Road Trip to Utah

We recently took a vacation to Utah to see my parents new home and hang out with my parents and my oldest sister and her family. It is a 20 hour trip without stops. We are pretty good about limiting our stops, but it still took us around 25 hours. We did the trip in two days.

We have gone on many road trip and the boys do a really good job. The boys watch movies, play gameboys, read, and watch more movies. This time was different. Before we left Chad informed the boys that they would only be able to watch three movies the first day in the car and two movies the second day, oh and there would be no gameboys. I was taken back by this announcement. Chad's explanation was that we would be driving through some pretty country and he didn't want the boys to miss it. I agreed, but I was a little worried. The first day was the longest day and I was worried about how restless they would get. My worries were unfounded though, because the boys did a fantastic job! I am glad that Chad is inspired. I think the car trip was more enjoyable because the boys didn't have their eyes glued to a screen. Instead they had fun with each other, they took naps, and they saw some beautiful scenery. It was fun to hear the boys get excited about seeing mountains. Every time Devon saw a mountain he would announce to everyone in the car that he saw another mountain (so we heard it a lot!). The boys saw faces in the rock formations and rivers running beside the road.

Taken with the camera phone (Tanner is in the middle somewhere)

The boys did do a couple of things that made us laugh. Every couple of hours Devon would ask what time it was. No matter what time we told him Devon would respond with, "Still??"! On one day it was nearing lunch time and the boys were hungry. We wanted to drive a little further so we said we would stop in a little while. Trevor's response was classic. He said, "A little while for you guys means a long time for us." We had a good laugh over that one!!

The drive was really beautiful. We were looking forward to driving through the mountains, but I also loved the plains. The sky was so blue and the clouds were so white and billowy. It reminded me of the movie Toy Story. The boy's room had sky wallpaper with clouds on it. Every time I see the wallpaper I think there isn't really a sky like that, but I was wrong. The sky was so beautiful.

I love that sky!

The mountains were equally beautiful! We stopped the first night in Vail Colorado. It was about 11:30 pm when we pulled into the hotel and I was sad that we had driven through the beautiful mountains in the dark. When I woke up, however, I was met with an awesome site! Chad and I decided that we are going to save our money and move to Vail. We loved breathing in the fresh mountain air! I got my camera out to capture that wonderful feeling of being in the mountains.

I took pictures of the mountains as drove from Colorado to Utah. I was so excited to see the pictures once they were downloaded. Pictures are rarely as beautiful as the real thing, but here are some shots from our drive.

Check out the cool rainbow we saw

The car trip went so well and we made such good time that we arrived in Utah much earlier than we had expected. The boys were so anxious as we got closer. Tanner was so eager to get to Utah that every time we stopped he wanted to keep going. He would have loved to drive through the night! As we got closer to my parents house though, Tanner was so anxious that he thought we were never going to get there. We had to go through Spanish Fork Canyon. We told the boys that Nana and Papa's house was on the other side of the mountains. The boys thought the canyon would never end. It is funny to note that later on in our visit, we came to a fork in the road where you could turn left and go into town or you could turn right and go into a canyon. Kaden saw the canyon and he said something like, "Oh no, a canyon, turn left, turn left."!!! The other boys agreed with him!

We decided to surprise my parents with our early arrival. It was fun to quietly go up and knock on the door. It was fun to see my Dad's excited face when he saw us standing there. It was a great start to a wonderful vacation!