We took a massive summer road trip this year. By far, the most complex vacation as far as planning goes. Lots of stops and places to visit. In addition, nearly all of the parks required reservations to enter and tour months on advance. It was fun to plan and even more fun to enjoy the trip with everyone. Initially, we planned a New England trip for the summer. But some family plans in Joseph's family changed our direction. So we will do New England next summer. Since we had to go to Utah in late July, we planned a trip around it. We also have about 8-10 vacations we want to do with the kids. So to switch gears to Utah, we wanted to include one of our vacation plans with it. Rocky Mountains was on the list so that was our final destination. We hit up 5 national parks (thanks for Ashton and her 4th grade pass)!
We broke the first drive up into two days. Getting to west Texas is far- 12-13 hours far. Doing that in one day as our very first day felt like a lot. We left late afternoon and drove west of San Antonio near a state park. It has a river to tube down. It was SLOW tubing though! Joseph had to get out a lot and tug us along. We also did a short hike to a scenic overlook. After the state park, we finished driving to Carlsbad, New Mexico.
We stayed two nights in Carlsbad to visit Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We got reservations for two cave tours, one for the whole family and the other for the older 3 kids. After the tours, we made a quick drive to Guadalupe Mountains. There isn't much to do there, especially in the heat of July. The kids talk about going back and hiking the peak there. We did a short hike, saw the visitors center, and drove back to Carlsbad Caverns. At night, the bats come out of the caves there so we wanted to back in time for that. It was very cool! 450,000 (estimated) bats come flying out right at dusk.
Next leg of the trip was driving to White Sands and Alamogordo. On the drive, we stopped in Lincoln National Forest and did a pretty hike there. White Sands was fun. We spent the morning there, sledding on the dunes, building castles, and enjoying the nice weather. Lydia didn't love sledding; she preferred to dig in the sand. Ashton and I also drove out to a New Mexico State Park to see the sunset one night.
After White Sands, we had a long day drive to Mesa Verde, Colorado. We
stopped in Albuquerque. My phone quit working at the start of the trip
so we were able to find a Best Buy to pick up a replacement. Then we
visited a cool national monument with petroglyphs.
We spent a day
at Mesa Verde National Park. As luck would have it, a family from our
ward was also road tripping the same time and our plans lined up to be
in Mesa Verde on the same day. We did one big tour with them plus a few
other things. The tours in Mesa Verde have varying degrees of
difficulty. The whole family could do Cliff Palace. Balcony House
required climbing a 32 foot ladder unassisted. I didn't trust Lydia and
Gemma on that so just the older 2 kids did it with me. Also,
reservations at the park are difficult to get. Some sold out right at
9am when I logged in to make them. So we got what we got. The cliff
dwellings were very cool. So neat to see how much has been preserved and
how much work went into building the dwellings. After our day in the
park, we went back to our rental home. It was on a farm and we got to
see a baby calf and all the farm animals there. The kids loved seeing
the cats and chickens everywhere.
After Mesa Verde, we continued
north to Utah for 4 days. We celebrated Joseph's parents' 50th wedding
anniversary. We also ran the Temple to Temple 5K again. We've done that
before and really enjoy it. Gemma and Lydia surprised me by running a
fair share of it. The older two kids and Joseph went rock climbing and
rappelling one day with Joseph's brother. We got to see some old friends
who lived in Texas but moved to Utah a few years ago. The whole family
did a hike to Timpanogos Caves and got to tour it. Lydia walked with her
cousin, Caleb, the entire time. The caves were a unique tour compared
to Carlsbad. Much smaller walking spaces!
After Utah, we drove
east to Rocky Mountains! We spent 5 days there and I would love another
week. We stayed the first night on the west side of the park. The first
day, we did a water fall hike on the west side and then drove across
Trail Ridge Road, the highest elevation paved road. No guardrails
either! It has a bunch of view points so we stopped a lot. We found
snow, which made the kids happy.
We spent the next 4 days on the
Estes Park side, which is more accessible to all the main trails and
parts of the park. One favorite of the kids was Alluvial Fan. It was a
waterfall but slow enough to play in. The kids climbed everywhere. We
spent several hours there. One night, I took Gemma and Ashton on a
sunset walk, which was beautiful. We saw a huge elk on our way out,
which made the girls happy. We hiked a ton each day and saw lots of
wildlife. We also found water to play in every day, which the kids loved
too. My favorite part of the park was the ability to just play and be
free. We found pullouts along the rivers/streams each day where we could
eat lunch and just play in the water with no restrictions. I think only
1-2 lakes in the park do not allow swimming. Otherwise, you're free to
get wet and walk around.
We spent our mornings and afternoons in
the park. Then we'd regroup at the rental house and watch summer
Olympics. One day, we stopped at Estes Lake and had a great lake
afternoon there. Estes Park is a tourist-y town but we didn't venture
into the town much. We avoided all the attractions and restaurants,
which was nice.
On the way home from Colorado, we stopped at
Palo Duro Canyon State Park in Amarillo and Dinosaur Valley State Park
outside Dallas. They were fun stops to break up the long days of
driving. All in all, we were gone for 20 days. I don't think anyone
completely lost it until the last night in a hotel. I consider that a win. We can't wait for next year's road trip.
