Friday, June 30, 2017

Vacation to the west!

Once again, it's vacation time!  Normally, I try to write every day we are travelling, yet most days I've been too tired to get to it (mommy does nearly all the driving, by choice :))  Anyhow, it's rather late (again!), but I wanted to at least note the highlights of what we have done so far...

Day 1: we traveled from home all the way to Cheyenne, WY.  Basically, just a really long day in the car.  You did great, though--you're a wonderful car traveler!

Day 2: From Cheyenne, we made our way over to Dinosaur National Monument.  This was a very neat site with amazing fossils.  We stayed in a hotel in Vernal, UT and had very yummy local pizza.  This area seems really cool--we all said we'd like to come back and explore more.

Day 3: This day was spent mainly driving, with a stop at Bruneau Dunes State Park in Idaho.  The sand dunes looked really cool, but the temperature on them (dark sand) was burning hot--so much for mommy's idea to try sledding on them (note: this idea cam from when daddy and I went to White Sands National Monument in NM a few years ago--you can do this there (and we will...))!  We stayed in a nice hotel in Boise this night.

Day 4: We drove to Collier Memorial State Park in Oregon to camp out for two nights.  The campground was wonderful (apart from mosquitoes--and yes, I did remember the OFF! this time!)--only drawback is that it is not near any real towns.  We had to drive to Klamath Falls (around 35 min one-way) to get dinner because it looked like it was going to storm (were going to grill originally).  You loved watching The Muppet Show on my laptop in the tent just before bed :)

Day 5: This was a super full day of fun--we started with going to Crater Lake National Park, where there was still snow on half of the park, so we were limited on what we could do (we did a short hike along the lake).  After this, we lunched back at the campground, then went to the Train Mountain Railroad Museum.  This place was really cool and you loved it--tons of old train cars, several of which you could go inside.  We returned to the campground, took a short break, then walked over to the logging museum that is also part of the park.  Your favorite part of this was going inside each of the cabins.  Think you will really love when we camp in a cabin tomorrow night...

Day 6: This day was spent driving from Collier to South Lake Tahoe, where we stayed in a hotel near the main strip.  We walked to the beach (hotel gave us a pass for the private beach!) and you were delighted to discover a playground on the the beach (and I was surprised, as I'd never seen such a thing).  You 'made friends' with a kid whose mommy said is normally super shy and we also dipped our feet in the lake (water temp was 63°F--not swimming temp, but wading felt great!)  We walked along the strip and ended up having overpriced pizza for dinner (was good, very similar to MOD pizza back home).

Day 7: From Lake Tahoe, we headed across Nevada to stay in a hotel in Ely.  The original plan had been to camp in Great Basin National Park this night, but the forecast low was to be 37°F--too cold for our comfort, especially for yours since you still don't like to sleep under any covers except your blankies (which mommy sewed into one big blanket just before the trip).  Thus, mommy opted to book a hotel and we just visited the park that evening instead.  The drive up Wheeler Peak was amazing.  We did a short loop hike once we got to the top and then came back down, stopping at a couple of viewpoints along the way.  Originally, I had also wanted to get the telescope out and check out the stars under the lovely dark sky, but we were all too tired after going out for dinner at a yummy Mexican restaurant post-drive.

Day 8 (today): Last night you stayed up way too late (past mommy and daddy!) and suffered for it, as we had to get up a bit early (7am) to make sure we could arrive for the Lehman Caves tour at Great Basin at 9am.  We got there with 10 minutes to spare (mommy goofed and missed a turn...oops).  The tour was an hour and a half long--you were doing well until about the 1 hour mark, then you got a bit testy.  Still managed to enjoy the awesome cave, though--we even saw 2 bats flying around during the tour!  We then drove across Utah and stopped at several view points along the way, one of which had a cool mini-hike out on a natural overlook of a huge canyon.  Mommy broke her thumbnail here (owie!) when we sat down to go down the the little rock stairs at the midpoint.  We had considered stopping at Arches NP, but by the time we'd done all these little view point places, you were tiring out and ready for the hotel (as were we), so we came here.  We went out for dinner (very good) and then swam a bit in the very large indoor pool before calling it a night.

Whew!  I'll do my best to update the next few nights, too--we've got a couple more before home.  Love you lots, little travel companion :)