{"id":92,"date":"2020-02-18T14:49:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T21:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clearasmud.blog\/?p=92"},"modified":"2020-03-04T10:25:42","modified_gmt":"2020-03-04T17:25:42","slug":"road-trippin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/?p=92","title":{"rendered":"Road trippin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Trip to Utah\u2019s Gems!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our daughter Shoshana is in a therapeutic boarding school in Utah (near Zion National Park). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Family weekend was scheduled for November 20th<\/sup>, just a week before our other four kiddos had their Thanksgiving break. So long story short, our kids would be out of school for two weeks, this coming \u201cnaturally\u201d after finally getting them back to school after the month-long Jewish holiday season!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I was so excited to be able to visit Shoshana, I was not thrilled with the timing! I have been working on letting go of things that are out of my control, but the fact that I did not have any control over when Shoshana\u2019s school has family weekend and how often my other children have vacation was really making me mad! But alas I eventually had to come to terms with it, and we decided to explore the Utah parks and create a fun family adventure. It\u2019s an eleven-hour drive from Bozeman and we would be gone for ten<\/strong> days. Road tripping takes a lot of physical and mental organization, especially when you observe Kosher dietary laws and have a daughter, Zeesy, who has a medical diet and we need to pack her special meals for the entire trip. (Link for Zeesy\u2019s story) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started the drive on Wednesday and though I we normally like to split up the trip and overnight along the way so not to push the kids too much, this time we did the full eleven hours in one day, as we had to be at Shoshana\u2019s school on Thursday  morning. We always end up regretting when we are too ambitious, but again the kids were already missing so much school, we didn\u2019t want to take off another day for just the drive. It was going pretty well, as good can be expected with a car full of young kids for hours on end. And\u2026. we almost made it to our Air B&B in Hurricane, Utah, literally twenty minutes from our exit off the I-15, no jokes, twenty minutes and boom there was an accident where a few semi-trucks collided, one of them, loaded with tons of cheese, was now scattered all over the highway. The Interstate was totally blocked off and being that we are on a narrow mountain pass, there was nowhere to go, WE WERE STUCK! It was so beyond frustrating, we had made it the whole day, we were so close and yet so far. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was dinner time and bedtime; they wanted out!  My husband and I were also exhausted and frustrated, but we rallied and realized that there\u2019s literally nothing we can do but try to make a crummy situation as bearable as possible. So, we sang songs, told jokes, listened to music and did the best we could to make a really tough situation a little more tolerable. I am really proud of ourselves for that \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two hours later we made it to our destination!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Air B&B, close to Shoshana\u2019s school, was perfect and we enjoyed a wonderful weekend, Jewish Sabbath, together. We took beautiful family photos in Zion with our dear friends and most wonderful photographer team Doug and Stana of Loneman photography (link). Took some nice family strolls in scenic Hurricane and had much needed quality time as a family of seven. We dropped Shoshana back off at school late Sunday morning, and started our trip back to Bozeman, which we were going to do through Utah\u2019s beautiful parks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t have an endless amount of time, so we really researched and planned for the best possible itinerary to fit our schedule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday<\/strong>: We drove through Zion (didn\u2019t stop much because we\u2019d been there before) and two hours later entered the incredible Bryce Canyon. Keep in mind, this was the beginning of winter, so it\u2019s pretty cold and somewhat snowy, but us Montanans can handle it \ud83d\ude42 . It\u2019s hard to put words to the beauty we experienced at these majestic parks. We were just in a constant state of awe and so grateful to be able to expose our children to the wonders of G-d\u2019s creation. It\u2019s so important for me and my husband, that our kids respect and appreciate this beautiful world we live in. But I digress… Bryce is this vast canyon of these jagged and pointy orange rock formations, that\u2019s the best way I can think of describing it. And when we were there, there was a dusting of snow on top. It was really breathtaking. We walked around enjoyed the fresh air and took it all in.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We then drove another couple of hours and arrived in Escalante National Park, at which point we drove twenty miles on a dirt road to see Devil\u2019s Garden. We arrived there a bit before sunset. We didn\u2019t know what to expect at all but that\u2019s part of the adventure! We were greeted by these huge boulders that had the most awesome formations, a lot of them looking really cute and the kids couldn\u2019t get enough of it\u2026We would\u2019ve stayed longer, but it was getting dark and we didn\u2019t want to drive the dirt road in the dark. We ended the night in the town of Escalante, where we stayed in the coolest yurt, escelanteyurts.com<\/a>! It was such a fun experience and just added more adventure and excitement to our trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Monday<\/strong>: Woke up in our cozy yurt, had breakfast and packed up for another adventure filled day. We took the most beautiful drive I\u2019ve ever been on through Capitol Reef National Park. I mean, we didn\u2019t want to take our eyes off the view for a minute; it was that good. Capitol Reef was another home run \ud83d\ude42 it was a huge valley full of wild rock formations. Sound similar? We then entered Goblin Valley State Park, which isn\u2019t national but what a treat it is\u2026The kids would\u2019ve spent the whole there, running up and down the rock formations, many that look like little Goblins, hence its name. Another reason why these Utah parks are so amazing is that it was so fun and engaging for the kids, literally nature\u2019s playground.  We then headed to Arches. So beautiful, everywhere we turned there was something amazing to see. We explored Sand Dune Arch which was so cool. Huge towering rocks and the ground was red sand, beyond cool. Being that we were there in the winter, sunset was pretty early, so we headed to our Air B&B in Moab for the night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Tuesday<\/strong>: After breakfast we made our way towards Canyonlands. It was freezing and the whole road up to the \u201cIsland in the Sky\u201d was a sheet of ice. My husband was freaking out about the road conditions and we debated whether we should drive all the way up, but we decided we are here now, not sure when we will come back and we should go for it. We drove, really slow and steady, but so glad we did. Canyonlands is so vast and huge and breathtaking. We got out a bunch of times and took these little walks on the icy paths to see and take-in these spectacular views. The park is so huge it\u2019s divided into three parts and we did \u201cIsland in the Sky\u201d but will be back sometime for the other sections, which are hours away. We then went back to Arches and climbed to the most amazing Windows Arch (in the ice again which makes everything more adventurous) and once again stayed out till the sun was setting and then headed back to Moab. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Wednesday and Thursday<\/strong>: We made our way back to Bozeman through Price, Salt Lake City, Pocatello and Island Park and through hours of snowy weather that was stressful big time, we arrived him Thursday afternoon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It was a wonderful trip and I highly recommend it! We had children of all ages and everyone had fun! Of course it\u2019s a road trip with a family and we had our moments \ud83d\ude42 but worth every minute. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Trip to Utah\u2019s Gems!   Our daughter Shoshana is in a therapeutic boarding school in Utah (near Zion National Park).  Family weekend was scheduled for November 20th, just a week before our other four kiddos had their Thanksgiving break. So long story short, our kids would be out of school for two weeks, this coming \u201cnaturally\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mud.webromancy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}