Phil and Megan's Blog

Megan’s Take We said goodbye to Capitol Reef National Park this morning and headed to Moab UT. En route, we stopped at Goblin Valley State Park. The valley is covered in sandstone goblins and formations (or “castles” according to Emilia and Emmett) which the kids had an absolute blast exploring. It was as fun for […]

Megan’s Take Today we hiked the Grand Wash trail in Capitol Reef National Park. The kids and I walked at least 2 miles out and back, and Phil went a bit further. It’s a very easy, flat walk along a dry wash with canyon walls towering above you. One of the cool parts of the […]

Megan’s Take Today was our first day at Capitol Reef National Park. It’s crazy how the mountains and plateaus are uplifted and tilted – like everything at an angle – and how many layers are visible. The kids are too much of a distraction to dive into the geology of the area while traveling, but […]

Megan’s Take Today we traveled down scenic highway 12 from Bryce Canyon UT to Torrey UT. The views are AMAZING. From a random Google search today, I actually discovered that Car and Driver magazine rated this as one of the top 10 scenic drives in the U.S. Our first stop on the drive was Kodachrome […]

Megan’s Take We started our day early at Bryce Canyon National Park, because I really wanted to do the Queen’s Garden/Navajo Loop without any threat of afternoon thunderstorms. I knew it would take our kids a while to complete, and I didn’t want any weather/time pressure. The loop descends into the Bryce Canyon amphitheater where […]

Megan’s Take Today we said goodbye to the Hurricane/Zion area and headed northeast to Bryce UT. It was difficult to make solid plans for the day, because the threat of thunderstorms loomed all afternoon on my weather app. BUT it actually cleared, and we had blue skies and sunshine most of the day. We settled […]

Megan’s Take Yesterday was a busy day in Zion. After the Watchman Trail, which Emilia did such a great job on, the kids and I turned in their Junior Ranger packet at the Zion visitor center, attended a ranger talk, went to the nature center, and walked down the Pa’rus trail and back. (I did […]

Phil’s Take Megan is sitting this one out today, so you’ll have to settle with just my commentary on today’s activities. This was an early morning again, because Zion has parking issues if you don’t get there early. The kids both needed to be woken up and Emmett especially was not happy about it. We […]

Megan’s Take We slept in until 7:30 am today, which we really needed. I could tell a difference in the kids, because they were very peppy on our morning hike at Snow Canyon State Park. We saw lava tubes, petrified dunes, cool rocks, and a small slot canyon. We did a combination of trails (Petrified […]

Megan’s Take We had Zion National Park on the agenda for today. We managed to get up and out before 7 am this morning so that we could get a parking spot at the visitor center. The alternative is to park in the town of Springdale and take a town shuttle into the park, but […]