08–2021: Week 1 of Summer Road Trip
Week 1: Our daily Itinerary
- Drive from Home to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (Day 1)
- Silverwood Theme Park; Drive to Dillon, Montana (Day 2)
- Drive from Dillon, Montana to Torrey, Utah (Day 3)
- Capitol Reef National Park; Drive to Escalante, Utah (Day 4)
- Escalante, Utah; Drive to Moab, Utah (Day 5)
- Canyonlands National Park, Utah (Day 6)
- Arches National Park, Utah (Day 7 and 8)
1 We packed all of luggage into our ‘palace on wheels’ Toyota Sienna and headed out on the first leg of the trip — to Idaho. The goal was to check into the hotel as early in the day as possible and head out to our first destination — Boulder Beach Water Park at Silverwood Theme Park.
After a few hours of water activity, we headed out to dinner and back to the hotel for a restful night’s sleep and be ready to roar with the roller coasters the next day. All of us were in the water so not many pictures taken!
2 We entered the park at opening time and spent until 3PM with the roller coasters. Kids knew exactly which ones they wanted to go on; the strategy was set even before we got there. Since the lines were shorter due to less visitors, kids went on their favorite rides multiple times and that made them so happy. They obviously chose the biggest and scariest ones to ride and in the picture to the right below you can see both of them in the very first row hanging face down from a very high elevation. Here is a video of that scary coaster: https://youtu.be/ybOPbeUqFTQ
With very fond memories, lots of laughs + screams, and a very happy heart, we started driving towards our next destination, Dillon, Montana which was a landing place to sleep and recharge in preparation for a long drive the day after.
We reached our hotel at approximately 9PM and worked on our first load of laundry in slot-based washer and dryer machines which reminded us of our early college and apartment days in the USA when we would buy rolls of quarters from the grocery store for laundry machines. In order to travel light, we carried about 8 days worth of clothes and planned to use the laundry at most places we stayed so we would never run out of clean clothes.
Sleep was another important factor, so everywhere we booked rooms with two queen beds so all of us could get a good view of the TV while binging and a good night’s sleep…needless to say, since we drive in our very own car, we also carried our own pillows for added nightly comfort!
3 Today was driving day. Our destination was Torrey, Utah. We were going to spend multiple days exploring 4 of Utah’s National Parks. This was our first Utah destination which was closest to Capitol Reef National Park. Today was also one of the three longest drives so our spare driver helped kick off the trip with his superb driving skills.
As we drove out of Montana and through Salt Lake City, Utah, everywhere we looked, we passed grand landscapes and just spectacular views of flatlands, mountains, and the straight line roads. This is the best part of driving. One gets to do nothing but admire what lies ahead of you.
Despite the fact that we were loaded with a mix of healthy and craving snacks, and other food that could pass up for lunch on the go, we still found time to dine at our favorite restaurants along the way. This one pictured below is at Olive Garden, in Salt Lake City.
About an hour away from our hotel, it got pretty dark outside and the weather took a 180 degree turn on us. For the last 30 mins until we reached the hotel, we drove through solid thunder, lightening and fairly heavy rains. There was a flash flood warning sign on the road and little did we know that one episode of flash flooding had already crossed our path a couple miles ahead leaving debris, large tree trunks, and big rocks on the road. Fairly large sized potholes had formed on the road due to the force of the water carrying all of the debris. We had no idea what constituted a flash flood but when we had to navigate the car very carefully through the debris, it became very clear that ‘flash’ did not mean a quick little gush of water and if there was a sign on the highway, it is to be taken seriously. If this flash flood had hit our car, we would be probably swimming in that thing in some off road area and it would have probably been the end of our trip. We were thankful to be left to navigate through the aftermath of the flood. We reached our hotel safe and sound around 9.30PM, very stressed and drained from this experience…and our dear car in much need of a car wash.
Hotel check in was quick, we admired how nice our hotel room was, then decided it was in everybody’s best interest to get a good night sleep!
4 We woke up to this beautiful view from our hotel window. We spent a leisurely time eating breakfast assembled in the hotel kitchenette, got dressed, and were on our way to explore Capitol Reef National Park.
In addition to taking a lot of selfies on this trip, we also managed to sneak in a lot of good family pictures which were not selfies…thanks to one of the things we packed for this trip — our cell phone tripod. It is a handy dandy foldable one (so much better than a selfie stick) which we used a lot on this trip. Of course it did not have a very stable bottom especially in strong wind scenarios. One time, the wind toppled it along with the phone hooked on it face down (the rock gave the phone screen a scratch)…eeks! That said, it came in super handy in scenarios where there were no people around to take our pics or we *really* wanted to really take our pictures our way!
