Birthday Road Trip

I thought it was a good year to get out of town for my birthday. I have totally accepted the fact that I am no longer in my twenties, but that doesn't mean that I can't escape for a minute and put that thought far away from my mind. I decided that I really am okay with being 30, because I feel really good with where I am at and what I have accomplished in my life so far.

This is another trip that for living in Utah my whole life, I cannot believe I have never done it. So the day of my birthday we started our trip at Arches national park. For some reason in my mind I pictured it being just the arch that is on the license plates(which I now know is called delicate arch) and driving up to it, maybe doing a 1/4 mile at the most walk to get there and that was it, you had seen Arches park. I couldn't have been more off.

We learned early on this trip that it wasn't really a two year old kind of trip. The driving part wasn't so bad for her, only because she had her DVDs to watch. Anyone that knows Brylee can tell you that the girl loves to watch certain tv shows. She is glued to them and focus all her attention on them. Which in some ways is a good thing, don't get me wrong. When I need a second to get something done, one word.....Dora. But at the a same time I don't want her growing up being a tv watching, couch potato. So lets just say that I really try to limit her tv watching because if I let her, I know that she would literally watch it all day long without even blinking.

So as I was saying, movies and books kept her busy while in the car. But it was the outside the car activities that threw us for a loop. To get to the delicate arch up close, you have to hike 3 miles. Not happening with a 2 year old. We did get to see a lot of cool things still and I am still way glad we went but this is a trip that I will definitely have to do again when my kids are at hiking age.

This was one of the arches that we did get to hike up to, except poor Jay had to carry sweet little Bry most of the way. She would say "I walk!" Then two minutes later "Daddy, carry you." I still think they both had fun.

This is the itty bitty view of delicate arch that we got(and this is with my camera zoomed all the way up)

Very beautiful everywhere we looked.

Next stop Hole in the rock

They had a little petting zoo at hole in the rock, I thought it might be fun for her to see the animals, but if I were passing by HITR again I would have to skip the petting zoo. She did like seeing the animals so I guess it was worth our $7

We stayed in Monticello, UT and as soon as we got dinner and checked in we threw on our swimsuits and headed to the pool. Bry absolutely loves the water. She is a little water doggy for sure. We had the pool all to ourselves. This was her first time in a real pool and watching Brylee laugh and splash was one of my highlights of the trip.

Mesa Verde

She was very stoked about the cave dwelling Indian ruins, you can tell by her face in the picture.

This was other place where we couldn't go up close because I don't think that a hour long guided tour and a 2 year old mesh well. We had our own self guided tour and it was still cool to see, even if it was from far away.

This is the part of the trip that I stopped taking pictures. Why I did this, we will never know. But we got to see some really cool little towns like Durango, Silverton and Ouray Colorado. We ended our trip in Grand junction and we were off into the sunset and headed back to my big 30 reality. What a Happy Birthday I had!