a completely different POV

Our travels this week served to remind us how spectacularly creative God is. We visited three more national parks, but their landscapes were so strikingly different from last week’s parks! I’m so glad we bought that national park pass so that we could experience all the views!

We’re based in Utah this week, so our first trip on Sunday was to Arches National Park, where we took our customary photo at the park sign, but then were promptly turned away. (See random observations/factoids for info.) Instead, we ended up about 30 minutes away at Canyonlands National Park, which, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it (I wasn’t) is “a wilderness of countless canyons and fantastically formed buttes carved by the Colorado River and its tributaries.” It really is remarkable – photos don’t do it justice because there’s just no way to capture the scale. We made sure to get an early start the next day, so we could make it to Arches, which is much smaller than Canyonlands, and features more incredible rock formations, with the addition of at least 2000 naturally formed arches. We only saw about ten arches, LOL, but still enjoyed the park.

Canyonlands National Park

Arches National Park

Tuesday was a long travel day, to Kanab, Utah, so we took Wednesday off to rest and prep for more sightseeing. On Thursday and Friday, we ventured into Arizona – Thursday to see the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We were surprised to find it’s very green on the north side! Friday, we took a long scenic drive to Flagstaff to meet up with the Christensens. We enjoyed lunch together, visited a dog park and then walked around the historic downtown area. Sadly, just before we got downtown, a bird hit a transformer and knocked out all their power! So we couldn’t do any actual shopping. But it was so, so good to spend time with my bestie! We took a slightly different route back to the RV park to view some new scenery, and enjoyed a pretty sunset on the way. We don’t often drive long distances at night – it can be dicey with all the wildlife just waiting to jump in front of your car – so we were on the lookout, but still almost collided with a deer that ran across the road right in front of us. Thankfully, it didn’t stop and be a “deer in the headlights,” or we would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere with a disabled car and no cell service.

After yesterday’s 10-hour day, we’re pretty exhausted, and so decided to take today off, to prep for tomorrow’s long drive through Bryce Canyon National Park, and Monday’s hike to the Kanab Sand Caves and visit to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. In order to take the day off, we had to forgo one of our plans, so we ended up deciding not to visit Zion National Park. They don’t allow private cars on the scenic drive until November, and dogs aren’t allowed in the park shuttle that travels that route. Between driving from here to the park, then riding the shuttle around, then driving back, it would be far too long to leave the dogs in the RV. And if we brought the dogs with us, the small portion of the park that we would be able to drive on seems like a long time in the car for not much reward. I took a poll among fellow RVers, and the vast majority said if we can only do one park, do Bryce. So that’s our current plan.

Next week we’re looking forward to enjoying the Boise area and hanging with the Millers 😊.

for the foodies

not much excitement in the food department this week!

praise & prayer

We haven’t had any success yet in convincing CAT to help us get the $3000 we wasted on an incorrect diagnosis, but we’re working on it. After Deron reached out a couple of times, the corporate office finally asked for all the details, which he promptly sent. Hopefully we’ll get some kind of compensation! But praise God the coach has been running so well since the second rebuild!

As the time gets closer to our arrival in South Bend, Washington, we’re praying that when we get there, we’ll quickly find a church that’s a good fit, and friends, and job opportunities. Or not – if it’s not where God wants us to be. Either way, we’re praying for clarity.

last but not least, some random facts/side notes

• Arches National Park is so busy that they have to shut down when all the lots throughout the park are full, from about 10am until about 2pm.
• For some reason there are many more restrictions on dogs in the Utah national parks than in all the others we’ve visited elsewhere (except Glacier and Yellowstone – but that made sense; bears vs dogs would not be pretty). It’s a bummer that they can’t enjoy walking at least a couple trails!
• When we crossed into AZ, Deron’s phone changed to mountain standard time (AZ doesn’t do daylight savings), and eventually mine did too. But sometime later, his phone changed back to mountain daylight savings, and mine didn’t. It really messed with Google maps trying to tell us what time (in mountain standard) we’d arrive in Flagstaff, when his phone had the wrong time. We had no idea what the problem was, but at least we had my phone continuing keeping the correct time. Then on the way home, on the same stretch of road, his phone did it again! Come to find out, the Navajo Nation, which we were traveling through, DOES switch to daylight savings, even though they’re in the middle of AZ which does not. And somehow Deron’s phone knew that, but mine didn’t. Google=1, Apple=0. Random!