Adventures in Compromise

Honeymoon edition

Arches National Park — taken with my new Panasonic LX 100 — look, there we are!

Ryan is a man of routine. He prefers the company of a few over the company of many. He uses reason over emotion in almost every decision in his life. He loves to cook, is a morning person, and eats every meal at the dining room table.

I’m… the opposite.

Playing with my new Panasonic LX-100 on the plane to Salt Lake.

To say our first couple of years together included a lot of compromise would be an understatement. To say deciding where to go on our honeymoon was easy… well, let’s just say it was no small feat.

We didn’t find ourselves on the beaches of Fiji (my choice) or on the top of a mountain (Ryan’s choice).

Instead, we found ourselves at Gateway Canyons, a luxury adventure resort located in one of the most remote places in Colorado.

An image of the Palisade looming over the resort in Gateway, Colorado.

To get there, we drove 5.5 hours from Salt Lake City through 20 miles of dirt roads (okay, okay, the dirt roads were a recommendation by google maps, and technically there is a real paved road to get there, but that doesn’t take away from the epic-ness our dirt road route!)

So glad we got an AWD Jeep for our rental! It was the perfect adventure car for our dirt road drive.

We woke up early. We slept in. We hiked (in a canyon that we had to cross a river to get to) & we spent an afternoon at the pool, drinking cocktails by the fire pit.

That pool view though!

We ordered room service for breakfast & we climbed some rocks.

Ryan doing some single pitch sandstone climbing in Unaweep Canyon.

We rode UTVs to the top of the canyon & we got a couples massage.

V-room!

We mountain biked, visited a car museum, walked trails, ate good food, saw some lightning, visited Arches National Park, and got to wake up in the middle of the night to a thunder storm!

A magic photo of the flash of a lightning rod behind the canyon wall.

Trying to decide how much farther my legs could take me…

All in all, I’d call it a pretty amazing week. The perfect honeymoon for us.

At the top of the canyon.

Of all the relationship and marriage advice we’ve gotten, the best and most popular has been to communicate. Our honeymoon, and the start of our life together, has been filled with so many amazing conversations: about the good stuff, the hard stuff, and the ridiculously mundane. I feel so lucky to say that Ryan is my favorite person to talk to, to debate with, to dream and conspire with. When we come to discussions from two completely different places, it’s not always easy, but we are both patient and we always try to find the middle ground together. That’s how perfect honeymoons are made!

Colorado sure is grand…

Here’s to a lifetime of finding the middle-ground with my favorite person.

-Samantha