We're in Kansas, Dorothy!

It's kind of like they read poor Kevin's mind. After 25 days, 5 hours and 36 minutes together, I'm sure he's had a few fleeting thoughts of leaving someone behind.

After about five hours of uneventful driving we stopped again for gas and the kids were waking up.

Annie, Teddy and I went in for drinks while Kevin finished pumping and moved the truck to a parking spot then did the same. After getting back on the road, Kevin noticed that we were still at half a tank of gas.

A family of KansASSians siphoned our gas!! They weren't even deterred by a sleeping teenager and two vicious Pekes in the back seat. I guess filling your 8 ATVs can get pricey.

While stopping for a third and again fourth gas fill, the temperatures continued to climb into the 108 range and the crosswinds picked up Sorry y'all but none of us are big fans of Kansas.

We occupied ourselves with taking pictures of our tonsils, you probably don't want to see them BUT just in case, they're available.

I also found out how to make jello worms using jello and drinking straws on Pinterest...Before

And after.

The day ended most calm, a quick swim in a pond,

And breaking news from the boys, Teddy just caught his first fish!! He brought his spongebob pole from Don and just tonight begged to get it out. Yay!!

Rocky Mountain doggy style...

Our boomerang is starting to return itself to home base. We are on the last leg of our journey. Our trip this morning out of Moab began at 5 am heading into Colorado. Within an hour we could smell the smoke from the wildfires.

The drive over the Rockies was stressful both up and down - there were times that we were struggling to keep 16 mph yet so were others - but oh so so beautiful! I can say that I at least saw Vail, Breckenridge and the mile high Denver. Pretty uneventful day, 8 hours of travel.

The kids are the best travelers ever, never a peep unless the boys are ganging up on Annie and even then she'll tell you it's funnny. But the dogs are another story.

They do travel great and are buddies but won't sleep here anymore. It has to be in our bed.

I have to be in their eyesight - preferably in the car.

Molly taking as much Moab with her as possible.

Hanging over seat + brakes = dog on floor. Common.

Kevin was so kind as to put ice in there bowl. They decided it was a dumb idea and picked out every cube and spread it all over the camper.

Molly apologizing for eating a beer can like a goat. Notice a theme here? You don't see Mr. Beebe in any pictures now do you.

 

My Favorite Things in Moab!

Here are a few of my favorite things....(try to not sing that all day now....from the girl that hates musicals!!).

*The bathrooms here were cute individual sheds and the prime time to shower is late, after everything has dried. Consider this proof that most KOA bathrooms are quite clean.

*The patchouli soap that makes the camper smell like a hippie's VW Vanagon.

*Shopping in town with Annie, we are bad together. "Should I get this? Of course you should!!"

*The sunset, taken by Kristian from our campsite.

*and a guided tour on a river boat!!

 

Our guide was cute funny and had tons of trivia for the four hour trip. There are over 2,000 arches in this area created by water erosion, but my favorite tidbit was that Johnny Depp is about to film here! This picture shows the Hollywood hanging tree about to be used in the new Lone Ranger movie to hang the bad guys.

A little further down the river was a steam engine (zoom waaaay in) is set up ready to be run off the cliff (computer animation will take over). The engine just so happens to be set up on the exact cliff that Thelma and Louise committed Harry Carry!! Annie's camera zoomed in so much on that steam engine that you can see the engineer picking his nose, use your imagination and I'll post highlights later.

A few other movies shot here include 127 hours (which actually happened here in Moab, dude had to cut his hand off with a Swiss army knife to save himself), John Carter, and a Will Smith movie among countless others.

Captain Hunk-a-hunk Rory let us search for fossils, he's showing Teddy a fossilized muscle...

...and that burnt looking piece of wood is also solid fossilized rock. So cool!! 

Dead Horse Point state park is a dramatic overlook of the Colorado river. It was used as a natural corral by cowboys in the 19th century and along with being 2000 feet above the river, it is the area of 35 football fields.

