We are continually surprised by the beauty that we are finding in places that we've never heard of before. When we left the Zion area our first stop was at Lone Rock Beach State Park on Lake Powell. We camped right on the sand overlooking the lake! Best camp site ever (well at least so far)! We went for sunset walks on the beach and explored the area during the day.
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| Moonrise over Lake Powell |
Horseshoe Bend overlook on the Colorado River is impressive.
Before we visited Lower Antelope Canyon, we were slightly skeptical that it could live up to the hype, but it was so amazing that I couldn't stop taking pictures around every new corner!
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| The formations are other-worldly. |
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| Water is so powerful! |
Next on to Sedona, which wasn't really on the way, but we wanted to check it out as a possible place to spend a season. Sedona is beautiful, but maybe too crowded for us to spend a whole season.
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| Devil's Bridge |
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| Courthouse Butte with a shadow of Bell Rock |
Petrified Tree National Park and the painted desert were next. It was interesting learning how the ancient trees turned into rocks. We even went on a haunted inn tour there.
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| Some of the ancient petrified trees were very large and very long! |
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| We saw such beautiful colors in the petrified trees. |
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| Blue Mesa in the painted desert |
Our stop in Texas took us to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. We did a great hike through part of the canyon about half way up the side where we could see both the cliffs above us and the canyon floor below.
Back tracking in our story a bit, after Yellowstone and before Zion, we stopped at Grand Teton NP. We love the Tetons and definitely will spend a summer there in the future.
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| Moose mama and her calf. |
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| We finally saw a bull moose!! He was a young one! |
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| Thought this little squirrel was too cute! |
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| After we left the Tetons we stopped in Salt Lake City and went for a swim in the Great Salt Lake at Antelope Island. |
 The water level was really low and we had to walk about half a mile to get to the water. |
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Branson was family time. We chose Branson, Missouri because Kari is going to school at Arkansas Tech, which is just a few hours from here. We celebrated an early Thanksgiving with the kids and my Mom. We challenged ourselves to make a turkey and some of the fixings in a apartment sized oven their cabin. It worked, and we even made our traditional homemade turkey noodle soup the next day. We had fun visiting with everyone!
Branson is the "music capital" and when we are in new places we want to check out what the area has available. Our first show was the Dolly Parton Stampede with the boys and my mom. Ben and Dan had to head home, but we saw 5 more shows with my mom. We learned that Branson is also a huge timeshare place (but they don't call them timeshares anymore). So we funded most of our shows by listening to 4 "time share" talks. We have seen more than 17 shows here in Branson. Some shows were really good, some were ok, and some we were glad that we didn't pay for.
We had hoped to work at the local amusement park, called Silver Dollar City, but due to our short stay they were not willing to hire us. Actually that was fortunate for us because most of their jobs are outside and the weather has been unusually cold here. We did get a chance to go to Silver Dollar City to check out the shows at the park and their Christmas light show was really impressive!!( And for me to say that means a lot!)
We were able to find jobs at Kohl's and we tried something new this year for Black Friday, we worked retail instead of shopping. People were in the holiday spirit and while they waited in the long lines, they visited with whoever was next to them, and got some really good deals. Then even though the credit card machines were bogged down and rejecting many transactions, people waited patiently and with good spirits. We worked with some great people at Kohl's. Everyone here at work, and at the campground, has been very friendly and welcoming.
We have been trying to plan where we will be for the winter and for next summer. All I can say is that we hope to be in Florida for the winter. You will have to wait for our next blog in January to find out what the future holds for us since we haven't figured it out yet! But whatever it is, it will be part of the adventure! We will leave Branson soon and visit Kari in Arkansas for a day, before heading north with her to Ohio for the holidays. She will head to London, and we will enjoy family!
We just found out that next summer we are going to Maine!! We will be working at a campground about 30 miles from Acadia NP!! We plan on eating a lot of lobster and mussels! We would love to have visitors!
Happy Holidays everyone!!
The water level was really low and we had to walk about half a mile to get to the water.
