I made the kids get up early (7 AM is early now) so I could have them eat breakfast and we could hopefully get some tickets to tour the Cliff Palace. But umm, I didn't look up when they actually opened to start selling them. I should have and then I should have gone myself to the tourist office in town to buy them. By the time we arrived (8:30ish AM) they were all sold out for the morning tours, although they still had afternoon ones. But we had to drive home before that. Anyway, we drove up to go look at the Cliff Palace and other places. But literally, by the time we even stopped just at the Cliff Palace to look at it, everyone had died--even Leo. Nobody wanted to look at anything or even get out of the car. So we drove home. It's a pretty desolate drive I have to say. The biggest town we went through was Grand Junction, CO. But for the most part we never had cell service and were in the middle of nowhere. We had to jog back in to Utah, going through Monticello and Moab and then to 1-70(?) to Grand Junction then up through Palisade and Rifle, CO. Leo and I found lots of places we want to retire. First and foremost, Mesa Verde Valley right by Cortez, CO because of the lovely reservoir for boating, and the whole area is beautiful. Or Meeker, CO. Or Rifle, CO. And then we almost hit a deer (it was a miracle we didn't hit it because it was less than a foot from our van, inches really.) And we saw elk, and bison, and antelope, and in Payson we saw a bald eagle. And more deer, luckily just off to the side of the road this time. And we stopped to change the kids' diapers somewhere just before we went into WY (near Baggs and Dixon) and Leo shut off our headlights and we were in complete blackness. It was weird. No one was on the road, there were no houses around for miles in any direction (in daylight you can see for miles and miles there). In Bryce Canyon they make a big fuss about how dark it is there and about it's lack of light pollution. It has nothing on Wyoming/northern Colorado. Oh, and one of the best parts of the drive home was that we stopped and got Dairy Queen treats for everyone, and they had my favorite Frozen Hot Chocolate. It was perfection. Leo got his favorite (I invented it for him, thank you, thank you) a Peanut Buster Parfait but with the hot fudge replaced with the chocolate cone dip. And the kids were all so excited to choose whatever they wanted. Lando was funny because he wanted something that looked "fancy" not just a blizzard. And it took a while but he finally ended up with a Peanut Buster Parfait without the peanuts. Otherwise we had the cheddarwursts straight from the package again near Moab and then scrounged around for the dregs of our snacks we had packed. Also not so great was listening to Eragon--the narrator's girl voices drove Leo and I crazy, it wasn't that well written anyway. Anyway, usually the drive home is rough--everyone tired and grumpy--but this was one of the smoothest drives we've been on with our kids. Yay!
I promise he was just on my lap while we drove at 10 mph from one viewing place to the next which was only minutes apart.
Can you see Shiprock?
There I zoomed in on this one, but it's in the other pictures too.
- Tour Balcony House or Cliff Palace
- Drive home to Rawlins
- Breakfast: cold cereal
1 comment:
Love the pictures of Jubal in the mirror! So cute!!! Also, now I'm hungry for DQ.
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