Category: Vacation

Trip to Grand Canyon

We went to the Grand Canyon for a hiking and camping trip. This trip was delayed by COVID and had originally been planned for early April 2020. We almost made it in 2020, but they closed the Grand Canyon a few days before we were supposed to arrive.

We hiked down the Tanner Trail and camped for three nights at the river. The second day we hiked west along the Beamer trail and the third day we hiked east along the Escalante trail. The Tanner trail is about nine miles and the elevation change is almost one mile. It is steep at the beginning and at the end. On the way down my legs got really tired and I was glad to have hiking poles to keep myself upright. The way back out was more of a workout, but much easier on the legs. Hiking up and down both took about 9 hours.

The weather was nice while we were there, though it was pretty hot down in the canyon. I usually think of climbing up and it getting colder, but dropping a mile into the canyon meant that it was 17 degrees warmer at the river than the rim.

Here are a couple of the best photos. The rest are available here.

  • View from the trailhead
  • View from the campsite
  • Little Colorado river

Wind River Range

We went to Wind River range for a hiking and camping trip right before Labor Day. The weather was great and we even had mostly smoke-free skies.

We spent the first two nights in the car at the trailhead. The first night was planned, the second night was because it took a full day to fix the two flat tires we got on the drive up. Then we spent five days and four nights hiking and camping around the Cirque of Towers area.

The plan was to hike this route: https://www.alltrails.com/explore/trail/us/wyoming/cirque-of-towers-big-sandy

I’ve also posted a gallery of photos.

Utah Trip

We had made reservations to camp at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in early April. As COVID became more serious and stay-at-home orders started coming out, we decided to leave Denver before it’s stay-at-home took effect.

It was still a couple weeks before our reservation at the Grand Canyon, so we started by going to Grand Junction and doing some hikes in Monument Canyon and a bike ride near Gateway.

After that hiked some of the Paradox trail.

At the end of March, Colorado issued a state wide stay-at-home and so we moved on to Utah. In Utah we did some biking and hiking near Blanding and Lake Powell.

Eventually the area of Utah we were in closed to out of county visitors and we moved over to Capitol Reef National Park.

Finally, we found out that the Grand Canyon was closed and we wouldn’t be able to do our planned hike. We headed back to Colorado, did one more hike in Monument Canyon and returned back to Denver to join the quarantine.

We’d horded enough food prior to the trip that we didn’t have to stop at an grocery stores on the way and we slept in the car or a tent. Our only contact with the world during the trip was at gas stations. Even there we only had to go inside a few times to restock water.

Fall Fun

I’ve done some short trips this fall with friends. In September I went down to Colorado Springs for the balloon festival.

  • Candle sticks
  • The field was tightly packed
  • Lion and Frog balloons
  • Skydiver landing
  • Lion balloon during glow

In October I went to Glenwood springs.

  • Glenwood hot springs at night
  • Chad at Caverns Adventure Park
  • Glenwood Springs from Caverns Adventure Park
  • SpeleoBox at Caverns Adventure Park
  • Fairy Cave
  • John Denver Sanctuary
  • Aspen from the north hills

I’ve also been to a couple shows at the center for performing arts: Verdi’s Requiem and Barber of Seville. Both were quite good!

For Halloween I dressed up as Spock:

Trip to Cape May and Philadelphia

I took a trip to Cape May New Jersey and Philadelphia with my parents and my brother’s family. Like our trip to Montreal last summer, the primary purpose of the trip was to spend time with family. We stayed in two AirBnB houses, had some time on the beaches and saw some sites in Philadelphia.

Follow this link to see the rest of the photos. Continue reading “Trip to Cape May and Philadelphia”

Trip to Scandinavia

My parents and I took a trip to Scandinavia this summer. We visited Sweden, Denmark, and Norway with a tour group. The trip was a lot of fun. We saw some beautiful scenery in Norway, learned about Scandinavian history and saw a lot of art.

You can see the rest of the photos in the gallery.

Continue reading “Trip to Scandinavia”

Summer trips

We made two trips this summer. One to Montreal with my family and one to Wyoming to see the eclipse. Photo galleries: Montreal Eclipse

We went to Montreal in mid-August and stayed near Mont Royal in an apartment through airBnB. Montreal is a nice city, but the main point of the trip was to spend time with my family and see my niece and nephew. The apartment worked well for having time with the kids and for take-out meals and breakfasts. One morning my sister-in-law brought back pasteries (Kouing Aman I think?) that were incredible. My favorite site was the cathedral. It was built in the 1820s in the Gothic style. It has a blue color scheme and some nice wooden sculptures.

A few days after getting back from Montreal, we went to Wyoming to see the total eclipse. We didn’t plan far enough ahead to have a hotel room so we left at 3am from Denver and arrived at Glendo state park (without too much traffic) at 7am. The park was nice and we spent quite a bit of time walking around. The eclipse itself was spectacular and something that I still think about two months later. I’m definitely planning to see the next one in America in 2024. Unfortunately, the drive back from the eclipse was awful. Traffic in the park didn’t move at all for a couple hours. We actually waited till 6pm to leave and the 3 hour drive took 6 hours. Next time I am going to plan much further ahead and get a hotel.

Trip to San Carlos

We took a trip to San Carlos 10/26 – 11/2 with a friend of ours. To get there we flew into Phoenix and rented a car. It takes about 10 hours to drive from Phoenix. In town we did our standard neighborhood walks, beach time, and restaurants. We also did several geocaches. All of the caches were a bit of hike to get to and one was on an island that only has land access at low tide. On one of the cooler days we hiked the Nacapule canyon trail. The Nacapule canyon is a few miles north of town and part of a national park. We also went into Guyamas to check out a pearl factory and the Three Presidents square. It was a fun trip and I’ve put up a gallery of photos here.

Anniversary Cruise

We took a cruise of the Black sea and Mediterranean with my parents and my brother’s family to celebrate my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. It was a 14 day cruise with stops in Greece, Istanbul, Bulgaria, Romania, Valletta, Sicily and Italy. The ship docked at a new port most days, and we would either tour on our own or take a tour organized by the ship. We got back on board for dinner as a group each night and the ship moved on to the next port while we slept.

It was a great trip and it was very nice to have time with my family. I’ve posted a bunch of pictures here.

Continue reading “Anniversary Cruise”