Capitol Reef NP was spectacular. We drove around for the most part but did stop at a panorama point and also did an adventurous hike. Here are some pictures from the drive — they do no justice to the beauty we witnessed in person.
Panorama point and Gooseneck lookout offered Majestic views of the landscape. It was a short hike from the parking lot and the characteristic red rock formations were awe-inspiring.
After spending about an hour at the panorama point, we headed on a medium strenuous hike on the Cohab Canyon Trail. The hike was an exciting and steep upward climb on a well carved but rugged and super narrow path along the edge of the tall mountain; then upon reaching the top, a lot of flat walking deep into the mountains. It is a very long trail if one were to include all of the connecting trails, but we only did 3 miles or so. Again, the spectacular views of the canyon were so mesmerizing that we had to make several complete stops to take in the views otherwise we would risk tumbling down into the deep valley.
It was a very frightening experience climbing down the mountain — amidst loud clapping thunder, sharp white lightening sights cutting across the vertical column of the dark sky, and rain as we were just getting ready to reach the end of the hike. As you can see in the last picture above and to the right, dark rain filled clouds came out of nowhere and in less than 5 mins of arrival, started dropping large water droplets from the sky. The kids were very far ahead as they were going fast on the flat hike as opposed to us strolling. As soon as it started raining, they sprinted back very quickly to join us and the four of us started making our way back to the front of the mountain. Our back up plan was to find shelter under a large rock if too much water starts coming down at us. But we were able to make our way through the steady droplets. On the climb down, the edge of the mountain felt steeper and the sound of the thunder echoing in the vast valley sent the heart pounding super fast. I don’t think we would have climbed down with such speed but the race to be on flat safe ground and in our car, caused the adrenaline rush and caused us to go faster! Later we found out that sudden changes in weather were a common occurrence here and these changes don’t last very long.
We left the Capitol Reef NP right after the hike around 3PM to drive towards Escalante, Utah, where we would be seeing the Grand Staircase National Monument. Our drive was at a very high elevation through the Dixie National Forest and white rock formations — which was a stark difference from the red landscape we just came from. The drive was the most beautiful, especially the one narrow road with white valleys on both sides.
Our driving ended around 6pm when we reached our hotel. It was one of the best hotels we stayed in on this entire trip with the kitchenette door opening to a large rugged backyard with high mountain views.
For dinner that night, we decided to take a break from the restaurant food and used the rice cooker to make Khichadi, accompanied by cold buttermilk.
It was a long day but a day filled with adventure and awe — well spent.
5 Today’s plan was to visit two interesting sounding places in addition to driving around the Escalante Grand Staircase area — Devil’s garden and Singing Canyon. We had no idea what to expect as Miten had looked it up on www.earthtrekkers.com the previous night. We had not seen any pictures of the places in advance. We were going to follow along on that plan. By the way, Earth Trekkers is a very useful website and we used it a lot to plan the daily activities at each destination.
The road to Devil’s garden must receive a special mention. For almost the entire mile and a half, it was unpaved, covered in small pebbles which would make the insides of the car and our bodies vibrate…and that too continuously. We only got respite from that vibration, when we could drive in the tire tracks left by the vehicles who travelled that path before us…and we thanked those vehicles immensely for leaving those deep tracks behind.
Devil’s garden consisted of interesting rock formations and we were pleasantly surprised by what we saw. We walked through the formations to admire the shapes and forms, climbed on top of the super big boulders, jumped over the deep crevices, and balanced on top of the arches. This was about the only place where the arches were accessible for climbing. For the first 30 mins or so we were the only ones at the site…it felt like our experience at the Stone Henge in UK where we got to explore the rocks formations from up close.
The only downside was that we were there around 11am and temperatures were nearing 108F. Our skin was burning after about 5 mins of exposure. Thankfully, the tall rock formations offered a lot of shade as we walked further along so we could step in and out of the shade from time to time. As soon as we got back into the car, we noticed all of us were at least a couple of shades darker in the exposed parts of our bodies and the skin texture had changed significantly. We remembered we had a bottle of aloe vera gel in the car. This bottle was a super last minute addition…literally…it got put as the last thing in the bag as we were driving out on day 1 because of a friend who reminded us to pack it. We generously slathered the gel everywhere we scorched and instantly cooled off before heading to our next destination.
