Driving to St. Louis we stopped overnight in three different locations. Our goals were (1) to see a bit of the beauty of the west, (2) to get a bit of exercise, (2b) to make sure Jessica kept up her 10,000 steps per day streak, (3) to avoid the heat of the middle of the day, and (4) to make all this happen during the time the cats were safely ensconced in a hotel room (see previous post).
Our first day’s drive took us to St. George, Utah. We’ve spent a lot of time there over the years, as Zion is one of our favorite national parks. We didn’t have time to drive into Zion and back the next morning (and the best hikes there are full day ones), so instead we headed just 15 minutes out of town to Snow Canyon State Park. This is a bit of a hidden treasure. It’s not as overwhelming in scope as Zion is, but it has some gorgeously colored and shaped formations. We hiked a loop through the center of the park (Hidden Pinyon/Red Sands to the Lava Tubes to the Petrified Dunes and back). It looked a little like this:
After our adventure in Snow Canyon we drove across Utah to Moab. It was a gorgeous drive, but the farther we got from California, the more we questioned what in the world was happening. It sure seemed like there wasn’t a pandemic in Utah. No one had a mask and most people looked at us pretty strangely if we wore ours indoors. Moab, being a bit more tourist-oriented seemed to have a bit stronger indoor-masking culture, but not much. Regardless, we weren’t interacting with too many people so it wasn’t that big a deal.
After some decent Thai and a better night of rest than the previous one (again, see post about the cats), we zipped into Arches National Park, which neither of us had been able to visit in almost 20 years. On the drive up we had a great view of the Colorado River valley where Moab is located and then took a gorgeous early-morning hike along “Park Avenue,” a typical steep-walled Colorado plateau wash.
Unfortunately, after our little 2 mile leg stretcher, we failed to get any more hiking in. We drove further into the park, but our next destination (the windows/double arch area) was completely parked up with a dozen cars circling like vultures for the first vacated spaces. With another drive ahead of us, we gave up on further hiking and headed back to town (where we did take a nice little walk along the Colorado River before packing up and moving on).
Leaving Moab we took a gorgeous drive along the Colorado River and passed the site where my dad and I famously had a car break down when I was 16 and driving cross country with him. We passed into Colorado and enjoyed the winding drive across the Rockies and into Denver. After unloading the cats and the car into a downtown hotel, we wandered through intermittent rain to attend a Cardinals vs. Rockies baseball game. When we arrived the tarp was on the field and they were announcing the game would be delayed. A smart usher pointed us to the upper deck seats that had a roof covering as we waited for the game start. It was a bit frustrating, but as the sun began to appear a little, we got a view of the most stunning rainbow.
We toured around for a bit to see how the rainbow (actually a double one) appeared over various parts of the city. Sadly, that was the best part of the evening, as, after a fun but low scoring game, the Cardinals managed to serve up a 3-run homer to the Rockies with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th. Alas, you can’t win them all…or, if you’re the Cardinals this year, you can’t win about half of ’em. (Good news: we did manage to get seats with basically no one sitting near us, which helped since according to nearly everyone there, the stadium was a pandemic-free zone.)
To cut a long story slightly shorter…the next day was a 12 hour drive across Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri. Bleh. But getting to St. Louis to see my family was a nice reward for all that time in the car…
Love all the photos!
Beautiful!