T-minus 2days 7.5hrs

Well my countdown is a little funky, it’s actually the amount of time at work before the big vacation. Instead of a count down of actual time before now and vacation. Either way it is approaching fast and we are more than ready for it. Well we’re ready mentally…that doesn’t mean we’ve finished packing or have all our ducks in a row yet. But we’re workin on that every night and are getting close! The last few nights we’ve done nothing but check things off the list that need to get cleaned, packed, organized, and thought of before we go. We’ve never been on a two week vacation together and so there was a bit more planning that originally anticipated. I almost have all the directions figured out. We’ve decided to wing it on where we spend the nights…we’ll see where we are when we’re tired and find a place to stay. The tent received some extra waterproofing last night and tonight will be cleaned out. I’m about half packed. We need to bring clothing for every climate. In the desert the temps get above 100, but in the mountains the nights get down into the 30ies! brrr!!!

Here is a pic of a clean version of my car. It’s just a little Saturn that we are going to jam pack full of our stuff to take across country. We’re thinking we’ll take I80 across Iowa and Nebraska and then swing down to Colorado. We’ll spend a day or two in the Rocky Mountain National Park doing hikes and exploring the mountains. We’re both very excited about attempting a summit hike. We’ll have to keep them limited to the nontechnical hikes, but I’m ok w/ that. It’ll already be quite the challenge since we’re not giving ourselves much time to acclimate to the higher elevations.
Then we’re headed to Utah to see Arches National Park. Everyone I’ve talked to that has been through Utah raves about the parks here and the land and how beautiful and amazing it is. I wish we had time to see a couple of the parks, but we only have about a day and a half. We’ll spend that time in Arches.
After this short time we head to see Miranda in California. We plan to take the Loniest Road in America, Rt 50 through Nevada. This is the same route the pony express used to use back in the day. The entire 4 towns on this highway are all very historical mining towns from the 1800s. This road alone should be an adventure! Already our time in California is booked up. We’ll be spending our time visiting wineries in and around Napa Valley as well as possibly seeing a petrified forest. We’ve also discussed visiting Stow Lake in San Fransisco.
Our trip back East will be a little more leisurely. We’ll drive to the Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming and spend 3-4 days here. There’s lots to do but at this point we might just be happy with relaxing in beautiful scenery or on a nice hike. Then on Labor Day weekend we head home.

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