Quickest, spur of the moment road trip!

There is a girl in our ward, Vanessa, who is an exchange student from Germany.  She goes home next Monday, and she hadn't been down to see any of our beautiful National Parks yet.  After taking her up to see the Kennicot Copper Mine on Saturday morning, Adam and I started making plans to do a quick Utah road trip so that she could see our beauties.

We called up Vanessa and made sure that she would be able to take a quick trip.  We went and picked up Vanessa and Cassie at 6:00 pm.  We made it down to Cedar City.  My sister, Teresa, let us stay at her house for the night while she was up here visiting family. (It was a terrible night with Brody... he screamed and cried for hours.  I think it was just the difference it atmosphere that was hard for him).  We headed out the next morning for Zion's National Park.  It didn't take too long to get there.  We decided that we had enough time to do the scenic drive on the shuttle bus.  It had been years since I had gone.  It was so beautiful!  We were all in complete and utter awe.

We left after enjoying the beautiful scenery.  We headed North planning on just going to the hotel in Salina for the night.  On the way, we pulled up a map and realized that we could take a short detour off SR89 and go see Bryce Canyon and still make it to the hotel with some time left for relaxing before bed.  We were SOOO glad we took that detour.  I had never been to Bryce Canyon before and it was absolutely incredible!!

I can't believe that I had never been to Bryce Canyon before (at least, I don't remember going there before).  It was absolutely amazing!

We headed to our hotel for the night.  We got there and checked in.  I went back to the lobby to find out if we could get a roll away bed... and I heard people speaking Italian.  There was a couple from Italy doing a cross-country trip on a motorcycle.  It was fun to talk to them.  The night was a lot better, but with some difficulties still.

We woke up early Monday morning to get to Moab early.  We got there and got some breakfast and then headed into Arches National Park.  We drove in to Delicate Arch, but saw some pretty cool things on the way.  We hiked up to Delicate Arch with Mason on my back and Adam helping Brody.  It was an easy hike, but still a little more difficult than normal, because we had extra weight. Then we saw a few more arches close to the road and headed out.  We drove by way of Manti, so Vanessa could see the temple.  We stopped for dinner with Adam's parents and headed home.  Needless to say we were all tired from our quick whirlwind trip.