June 17

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.

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.

June 15

Today was a leisurly day; we slept in, ate breakfast, and left then Lauren's Uncle took us on a tour to see the mountains.  We saw Bridal Falls, and put our feet in the frigid pool of water at the bottom.  The water fell almost softly down the side of rock for a long way, hit the ground, and then splashed down a hill of stones into a small pool.  We then drove over to Sundance, where we were going to take the chair lift up the mountain.  However, Sundance apparently has the sixth longest zipline in the world...of course, this was something that needed to be done.  But, we were wearing flip flops (I hate shoes), and you have to be wearing close toed shoes.  So we drove back to the house, ate Subway, got shoes, and went back.  However, a thunderstorm appeared while we were gone, and the lift and ziplining were closed for the day.  This was very sad.  Lauren was very convinced we still needed to do this insane activity, so we are just leaving later tomorrow instead of right away...

I'm a little nervous about being up so high (again!) but I think it will be interesting to zipline so far.  We will be going 3,871 feet. Seems kind of scary, but I guess worth a try.

June 14

More driving today.  Lauren drove most of the time; we listened to the rest of our book on cd, so the drive wasn't to bad.  We saw the salt flats, and lots and lots of nothingness.  I did not like the desert.  Its so bare, and dead.   There seem to be almost no life anywhere.
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.

Today started with quite an adventure.  After waking up and having breakfast at 4am, we headed down to the beach and arrived just after 5 when the morning light was just showing in the sky.  We had flashlights, and walked down to the tide pools again.  Because of the cliffs, it was quite a long walk from the car. What a grand adventure!  Lowest tide was at 4am, and the water was still out pretty far when we arrived. We saw three large starfish, and three small ones, lots and lots of sea anemones, mussels, shrimp, and other critters I can't identify.  We stayed on the beach for about two hours; what a lovely experience to see the sun peek over the mountains and trees, and shine on the waves.
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. 

June 12

We first went to a redwood forest.  What an amazing experience.  The trees are magnificent.  So much beauty, and life.  The largest are hundreds of years old, and probably more thant 20 feet in diameter. Lauren and I both took lots of photos, and enjoyed several hours there.
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.