a free sandwich.

On our way out of McD's parking lot The Man spotted this bad... bug.

Our trip had only just begun and we were already laughing at the adventures that we'd found in just a McDonald's parking lot.

And the pressure was off.

We weren't racing to a destination to attend some event and trying to get somewhere as fast as we could to start our trip, for once, the journey really was what it was all about it.

It was relaxed and freeing.

Our GPS dude (The Man downloaded a skeleton hand and a creepy voice for me.  He likes to say things like, "Have you seen my spider?  It was crawling around here just a minute ago..." and, "You're driving like your life depends on it.  I like that," and, "Ignore the noises coming from the trunk.") led us straight to a submerged house that used to be part of Thistle.

It was surreal, to try and think that someone had lived there in my lifetime and the events that had taken place, leaving them with no home.

We stopped at an abandoned barn/work shop structure which was full of garbage and then parked on the shoulder and hiked uphill in the mud to another abandoned home that was affected by the flood.

You can almost feel the stories as you look these places, like the history is still tangible all around it.

There were other stops we could have seen on our way down to St. George, but I felt those stops would be better in the summertime we so we drove back to I-15 and headed south.

We detoured in Leeds to see the stop of Silver Reef which is an old mining town, now set up as a museum.  The only place where silver has been found in sandstone.

My favorite part is seeing the old foundations from the original homes that were in the area.

Then we drove around Leeds and looked at the seriously posh houses in the area.

We finished our way to St. George where we met up with my parents for dinner and then crashed on their couch for the night.  We'd invited them on our road trip the following day and I was super excited for it.

Our second trip can be found in full here.

The agenda called for a stop in Pipe Spring National Monument in Arizona, The Old Frontier Town which I found out through googling is actually a museum called Little Hollywood, the Moqui Cave, and then the ghost town town of Grafton.

Our first stop was Pipe Springs which is a national monument ("Free this weekend for President's day!" Score!)  Where we learned about Pioneers and Indians and Mexicans all rolled up into one settlement area.

We had the option to wait for a tour inside the "castle", but as it was off-season, the tours were only held at specific times and only if they knew you wanted to take it.  We never really told them we wanted to, and we didn't feel like sticking around to wait for one, so we decided to skip that part and head on to our next destination.

I was especially excited for the next two stops, the Little Hollywood museum where they had the sets from the filming of old western's and the Moqui Cave which used to be a hidden speakeasy during prohibition, but is now an open to public store.  Though they still have the bar set up in it for people to see.

I'll tell you now that if you follow our roadtrippers.com map for this trip, it's slightly wrong.  Little Hollywood (Old Frontier Town) came before the cave did, and the cave is actually on the same road, you don't have to turn off for it.

But what we found is both the museum and the cave were closed for off-season.

I was so disappointed!

We stopped at Carmel Mountain Junction, where we were to make a left turn, for lunch at the Thunderbird Restaurant, home of the ho-made pies, where we didn't get any pie, but we did buy my dad a t-shirt, and would have bought one for The Man but they didn't have his size in the color he was hoping for.

Turns out that the simple story of that is when the restaurant first started, it was sitting out in the middle of no-where on dirt roads and the owner just simply didn't have room to write out the full "Home Made Pies", so he shortened it to fit best he could.  Only recently has it created some controversy, so doing the only thing they could do, they made merchandise and kept running with it.

I'm an open minded person and feel that the reason for their claim for ho-made pies is simple enough, so we supported it with buying t-shirts.

I knew our trip was going to take us near Zion National Park, but what I didn't realize was that it was going to take us straight through it.  Which was a happy surprise and added bonus, so be prepared to pay the park day fee ("Not this weekend!  It's free for President's Day!"  Double score!)

I was happy to recognize Checkerboard Mesa when it loomed up before us, a spot on roadtrippers I had seen and thought would be fun to visit.

That place is just beautiful.  We'd been there before and done some of the hikes (here) but I'd never driven through the whole park like that before.

The tunnels were awesome, one being so long that they had to cut windows into the side of the mountain to give it some light here and there, but it was still mostly dark and very closed in.

We ended our trip with a stop at the ghost town Grafton which is near Zion's.

I fell in love with the history of that place.

Apparently people back then didn't need much head clearance?

We had so much fun on this trip, that we're planning to do it again with The Circus.  Only this time we're going to do it when Little Hollywood and the Moqui Cave will be open.

