Yay for road trips! Nothin like packin up the car, having a bag of snacks and cooler of yummy food in the back seat, good music playing, and hittin' the road. I must admit, it's much more fun being the mom in the front seat with a good book rather than one of the kids squished in the back seat. Ohhh the memories of countless road trips as a kid going from CA to UT in the backseat of our brown station wagon or blue and white 12 passenger van....a big tub of melted gummi worms, food that started to taste all the same like "cooler", fighting over not crossing the invisible line in the seat, sleeping on pillows, watching for the hills of windmills, driving through endless desert...good times. Kinda. Mom and Dad were troopers!
It's pretty easy with one now...there's just the matter of making sure she has everything she could possibly want, right there within arms reach. Blankie: check. Water: check. Books: check. Fruit snacks and fishies: check. Doll, sunglasses, juice, etc.: check. (I hate turning around in the car, cuz I get kinda sick, so I try to minimize the need to do so). When we have 3 or 4 kids, it'll be a different story, I'm sure!
Anyways, we had planned this little jaunt to St. George back in like January. We had a free 2 night hotel stay from an RC Willey purchase, so we decided on St. George in May. It'd be nice and warm, but not too hot in the dead of summer, and it would be a nice welcome time for a vacation. We were looking forward to just getting away for a weekend as a family. We headed out on Friday morning, the 20th, and started the 5 hour or so drive down there. I'd made sure to ask some friends what was fun to do down there (even though we've both been there...it's fun to get new ideas and know what is good for kids to do, etc.) So I made up a little list of stuff we could stop and see and places to go, if we felt like it. First stop in Santaquin, which really was only 10 minutes after we'd stopped in Springville at Britt's house to grab something, but we couldn't pass up The Red Barn!
Esther wrote about it on her blog and said they had really good ice cream, and that's about all it takes to make me want to go somewhere, especially when I'm pregnant. :) Ice cream is my love, these days. So even though it was 10 am, we stopped and shared 3 scoops of some of the best homemade *hard* ice cream I've ever had! Mmm I want to go back right now. So thanks, Esther. ;)
This was Cami entertaining herself in the car for a lil bit. She's taken to chanting "BYU, BYU!" I think I taught her last year during football season or something, and it stuck. Woo hoo! Atta girl. Already chanting her Alma Mater (much to Jake's chagrin).
And this is what it looked like on the way down, right around Cedar City. Crazy that it can be cold and snowy in one town, and then sunny and warm in the next. We were glad to leave this behind.
However, when we DID make it to St. George, I was disappointed in the dumb weather forecast which had said clear skies, high 70's. It was super overcast and windy, and started to rain right when we got there. Boo. But we stopped at Jake's choice of lunch: In N Out. (even though they have them all over now, he likes the authenticity of the good ol' St. George location). Check out Cam's face, hehe.
With a pile of fries, ketchup, and strawberry lemonade in front of her, she was one happy camper! I'm not really a burger person, but I did enjoy mine. The fries aren't my favorite though, they have a weird texture and just aren't as good as others (I'd choose Mcdonald's or Wendy's fries). But it was fun.
We stayed at the Lexington Hotel, right on Bluff Rd. off of the boulevard. It was nice....used to be a Holiday Inn, and they beefed it up to a conference center/hotel with free hot breakfast every morning, and fridges and microwaves in every room. Woohoo! The little pleasures of knowing you can stick leftovers in your fridge and make some popcorn if you desire. So after we checked in, we headed out again and did some sightseeing. We stopped at the Jacob Hamblin house in Santa Clara, which was a really pretty location. It's one of the church historical sites in that area, and we met a nice grandma sister missionary who gave us the tour.
A cool view of the red rocks...
I'd read about a trail you can take to see petroglyphs on big boulders (Anasazi Trail), so we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere amongst these llamas (or alpacas?).
And although we did find the trail, it turned out to be 3.5 miles, with the petroglyphs being most likely at the end, cuz we sure didn't see any. We weren't prepared for a full on hike, so we only walked a little ways through the desolation.
On the way back, we saw this place:
Jake thought that was pretty cool. Next, we headed into town and stopped at Ancestor Square. Had to get a few pictures!
:) Good one.
And THEN we headed to Cami's favorite spot of the trip: the splash pad! That's what they call these little areas downtown that I guess are getting more popular all over, where kids can romp around in water and fountains. It was actually pretty cool that day, so almost no one else was there.
Awwww. Hugs. (wasn't prompted, she just felt the urge to hug the statue).
And we had been telling Cami ALL week that she could go swimming when we got to St. George, and that was the first thing she said when she woke up that morning in her crib. SO, we went back to our hotel and threw on the swimsuits and got in the freezing water. It was both an indoor and outdoor pool, but it was all cold, and we didn't last long! But Cami loved having Dad throw her up in the air, and floating in her little floaty ring with her lifejacket on.
We enjoyed Cafe Rio in our room for dinner to finish off the fun day. Stay tuned for the rest!
3 comments:
I think we did that same hike for petroglyphs. We hiked forever and then decided to turn around because we couldn't find them. Some people were nice enough to show us where they were. They were kind of off the trail down a little cliff. Yeah, we never would have found them on our own either.
Cute hug for the statue! Reminds me of when she bent down to kiss the metal duckling at Thanksgivin Point. Sweet girl. Love her BYU chant! =)
I'm glad you had such a fun trip! Sounds like you had lots of yummy food! :) And I love your little description of our childhood road trips. What about the "busy box" I'd work so hard on to prepare? Or maybe that just had stuff in it for me to play with... don't remember. :) We survived, somehow!
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