August 1st -
well.
there are three weeks left of summer. That happened fast. I was expecting to have a post every day or every few days on my vacation, but obviously that didn’t happen. Collectively, we had 9,000 photos from the trip, so it was a little overwhelming to go through them all every day, and after the first few days, I just gave up. Here are a few highlights (be sure to click all the links for photos!):
We toured the Celestial Seasonings tea factory. It was pretty cool. They have a room full of mint that will make your eyes water. Then we went antiquing and I wrestled a bear.
Day three, we drove to Delta, CO. Along the way, we stopped at scenic overlooks, explored summertime Vail, found an abandoned marble processing facility, and went hiking in an aspen forest. It was a fairly scenic drive.
Day four, we left Delta, drove through increasingly red, rocky, arid terrain until we got to the full-fledged desert of Moab, UT. We took an impulsive dirt-road detour that turned into a 30-mile back route that put us near where we wanted to be. We got out and took photos a few times along the way.
We went to the Colorado National Monument state park, and hiked around for a bit. It’s this enormous canyon that has a road all around the rim so you can drive around gawking at the immensity of it all. There are also plenty of trails to go on, which we certainly took advantage of.
Once we got into Utah, the scenery changed completely. Everything was dry, red, and rocky. We took this super-scenic back way into Moab that snaked its way alongside the Colorado River, with the looming red canyon walls on either side of it. It was really pretty.
On the fifth day, we went into Arches National Park in Moab, where we took the “fiery furnaces” tour, which was fantastic.
Then we did some more exploring in Arches National Park and headed back to Denver. Along the way, we stopped and went ATVing in the mountains. It was lots of fun!
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August 19th -
well.
There is one day left of summer. I leave for Pittsburgh tomorrow. Just sayin. I completely failed at the whole blog thing this summer, so for that I apologize. I’ll eventually get pictures up from the rest of the trip… but that probably means never haha.
For now, I’m hitting “reset” and pretending like I didn’t just not mention practically everything that happened this summer.
TIME FOR SCHOOL!