Do you use roadtrippers?  Let me know, I would love to swap road trip maps!

Zion Run a way

West and I ended up with a kidless weekend. How often does that happen??? Rarely to be honest. Especially lately, so we definitely took advantage of it. I got online and booked us a last minute bed and breakfast room and off we went. Our hosts at the bed and breakfast were amazingly sweet and very helpful with information on the park. If you ever want to go to Zion, check them out for a stay at http://www.thedesertthistle.com/ tell them we sent you :). It was the most tastefully decorated b&b that I saw at both Zion and Moab on my google searching and it was also one of the most reasonable priced. I HIGHLY recommend them! So on the recommendation of Warren, our gracious host, we decided to try Angel's Landing. Hang on, there's a lot of pictures coming here:
Starting out... we have NO idea what we're about to get into! If you look closely at the side of the mountain you can see the trail steeply zigzagging on top of itself... not looking too fun at this point and we're just beginning Funny faces to be sure... but we were really Ex.Haus.Ted! And not even half way at this point. Not even to the part they call "Warren's Wiggles" yet. Warren's Wiggles... stacked below me in a steep zigzag ... ...and stacked way above us in steep zigzags Finally at the 2 mile mark where the steep steady hiking trail ends, and the steep narrow climbing part begins, we sat to rest and watched a chipmunk breaking into peoples packs. The next half of narrow climbing on the edge of steep cliffs is no place for a bulky pack on your back! But our camel pack was just fine. Just the fact that we made the the 2 mile hike to this point was impressive to me. And exhilarating. With a drop off on one side of us, West peers at the view on the other side... ...and what a view it was! Literally climbing up the ridge of the mountain As wide as our "trail" was. As wide as the entire ridge to walk on was.Doesn't get much wider than this the whole way up. I told you before... I like to take pictures of my feet... it shows where I've been, where I am, and where I'm going... The world is my playground. The view from that perch of West's:Way cool tree at the top. Oh yes... the top! The funny thing is, we saw two people turn back once we were on the narrow cliff climbing part. Seriously though, you made it through 2 very steep miles, push through the last half... it's so worth it! What a waste not to finish! Walking on top of the world! To the point where you absolutely can not take another step. On the very most tippy top edge of Angel's landing. Sorry, I wasn't about to get closer to get a better shot of below. No way!To tell the truth, going down was a lot more unnerving than going up! My crazy man screwing around. Back on solid ground, and exhausted and craving ice cream. Angel's Landing... We made it to the very uppermost tip top... crazy, huh? Our cute bed and breakfast the desert thistle. These people are so stinking cute!! We dipped our feet in the cold water of the pool, grabbed some Mexican food in town, that I was way to exhausted to eat. Five bites and I was done. Bed. I want bed. We were asleep by 8:30. But here's some pictures of the cute place: They had a giant sheep in the backyard! Our room, the Zion suite (the next morning so the bed's a little rumpled... don't judge them because we didn't make the bed for our picture).The next morning we decided we wanted to see the Emerald Pools before we headed home to get the girls. These caterpillars were EVERYWHERE. The falls at the Lower Emerald Pools: Behind the falls.

On our way up the middle pools. We were told that the lower pool is where the waterfall falls, and the middle pool is where the waterfall goes over the edge. We really never heard much about the upper pool, but I'm getting ahead of myself with that. Right now we're just on our way to the middle pool.

One last shot of the Lower pool falls as we continue on.

And to tell you the truth, the middle pools weren't anything much when we got there. They have the edge chained off so you can't see the falls from the top, not that I would have dared to look at it from the edge anyway...

We were less than a half mile from the upper pool so we decided "why not?" It was a good decision. The trail was a little more work because it was sandy, but once we reached it, wow... the pictures really don't do it justice. The waterfall was so much taller than the one at the lower pool and it fell into a real pond instead of just onto rocks. It was such a serene and beautiful place. We want to take the circus there. I had a hard time leaving the upper pool, but we had to be on our way so we could head home. I needed to meet my ex and get my part of the circus back. One last parting shot of the falls at the lower pool though.

On the way home my ex called saying he'd been in an accident with Deeds and B. B had been complaining about her stomach and after a CT scan the hospital was opting to keep her over night. I was planning a trip to her, but after a few hours of waiting for the hospital to make up their minds, they finally decided to let her go. I ended up getting them back the next day. The trip was refreshing and I was ever so glad to have my girls home.