After enduring the same vibrating ride out of this place, we made a quick lunch stop at the Escalante Outfitters, the only place where we could find something fresh, hot, and vegetarian within 20 mins. After a full lunch, we packed up the leftover pizza, and were super happy to drive on a paved highway road before we reached singing canyon.
The drive to Singing Canyon was very scenic and this one picture is a representative of the many pictures and videos we took along the way.
After parking the car on the road where the GPS asked us to park, we had some trouble finding the canyon. So we explored the outside of the rock with the hope of finding it eventually — which we did. The entrance was a literally a slot that separated the two big rocks and we would have easily missed it. We started walking in a narrow walkway which eventually opened up and led to a little pond at the end and a nice view up front and to the sky. And yes, kids got to climb onto the rocks.
And true to its name, when one sings or yells at certain places in the area, the sound echo's and sings (or yells) back at you! So we spent a good amount of time practicing singing and making funny sounds in the canyon. The area near the deep cut of the rock (in the picture below) on the outside had the best echo. Inside the canyon the echo was OK but not as profound. It’s a nice, quick, fun place to visit. We had a good time.
Around 6PM, we started driving towards Moab, Utah where we were going to stay 3 nights and this would wrap up our first week of the road trip.
The drive to Moab was very colorful and again, these sample pictures cannot fully represent the beauty of the landscapes we passed through and saw ourselves.
We reached the hotel around 10pm and immediately found ourselves in bed eager to get our beauty sleep.
6 Our most favorite thing to do in Moab was to eat at the food trucks whenever possible. The food truck area was very conveniently located across the street from our hotel. We were so impressed by the quality of paninis and smoothies made at one of the trucks that most of our meals got purchased from there…I think by the time we left Moab, the owner would have memorized our orders.
Our biggest attraction near Moab was Arches National Park for which we had earmarked two full days. But today we decided to spend a part of the day at Canyonlands National Park. Before we reached Canyonlands NP, we stopped by the Arches visitor center, consulted with a park ranger, and got the map and a list of all the must do things.
We reached canyonlands around 1pm. The canyon was so vast and grand — the sunken canyon was quite a sight to see from the Grand View Point Overlook. The park ranger said that visitors could go all the way down to view the canyon from up close. This would need special hiking passes and travel in higher clearance 4WD with lots of food and water at hand. However, the wildfires going on in California brought a lot of smoke to this area and the far away mountains and landscapes were not visible to us from the viewing points that day. We also thought that the view was the same from most of the other view points we stopped at. Essentially the paw shaped structure is pretty much we saw from everywhere. Because of these reasons, this NP turned out to be the one we were a bit disappointed with. We thought it was also because there was a wow expectation set in our minds from the earlier ones we had visited and this one did not feel much unique. We returned back to the hotel in a couple of hours.
We then came across the Dead Horse State Park which was not too long of a drive from Canyonlands and it looked amazing in the pictures. This was not on the agenda but we returned to Canyonlands after two days of Arches to catch the views of this state park … and it did not disappoint.
7 Words and pictures cannot adequately describe the beauty of Arches National Park. On the first day we were up bright and early and started the hike to Delicate Arch at around 7.30AM. We wanted to come back to the trail head before the afternoon sun scorches our skin again. It was a medium difficulty hike but felt like a long and tiring one especially due to the warm weather despite it being so early in the morning! We were prepared — our backpack loaded with light snacks and lots of water. We had packed a full gallon bag of cold red grapes that turned out to be excellent fuel supplying us with small doses of sugar and fluids during the hike. Contrary to other places where we saw very few visitors, this place was packed with people this early in the morning. The trail was mostly paved and very safe.
Below is the view of the end point of the hike — The Delicate Arch. We reached the arch at 8.30am, spent at least 45 mins standing in line to get our pictures taken and then another 15–20 mins just sitting there and admiring the beauty of this structure and its surroundings. We were truly wowed by how majestic, bold, and beautiful looking this structure was.
We were back at the trail head by 10.30am. We spent the rest of the day and the next day driving around to various look out points, stopping to admire the enormous rock formations and did a couple other smaller hikes. It scares us to even think about how many pictures we took of this entire NP. But here are a few of our favorite clicks.
One of the things that we love to do as a family is watch movies or binge on shows at dinnertime. So we also packed our Roku device on this trip and re-watched our favorite movies and Netflix shows by hooking up this device to the TV set at most hotels we stayed at. So cool, we carried our own mobile entertainment and all we needed was a wifi connection!
This concluded our first week of the road trip.
In week 2, we visited the Four Corners Monument, spent a few days in Colorful Colorado — in Ouray, Aspen and Vail.
Week two story here.
