This was the last day of our road trip. Since it turned out to be such a long day, I postponed blogging about it until now.
We spent the night in a town in Colorado. We were up at 6, and left shortly after. We continued on towards Denver. Of course this meant driving through lots of mountains. At one point we were more than 11,000 feet above sea level. We even saw snow on the slopes right next to the road. We eventually left the mountains to drive through miles of farms. The road got flatter, and the snow covered mountains disappeared into the distance. We drove about 16 hours, finally arriving at Lauren's house about 2:30 am. It was very nice to be back in Wisconsin.
The trip was amazing. We saw such a variety of landscapes, cultures, and many memorable locations. Thank you to all who were following the blog posts!
I will be back to posting only once in awhile now.
Friday, June 19, 2015
June 17
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
June 16
The plan was to leave Salt Lake City bright and early. However, since a thunderstorm stopped us from ziplining yesterday, we decided to do it today. Our adventure actually started at noon, as that was the earliest available time slot.
I didn't love going up to the tip top of a mountain on a chair lift, or walking the top of said mountain, but I did really enjoy the actual ziplining!
We went on a short practice zipline first, then a series of 4 other lines, totally around 1.86 miles. We went down 2,100 feet.
They told us we could get going up to 70mph on the last stretch, which was 3,871 feet. I loved that; I tucked my knees up and went as fast as I could. What fun that part was!
We then had lunch at Culvers. That felt like home! (I am missing WI now!)
We headed to Denver. After about 5 hours we drove into some thunderstorms. Thunderstorms at night in the mountains was not great. I greatly dislike wipers that don't work perfectly, so we stopped at a Walmart. They didn't have what I wanted so we went to AutoZone. That was great because the guy there put them on the car for me. He also told me he thought it would be snowing up in the pass; he wouldn't drive to Denver in this weather. Lauren and I weren't super thrilled either, so we called around and found a hotel.
The crazy thing is we had already booked a hotel in Denver. Then a few hours later when we had phone service again, we saw it had bad reviews, and canceled it. Then booked a second hotel in Denver (we had to call a lot of hotels to even find a room.) Then I had to call and cancel that one too. They waived the cancelation fee since we hit bad weather, so that's nice at least.
Despite hitting bad weather, we did see a beautiful glimpse of Colorado first.
All in all, a crazy day.
Monday, June 15, 2015
June 15
Sunday, June 14, 2015
June 14

We are near Salt Lake City, which has quite a bit of beauty to it. I feel like we are in the center of a giant bowl. The mountains surround us on all sides. Several of Lauren's aunts and uncles live here.
We had fun tonight on the lake driving a jet boat. I loved that.
Seeing the sunset over the lake, behind the mountains was very pretty.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
We left Crescent City, California about 8:30 and drove for hours and hours. Through redwoods for a little, up and down mountains, back and forth on curves, then miles and miles of the high dessert. What a insane sight to see. So much nothingness. So odd. We listened to an audio book most of the way, which kept me happily entertained.
More driving tomorrow!
This is what was above the beach. |
The dessert is a strange place. |
Friday, June 12, 2015
June 12
We then drove back to the coast to tour Battery Point Lighthouse. It can only be reached during low tide as you must walk across a path of rocks to get to a small island. This small lighthouse has been lived in, and operated since before the Civil war.
While the tide was still out we quickly went over to Endert's beach to look for some tide pools. We had to walk along the beach quite aways before finding them, so the tide was coming back quickly. We did find several, and I think seeing them was probably one of the best parts of our trip so far. I love small aquatic creatures, and there were many. I didn't see any fish, but I did see lots of small mussels, anemones, snails, seaweed, and even one small starfish!
We left when the tide was covering the rocks, and headed back into town. Next visit was a small aquarium where we watched sea lions, and seals do tricks, pet more anemones, starfish, and sharks, and saw a few fish.
That was quite a few adventures for today! I loved it, and tomorrow is goodbye to the ocean.