Road Trip Day 5 - June 30

We stayed at the Comfort Inn and it was pretty decent. We found a pizza restaurant for lunch before going to Grandpa's party. I haven't seen him since 2010 when we went to Colorado for Dad's side of the family reunion. He is living at his nephew Dave's house and is having trouble walking, but he is still as sharp and witty as ever! 100 birthdays are pretty special. I'm so glad we got to go celebrate!

This is Mom's cousin Donna.

Grandpa drew these posters for the Army in WWII. Mom got an autographed set of them. :)

He also did portraits.

Road Trip Day 4, Part 2 - June 29

Just past the Colorado border is the Colorado National Monument. We decided to drive through. It was a 23-mile road (on the highway it would've been 8 miles) through more beautiful red rock.

We didn't stop at too many view points because we still had a few hours of driving left before reaching our hotel for the night, but the views all around were great. We got in to Lakewood, CO around 11:30. Whew!

Road Trip Day 4 - June 29

We got into Moab, UT late on Day 3. It was still 95 degrees at 10pm so we were very thankful that our modest motel had excellent air conditioning! We slept well, had a McDonald's breakfast, then headed to The Arches National Park. What a beautiful area! We did the little half-mile hike to a viewing point of the most popular arch (Delicate Arch) and that made me glad we didn't choose the long hike.

More Driving Day 3 - Utah - June 28

We continued on through Utah past some huge wind generators. On the way home we saw some of the blades being transported on semi trailers. It's hard to tell how large they are until you're right up next to them.

Then we drove into Salt Lake City just to say we'd been there. Since we're not Mormon, I never paid much attention to the Mormon Temple, but it is quite beautiful. It was 104 degrees here.

Road Trip Day 3 - June 28

We stayed in Layton for the evening, had dinner at a restaurant called Iggy's (very good!), then headed to Antelope Island(which is in the middle of the Great Salt Lake) in the morning. We first noticed the smell as we were on the bridge to the island. Once we were on the island, we didn't notice it so much. The Visitor's Center was packed with kids on a field trip, but we learned a lot about the area. We stopped to photograph bison on the beach, stopped at the beach and got covered in gnats/bugs, and went to the ranch at the end of the island and looked around a bit. It was quite hot (upper 90s) so we didn't stay there too long. We had lunch at a little place on the beach. Owen and Nicholas both had bison burgers. They were pretty good!

Road Trip Day 2 - June 27

We stayed the night at a Best Western in Boise, ID then started on our way to UT. Near Twin Falls, we stopped at Shoshone Falls to have a break and see something neat.

It was quite warm (high 90s) but a very nice stop to make.

Road Trip! June 26

We are on our way to Colorado for Grandpa's 100th birthday celebration. We will be traveling through 6 states (ours included, of course). I haven't been to two of the states (WY and UT) and we are there and back in a week! Nicholas and I ended up sleeping through most of WA and OR, but we stopped in Oregon at a rest stop. It was very nice with an Oregon Trail marker right there.