Here's a shot from above, looking down from Dead Horse Point to the river, exactly where we turned around on the boat.

I thought this was soooooo cool, every September they boat in 200 people to enjoy the natural acoustics of this grotto. Our guide says they carry out a baby grand on the boat along with all the musicians and they put on beautiful concerts including operas, right here on the Colorado river.

There were so many more cool facts and tidbits of information to hear, we even saw honest to goodness petroglyphs. "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I now"...oh crap I'm singing again. We are going to be sad to leave this place, I might even say it has been my favorite place to visit and must come back.

 

Ummmm....MOAB!!!!

No one told me, or even hinted, that Moab would be my favorite place on earth!! It's home to so many beautiful sights, namely the Arches, but my favorite is that it combines the canyons, cliffs, plateaus and mountain ranges. It also has a cute microbrewery!

It's hot early in the year, 100 degrees 24/7 right now which makes perfect swimming weather...

The Arches National Park is so much fun. Being from Ohio we are used to being stopped and given lists of rules for everything we do in the park. What crazy fun it is to enter these places and have free reign! I personally believe it's why these parks are so clean too, respect for the greatness instead of being ticked off at the park ranger...?!

It's impossible to grasp how huge these formations are but thought it was awesome that the kids took to climbing all over them.

We did another sunset hike. Three miles round trip to the Delicate Arch (there are many arches, this is one of the most famous). The trail started out on sand then we followed trail markers up those huge rock formations. Annie bolted ahead right away, Kristian followed with left arm in air looking for 3G service and I had to laugh when we reached the top to see that every teen was doing the exact same thing.

Boanie Maronie looks tired here but he talked nonstop all the way up and allllll the way down!

I call this the Petroglyphs shot. They look like all those carvings in the wall and you also get an idea of how high we climbed, their heads are in the clouds.

At the summit, we got a great family picture. The Arch was a good half mile away, gives you a little perspective.

The walk down. There were still people heading TO the arch, meaning they'd be returning in the dark. A little too precarious for me. That silver glowing dot to the left is the parking lot.

 

Bryce Canyon Unplugged

As we pull out of Bryce Canyon at sunrise, everyone asleep in the backseat, I believe that I could stay on the road another month without a blink of the eye. It's really crazy how much we've seen and done. When I fall asleep I remember at least 30 things I didn't add to this story.

Yep, they are teachers from Maine ;)

...Teddy dropping the SH#% bomb while playing Mario

...the guy that was carried out of the river walk by 7 others after breaking his foot while jumping off a cliff. A 2-3 mile hike back.

...polygamy beer and the promiscuous French teenagers.

...how filled these campgrounds are with Europeans. Americans are the minority around here it seems.

...finally got a small run in. 463/1000. The heat and altitude made me lazy.

We spent four nights in Bryce, much of it just regrouping, eating, swimming and playing Mario. No 3G and very weak wifi was rough on the kids at first but they got used to it quickly.

***I, Annie, did not get used to it thank you very much . We went into town and got service and I got 27 messages . ( I'm so loved ) I even allowed them to take another 20 mins at the grocery store so I could have service longer . Anyways it's all good . (:

Teddy found an apricot tree in the KOA AND a bing cherry tree (private property) the kid was in heaven!

The three snuck back under cover of darkness to sneak another handful of cherries. It was in a neighbors front yard and reminded me of grandma Sass' walnut tree. There were thousands of cherries!

The KOA here is beautiful, reading outside the camper left me feeling like I was as far from home as we really are.

Kevin and I drove in to Escalante to check it out and I found my most favorite thing in the whole world....a dirt suck upper that rescued the Durango from 3 weeks of dust, dirt and hair. Yay!!!

To close out our stay here we took a three hour ATV tour. Between Arizona, Utah and Colorado there are over 3000 miles of ATV trails maintained by the US Forest service. Many of them are old logging roads and they're also built as fire stops to control wild fires.

