Summer Vacation #1

Guess it is time to write about our summer vacations. We took two separate trips to Utah; one in July and one in August. This post will be about our first trip and then I'll do another one about our second trip.

We decided to make a trip to Utah in July for a family reunion on Tracy's side. One of his cousins who lives outside of the U.S. was going to be there so it was an opportunity to see her and her family.

This time out we took Highway 50 across Nevada. A little less boring, with fun little towns and more scenery, but still very long drive. Charles doesn't do long car rides very well. So I tried to have some fun new and old things to play with in the car. He cycled through his stuff every 5 minutes. James barely touch his things. He just loves to watch out the window and see the world.

James did really love this chalk board I got. 

 Once in Utah we stayed at Joe's parents' house for a few days. We covered our Jeep to get it ready for our Moab trip in August. And just relaxed enjoying Tracy's official start of summer since he had been working up to our trip.

All ready for Moab!

The day of the family reunion we met some of my family in Salt Lake for lunch at Blue Lemon. We played a bit at City Creek and then went to the reunion. It was a lot of fun spending so much time with family. It was especially fun to see a lot of Tracy's cousins many of whom we hadn't seen for a couple of years. I didn't take any pictures at the reunion, but there was family group pictures taken. So I'm sure someday we'll get copies.

After the reunion we spent the rest of the trip in St. George. Tracy did some work at Zion NP. We just love Zion. Such a beautiful place!

Playing with chalk at our favorite place to stay in St. George.

James sat and looked at this map in the museum for hours.
Pretty much the entire 2-3 hours Tracy was doing his work in the museum collections.

Having snacks outside the museum.
The only time I was able to pull James away from the map.

James asked to have his picture taken with the tall mountains.

We help James earn a Jr. ranger badge.
This was us taking a short hike to the place
where they had one of the ranger activities required to earn the badge.

 On the way home we took a two day trip so we could see Death Valley and Yosemite and the research center Tracy worked at prior to our trip.
It was sooo hot in Death Valley, we only left the car to see the visitor center and immediately regretted it.

The thermometer says it all. Misery with a capital M.

Can't even look at the camera it was sooo hot. 

Yosemite was very much more enjoyable than Death Valley. We'll just have to go back in the fall/winter when not so hot. 

In Yosemite we also because of the distance and time to get home we just mostly drove through. Stopped by the river to play and have lunch. Another beautiful place on earth. We're considering a winter trip there over Christmas break.