Utah has great parks!

    Arches National Park is just outside of Moab, Utah. The whole area is surrounded by red rocks. The sun lights them up like fire at certain times of the day. Arches is a very busy park, but it's spread out so it feels easy to find a quiet spot among the arches, fins and sandstone formations. We did some amazing hikes, especially the double O, and fiery furnace hikes. They both require scrambling up, and around mountains of slick rock. The fiery furnace requires a permit, you have to watch a video and understand what is required for the trail. We also studied you tube videos and read up on AllTrails since they say it is very easy to get disoriented in the fins.  The hikes were beautiful, challenging and very fun!! This is what the fiery furnace looks like from the viewing area.

This is one of the trails. We slid through narrow passages, we "V" walked over crevices and crab walked through channels.

This is the trail going up to the double O arch. You can see the people behind me on the trail.   

This is Double O arch. There is a smaller arch below the larger one.

Delicate arch is one of the most famous arches in Utah.

                                                                                    

  We keep seeing eyes everywhere we go!                    

                                But these are made of stone!                                                     

Canyonlands National Park is also beautiful, with amazing vistas that are hard to capture in pictures.

After the parks we headed to the northern part of Salt Lake City. We did some sightseeing and did some final shopping before heading to the Yellowstone area. We went to Antelope Island, which is in the middle of the Great Salt Lake. Unfortunately the biting flies had hatched and the animals were mostly in the higher parts of the island. But we enjoyed a beautiful sunset.

The next day we headed to downtown Salt Lake to visit Temple Square and to work on a little geneology. The spring flowers were amazing, the gardens were beautiful!

For something different, we decided on a  waterfall hike the next day. We climbed a few miles up a canyon and enjoyed listening to the stream and seeing all the young families and their children out for an evening hike.

The next day was a travel day again and we can finally say that we have now made it to the West Yellowstone area!!!! We will be moving into the Old Faithful employee campground on Sunday. We checked it out today and shoveled out some snow so that our camper will fit. We are  excited to be here. It has been a wonderful journey, but we are ready to get settled for the next few weeks, learn our new jobs, and begin to explore this amazing natural wonderland.

Traveling across the country with our 5th wheel

     Traveling across the country with our home behind our truck is pretty cool! Our plan is to drive no more than 5 hours each travel day, and so far that seems to work well for us. We had 3 driving days back to back last week. Three in a row was a bit much, but that's ok because it gave us more time at our next stops.
     Our country is so amazing! There are great natural things to see everywhere!  After checking out Branson, Missouri (possibly more about that in the fall), we made our way across Oklahoma and Texas. Then we stopped in Albuquerque, New Mexico to explore. Our campground overlooked the Rio Grande River with a view of the Sandia Mountains. It was beautiful and windy.

We checked out 3 national monuments that we had never heard of before. First was Petroglyph National Monument, where we looked at pictographs that the Ancestral Pueblo people drew on rocks. I think now it may be called graffiti.

The next day we went to Bandelier  National Monument to view an Ancestral Puebloan village and cliff dwellings. We enjoyed learning about this culture previously called the Anasazi and how they lived day to day. It was also fun climbing ladders up the canyon 140 feet to view the cliff dwellings there. Why can you only free climb like that at national parks and monuments?? ( Hmmm, less liability??)

Kasha Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument was on our the list the next day. More hiking through rock formations unlike anything we've seen before. What a beautiful day!

We finished the day with a ride on the Sandia Tramway to the mountain top for amazing views!

Next on to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado for 2 days. We did the Balcony House ranger led tour and viewed many of the the mesa top and cliff dwellings.  This picture is of Cliff Palace.

Our campground was next to a casino and the Sleeping Ute mountain. The best part of the casino was the strawberry shortcake and the free popcorn! (I think food is the best part of a casino!)

We love our 5th wheel. We are settling in, finding places for everything, and we are starting to call it home.  It is great to be able to come home each evening and relax after a busy day of driving or sightseeing.  Now we are at Arches National Park, such an amazing place!! It will deserve its own post in a few days. More soon.                                                                                                                          

The adventure has begun!!

We are on our way.
We're at the corner of Campground  Road and Easy Street, USA. Come visit us!
We left Wilmington on April 4, 2018, after cleaning snow off the top of the slides outs. We've had 2 great driving days so far. Mark is doing an excellent job handling the truck and 5th wheel.  Today we spent the day getting the camper organized and sanitizing the water system. This evening we have our first visitor on this trip. We are in Branson, Missouri, about 2 1/2 hours from Kari, so she came to visit and spend the night with us. Snow is predicted for tonight, but the Hideout (the camper) is cozy. We'll spend a couple more nights here, then head west.