Videos

Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming

Lower Falls at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone Wyoming

Falls in Glacier NP Montana

Virginia Falls in Glacier NP Montana

Running Eagle Falls in Glacier NP Montana

Sol Duc Falls at Olympic NP Washington



Extreme northwest of Washington

Deer in Olympic NP Washington

Watchman Tower at Crater Lake NP in Oregon

Down on Crater Lake

The ocean at Redwood NP in California

Tall Trees Trail in Redwood NP California

Seals at Pier 39 in San Francisco

On the boat tour in San Francisco

Our bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge

Vernal Falls at Yosemite NP in California

The top of Nevada Falls at Yosemite NP

Silly monkey at the San Diego Zoo

The Bellagio Fountain Water Show in Las Vegas

The light show on Fremont Street in Las Vegas

Angels Landing in Zion NP Utah

Hidden Canyon in Zion NP Utah

Grand Canyon NP in Arizona

White Sands National Monument

Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico

Summer Road Trip Final Entry

As our trip has come to a close, we feel especially thankful that we had this opportunity to see the country this summer and spend such quality time together as a newly married couple.  God has been so good to us, and we are so grateful to Him.  We thank Him every night because all things, good and bad, come from Him.

We have travelled all over the western United States.  Over the course of 51 days (July 5 - August 24), we have travelled 10,118 miles.  We visited 12 national parks, 7 major cities, 4 theme parks, 2 national monuments, and we have had 1 heck of an amazing time.

I could not ask for a better partner to have toured all of these marvelous places with or one that I would want to spend the rest of my life with.  We are sad to see the trip end, but I suppose it has to end at some point.  We have looked forward to moving into our first home together for quite some time and finally being in the same city together all the time.

Summary of our travels:

National Parks: Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, Olympic, Crater Lake, Redwood, Yosemite, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Carlsbad Caverns

Major Cities: Seattle, Portland, San Franisco, LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, San Antonio

Theme Parks: Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Six Flags Over Texas, Six Flags Fiesta

National Monuments: Devils Tower, White Sands

Six Flags Over Texas and Twins Game (Thursday)

Our final stop on our trip was in Dallas, TX.  We spent the majority of the day at Six Flags Over Texas.  We rode all of the roller coasters and a few other exciting rides.  It was our second favorite theme park on the trip (after Six Flags Magic Mountain).

After the fun filled day at the theme park, we headed over to Lincoln Square, which is near the park (and the Rangers and Cowboys stadiums).  We went to a pub for dinner and happy hour.  Meanwhile, we noticed a lot of people with Rangers gear on.  Then we realized that they were playing the Twins that night, so we decided to get some cheap tickets and go to the game!  We had a lot of fun at the game, and it was our first Twins game of the year (in TEXAS)! 

That is how we spent our final night on our road trip.  The next morning, we got up at 6:20, and we were on the road to Rochester by 6:45.  We made it back at around 11pm.  We drove from Dallas to Rochester in one day!  It was a long day, but it did not seem all that bad!

 

The Stadium

 

We moved a little bit closer

 

Patrick, enjoying the game

Six Flags Fiesta Texas, The Alamo, San Antonio Riverwalk (Tuesday)

Yesterday, we went to Six Flags Fiesta Texas, which is right outside of San Antonio, TX.  It was a fairly small park, and fortunately it was not very busy.  We went on all of the rides that we wanted to (more than once) by about 3pm, so we left and went to see the Alamo.  My brother, Kristofer, loved Davy Crockett when we were little.  He had a fake raccoon hat, and we used to watch the video that we rented numerous times from the library and play "Davy Crockett."  That's all I could think of as we headed to the Alamo.  We toured the buildings and watched a short film on the Alamo.  It was an interesting place.

The Alamo is right near the San Antonio Riverwalk, so after we toured it, we walked around the walkways. What a cool place! We had dinner at a restaurant called "The Republic of Texas" and sipped on some delicious margaritas and sangria.  After dinner, we treated ourselves to some delicious ice cream in waffle cones.

 

The Alamo

 

 

One of the cannons

 

 

Patrick, standing at the entrance to the courtyard

 

 

Entrance to the barracks

 

 

The main doors

 

The statue that Texas created to remember the Alamo!

 

 

San Antonio Riverwalk

 

Beautiful!

 

 

Justin, I see it in your future that you and Mary will own an ice cream shop!

 

Yummy! Strawberry Margarita.

 

Mmm. Sangria

 

Finished off the night with delicious ice cream.

 

 

 

Carlsbad Caverns (Sunday and Monday)

On Sunday, we drove from White Sands National Monument to Carlsbad, New Mexico.  Let's just say that driving in New Mexico is worse than Iowa, Wyoming, or Montana (hard to believe it could get worse, huh?).  It was so boring!  We felt like we were in the middle of nowhere the entire time we were driving.  After setting up Colbie, we relaxed for a bit before heading to Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  We took two self-guided tours of the cave, toured around the visitors center a bit, and watched a short film about Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Cave (in Kentucky).  We were going to watch thousands of bats fly out of the cave at sunset, but we decided not to drive back to the park after dinner.  We hear that it is a neat experience though!

When we first got to the park, we rode the elevator down about 800 feet, toured the "Big Room."  The "Big Room" is enormous!  It is the second largest single room in a cave!  It is the size of 4 football fields (if I remember correctly)!  It was neat to see the different formations within the huge room.  We finished the afternoon by taking the "Natural Entrance Tour."  Instead of taking the elevators out of the cave, we hiked about 1.25 miles out of the cave.  Again, it was interesting to see the different formations along the pathways.  This cave is huge!  It's grand size is nothing compared to the cave that I have been to in Minnesota (Mystery Cave, not far from Rochester).

