Sam’s family lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, and our cats have taken up a temporary home with his sister Anna, so we decided we had to stop by and make sure our cats were settling in. When we left for Alaska they were adjusting to the new house and life with a dog and they were not super happy. It made leaving them gut wrenchingly difficult.

The good news is they are doing amazing (even though Nala our Maine Coon gained four pounds putting her at a gigantic 24 pounds)! I guess she learned about stress eating from me. We also got to spend a great week with Sam’s amazing family while we finished up the final details of securing our rig.

From SLC, we headed south to Bryce Canyon after getting news that even though all the National Parks in the US were closed, Utah decided to reopen their parks the day before we planned on visiting. We got super lucky!

I remember Bryce Canyon from my childhood travels, I thought it looked like a crazy world Dr. Seuss dreamed up. It was fun going back 30 years later and seeing that not much has changed. I think we even did the same hike, everything had this great feeling of deja vu.

The thing I love the most about this picture is my Dad’s white pants, in red rock Utah! Oh, the crazy 70s…..

When we arrived at Bryce is was cold, about 30 degrees. The great thing about this was that it was empty of the usual crowds. There was one other couple with two kids and the little boy kept begging to go back to the hotel for hot chocolate (I did not blame him). Sam and I decided to go on a hike and bundled up.

And then when we got to the bottom of the canyon and it began to snow….. We decided that snow was better than rain and powered our way along the trail. It was the first time I was happy about hiking uphill in high altitude, it was the only thing to keep us warm.

The trails wound their way through the red spires.

Hiking down….

Sam forgot his hat, I had to give him mine, his head was freezing.

The hoodoos of Bryce, they are really stunning.

After our rather brisk hike, we were ready to leave and get down a few thousand feet to camp for the night (we did not feel waking up with the XP covered in snow). I looked at our road atlas and found a dirt road that was calling our name and we set off for a great adventure through the back road canyons of spectacular Southern Utah.

Beautiful Bryce from the first lookout, you can see the storm clouds coming in.