The Country's Most Beautiful Drive

After exhausting ourselves in the Grand Canyon and leaving a day early, we took advantage of the extra time and drove through Monument Valley, which was like driving through Mars. That place is insane.

It's honestly the coolest drive I've ever taken and I was constantly exclaiming around every corner. I've never seen anything like it. Not only are all the formations just crazy beautiful, but they're all different, which was what was so amazing to me. Some were smooth and rounded and others were pointy and textured. Some of the spires were thin and fragile-looking and others were massive and solid. And all of these were right next to each other. 

For Experienced Desert Hikers Only

Check out all of our pics (including Grand Canyon pics) on THIS PAGE!

I was PSYCHED to go to the Grand Canyon. I'd never been and it seemed like an important place to check out before we went abroad. After we left Zion and Bryce (see Tom's post here) we made the long drive to the Grand Canyon and arrived at the East Entrance just as the sun was setting. We raced to the Desert View Watchtower and Lipan Point to catch a few pics of the setting sun. Unfortunately, pictures just canNOT do the Grand Canyon justice. We tried anyway.

After a few shots, we made the rest of the Desert View drive and to our way to our campsite in Mather Campground, where we planned to spend 3 nights. Mather is a large campground and I had expected it to be pretty generic and crowded. Surprisingly, the sites are well spaced out, quiet, and well-shaded. At this point in our trip (and after sweating like crazy in the desert), I was in desperate need of a shower and raced to the coin-operated showers in the campground. It was amazing. It may have been the best $2 I've ever spent. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the water at the bottom of the shower was brown...BROWN....from my dirt-covered self.

Utah Rocks

Check out our pics from Zion and Bryce on our Pics Page.

Today, we're in Colorado, visiting my sister and her husband and our two nephews and, now that we have Internet, we're catching up on blog posts.

After leaving Yosemite and stopping in St. George (check out Steph's post here), we picked up some groceries from a weird supermarket in Southern Utah (I got a strange look when asked the check-out guy where we could find a liquor store), and we headed into Zion National Park. While driving into the park the landscape changes and large red and orange sandstone cliffs start towering all around you.

Zion NP entrance

Cliffs at Zion

The Adventure Begins - Yosemite National Park

First - if you want to skip this post and just see pics, you can see all the pics from the first 3 days of our trip here. (I haven't had a chance to organize, clean-up, or caption them yet...but you'll get the idea.)

Now - The past few days have been a crazy whirlwind - from the moment that the storage pod arrived, we've been non-stop.

When they came to pick up our storage pod on Saturday, I noticed that, with everything we owned was in the storage pod on a San Francisco street, Tom had forgotten to lock it up overnight. Thankfully, no one noticed or, at least, no one sketchy took advantage. Lucky for Tom...he would have been in the shit house for years if EVERYTHING we own was stolen. Great job, Tom. That night, we had quality time with Bernie, Todd and Q before we finished our time in SF with drinks with a friend in from Miami. The next morning, we were both overwhelmed with excitement and a constant feeling of, "Is this really happening?"

In front of our house - right before we hopped in our car and left town!