On Monday, we did the Kings Palace tour at Carlsbad Caverns.  It was actually the only guided tour we could sign up for.  If you are ever planning a trip to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, book your cave tours well in advance (if you would like to do a more "off the beaten path" cave tour).  We wish that we would have booked a cave tour further in advance, for it would have been neat to do a more primitive cave tour.  But, the tour we did do was great for families and people without much time at the National Park.  The ranger taught us about the founding of the cave, early explorations, and just some general history about Carlsbad Caverns.  It was very interesting!  Once the cave tour (about an hour and a half) was finished, we headed on our way to Texas! 

First entering the cave 

 

Neat formations!

 

 

Patrick, posing for a picture



 

Nice, natural-looking lighting

 

 

A narrow passageway

 

Look at that huge stalagmite

 

One of the first ladders used to explore the cave

 

 

Ahh, we're trapped in here :)

 

I think this is called the "Whale's Mouth"

 

 

Looks like a waterfall!

 

 

Veiled Statue formation

 

 

This one is called the "Lion's Tail"

 

 

Petrified Forest National Park and White Sands National Monument (Saturday)

Today (Saturday) was a driving day.  We drove from the Grand Canyon to White Sands National Monument. About 3 hours into our trip, we stopped at Petrified Forest National Park.  It was right off the highway, so we thought, "Why not? We have a national park pass anyways."  It was pretty cool to see the petrified wood.  We walked a couple of short trials before making lunch and heading on our way.  We purchased a piece of petrified wood for a decoration for our new home!  We haven't bought very many souvenirs (we don't like non-useful items), but this should make a pretty neat end table decoration!

Boy, we drove through a nasty rain storm on the way to our campground today!  It was kind of close to our campground, so we hurried as we set up the camper.  Fortunately it did not rain on us while we were outside!  Once we were all set up, we sped down the road to catch the sunset at White Sands National Monument.  We got there in time, but there was not too much of a sunset to see tonight.  There were a lot of rain clouds moving in.  If you ever are in New Mexico, near the area, we would definitely suggest stopping at this national monument.  It was very cool!  We will let the pictures speak for themselves!

Oh, and just for those of you who are interested, our trip is coming to an end in one week.  We will return to Rochester a week from today (On Saturday, August 25th… my Dad's birthday!).  Our final destinations are White Sands National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Six Flags near Dallas, TX, and Six Flags in St. Louis, MO.  We have quite a bit of driving in the next week to get back to Minnesota!  We are sad to see our trip coming to a close, but we are excited to move to our first home together once we get back to Minnesota (well, besides our pop-up camper; we did live in it for the first 2 months of our marriage. Hehe) And, we are looking forward to seeing our family and friends… it's been awhile!

Very cool colors!

Standing by a bunch of them

The logs broke up but stayed in a line

It looks like a rock

An awesome one that kept the lines like a tree

A large broken up log

Patrick, sitting on a large petrified log

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Our view as we drove into White Sands National Monument

We watched the sunset

I love him!

See the dark sky... here comes the storm!

So windy!

Looks like heaven

Patrick, carving a heart in the sand

Gorgeous sky (and husband)!

Love forever

Posing in the sand

That's me, heading to the top of that sand dune

The ripples that the wind made in the sand

When we were driving, the sand looked like snow!

Grand Canyon - Day 2 (Friday)

Grand Canyon Day 2 was my 23rd birthday!  I woke up to note from Patrick saying that he tried to throw me a great birthday party, but our friends didn't want to come to Arizona for the party.  What friends I have…  Instead, I'd have to settle for a present… an Ipad! Don't I have a great husband?

We spent the day hiking in the Park.  We started the day with a 6 mile hike down into the canyon.  The hike was 3 miles down and 3 miles back up.  We hiked to Skeleton Point from the South Kaibab Trailhead.  Well, the first three miles were easy… then we had to hike back out of the canyon.  Wow, the hike back out was steep, but it was worth it.  It was so neat to be hiking in the Grand Canyon.  The Grand Canyon is about 5,000 feet deep (down to the Colorado River).  We hiked down about 2,000 feet.  So, we'd have to double that hike plus hike another 1,000 feet just to get down to the river.  Whew, that would be difficult to hike back up.  The park strongly discourages any groups from hiking farther than we did in one day.  We brought 4 bottles of water and drank all of them on our way out of the canyon!  We were hungry for some lunch when we got back to the shuttle station, so Patrick treated me to lunch at the pizza pub in Maswik Lodge in the Park.  Delicious! And, ordering a pizza didn't seem to be so overpriced, compared to other National Park restaurants.

After lunch, we hiked the rim trail for about 3 miles back to the Visitor's Center, where our car was parked.  By the time we got to our car, I was very tired!  We did a lot of hiking yesterday, and the hike back out of the canyon wiped me out!

After I mustered up the energy to take a shower back at the camper, Patrick took me out to dinner at a steakhouse in the little town we were staying in.  We finished off the evening with the birthday cake Patrick made from scratch in the camper… wait, we don't have an oven.  We had Frosty's for my birthday dessert from Wendy's while watching the lightning storm roll in.  (If you know us well, you'd know that Patrick and I love to get ice cream.  If you've followed the blog regularly, you've probably picked up on that.)

The mule deer we saw as we entered the park yesterday

A picture of Patrick as we started our hike into the canyon

Down we go

An awesome overlook!

Very neat views!

See me on that point out there?

Wow! The canyon is so huge!

 

A crow flying over the canyon

At an overlook on the Rim Trail

 

Are the views or my husband more attractive? Haha!

An awesome picture that Patrick took as the sun was going down and clouds were rolling in

Birthday dessert!

See that lightning on the right? Patrick was changing the settings on the camera.

Just caught a little bit of that lightning streak

Then there were some beautiful stars out