They are all open for public use and it's possible to ride from northern Colorado to Las Vegas on an ATV.

It rains approximately .5 inches per month here so the bandanas were necessary to keep dust out of our mouths. Teddy still has dust coming out of his tear ducts.

 

We needed an air compressor to be able to see each other at the end but it was completely worth it.

Definitely an option for the Zombie Apocolypse!

 

Utah and Spaghetti Sauce!

The drive into Utah was gorgeous but I missed some (most) of it because I fell sound asleep an hour out of Vegas....sorry Kevin. He can speak for the beauty later and the toils of towing up mountains.

Spaghetti sauce - I believe it should be white. After stopping for a leisurely lunch in the camper while viewing the mountainous scenery, I forgot to close the fridge all the way. Yep, sauce coated a large section of the camper when we walked in. I'm 2 for 2 now. I cleaned it all up and lit a candle but am kicking myself that I didn't take a picture...my gag reflex is getting more sensitive, thanks Peggy.

I really believe that I could run a KOA and have kickass bathrooms. I've trained all my kids to shower without Touching a thing AND to wear flipflops. I absolutely hate touching other people's "wet"! This is what this KOA looked like to me...

Nah, it wasn't nearly that bad, but really, a little love and less of the skin stripping shower head would work wonders.

This campground does have its plusses. It's relatively close to Zion and there is a hot air balloon festival tomorrow. Ever tried to sleep under just ONE of them while it's trying to rise? I can't even imagine 35 of them outside my window!

On the way into Zion, Teddy felt the urge for more jerky, a theme on this vacation. You should just smell the car! This guy had gator jerky, elk and anything else on four legs. We settled for buffalo. Ew!!

And UUUUGG! I couldn't take my camera on the river hike. A good mile up an incredible river that had a layer of bowling ball and bigger sized rocks. Temperature was 100 and water 70 again... Ah!! Google the Zion virgin river walk. Here's a pic of the 1 mile tunnel (crazy long in pure dark) through a hole built in 1920. That's before campers were made so it had to be one lane for anyone in a camper. Grateful ours was parked.

 

And lastly, a picture of Teddy's ever growing shrine. While Kristian and Annie are texting their long lost friends that we drug them away from, Teddy, blissfully unaware of teenage angst has been once again creating a shrine in the camper. This time its geodes, cacti and golden cats.

 

And your trivia for the day is, What do you call someone from Utah? Ever thought of it?! Illinoisan, Hawaiian, New Mexican??? Utonian? Utahhhan? Well are you ready? It's a Utahn. Yep, just Utahn. There's an actual online list of Demonyms. Georgian's are also Goobergrabbers, but I move on now...

 

Vegas Wedding

I believe that having your vows renewed in Vegas is worth the embarrassment to your kids.

Monday we woke up early to see that at 6:30 am it was already 95 degrees. Kevin called mechanics while the kids and I swam.

At two, we drove to the Viva Las Vegas Elvis chappel and had our vows renewed by the man himself!

We then spent the evening inside Circus Circus....speechless! Indoor roller coaster, shopping, food, slots EVERYwhere, you would never need to go outdoors and all right outside the camper door.

 

There were two guys passed out cold at the clown feet when we left. Kevin had to wonder why they didn't choose the shady side. Damn, no picture again!!

At four the mechanic came to fix our camper tire and then we boarded the Deuce (shuttle bus, Teddy loved the name) and rode to Fremont Street. Funny enough it was the mechanic at home that said it was a must see and how right he was!!

You zip line right down that light show!

Tuesday, Annie and i rode up the street to Forever 21 for shopping, then we all we rode back to Fremont to zip line...

And gawk.

More swimming then Kevin and I Went back to Circus Circus for an hour to play some penny slots. I won $3,000 and he won $1,700!!! (fine, $30 and $17)

Pulling out at 8am this morning for Utah a bit rough but what happens in Vegas.........