Cross-Country Cruisin 2019 - Day 4

Day 4: Idaho Falls, Idaho, to Red Lodge, Montana
Miles: 309
States: Idaho, Wyoming, Montana

Day 4: Yellowstone National Park (July 7)

Today, we went to Yellowstone! We drove to Montana from Idaho Falls. Took a few pictures of the Montana sign, and drove to Yellowstone.

Yellowstone isn’t like Zion. In Zion, you park, get in a shuttle, and you’re in Zion. The only way to get to things is the shuttle. In Yellowstone, you’re driving around and looking at things from your car. You can get out, though. We saw elk, bison, and rabbits. The first animal I saw was a bison. We took pictures of it. We then saw geysers. There were a bunch of them!!

The best thing was Old Faithful. We saw that after lunch, which was a very fancy bison burger at a very fancy restaurant(I was not made for a fancy restaurant). We went to the gift shop and got a few keychains and postcards. After that, we were heading toward the exit, which was about 100 miles from where we were. Luckily, we had a book to listen to called Cress.

Yellowstone Lake

After we finally got out of the park, we went towards the mountains, where there was a bunch of snow.

We were so high up!! We were 11,000 feet high.

It was amazing. It took us a while to get to our hotel. After we got there, we put our stuff down and went swimmin’.

Wyoming-Montana border on the Beartooth Hwy

Cross-Country Cruisin' 2019 - Day 3

Day 3: St. George, Utah, to Idaho Falls, Idaho
Miles: 514
States: Utah, Idaho

From Tim:

Day 3: Driving again (July 6)

Today, we were driving from St. George, UT, to Idaho Falls, ID. It was a long day. We drove for about seven hours. It took us nine hours total to actually get there. We watched Iron Man and Captain America: Winter Soldier. We also listened to my playlist on the way. It wasn’t a very active day.

Here’s a link to my playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6s42Lk4mjfKObJL57pFxZ7

Cross-Country Cruisin' 2019 - Day 2

Day 2: St. George, Utah, to Zion National Park and back
Miles: 88
States: Utah

Here's Tim's entry from Day 2.

Day 2: Zion National Park (July 5)

The journey to Zion took us about an hour. I was asleep for most of it because I was awake late the night before. Once we got there, we parked in the nearest town and waited for a shuttle to come and take us to the entrance to Zion. We had gotten to the entrance when we realized we had forgotten our National Parks Passports, so they couldn’t be stamped. We got the annual pass so that we could go to any National Park for free for one year. 

We walked to the bathrooms first and passed an enormous line. I thought, “Lucky we don’t have to wait in that line.” We went to the bathrooms and headed toward the visitors center to look around. We looked around and left. We realized that the line was for the shuttle, which was the only way to get anywhere. We had to wait in the line for an hour and a half, standing in the hot sun. For some parts, it was shady. After the wait, we finally got onto the shuttle and headed toward the Zion Lodge, where we could eat. We went to the restaurant and bought (overpriced) burgers. Anna got pizza (typical Anna). After eating, we went to the bathroom and got on a shuttle. We got off at the last stop. There is an entrance to a riverside hike at the last stop. We didn’t go on the hike, but we did get into the water. It was really cold!! I eventually got used to it, though. I got completely wet. We spent 45 minutes to an hour there. When we finally got back to the shuttle stop, there was a long line again. Luckily, it wasn’t as long as the one in the beginning. We got back to the front of the park and bought a few postcards and a puzzle at the store. We left the park and headed home/hotel. We swam for 30 minutes and then left. After that, we went to bed.

Cross-Country Cruisin' 2019 - Day 1

If you read my blog but don't follow me on Facebook, you may not already know that the kids and I are moving to Fairfax, VA, in the greater DC area, for a year or two. We're currently on our way across the country, seeing what and whom we can along the way!

Day 1: Bakersfield, California, to St. George, Utah
Miles: 412
States: California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah

Here's Timothy's take on our first day of traveling.

Day 1: Driving (July 4)

After days of packing, the day came. We left just before 10:30 this morning. We had to do multiple sweeps before we were sure that we were good to go. I had made a playlist to listen to on the way to Utah. We had just started driving and listening to the playlist when Grandpa told us that there was a 6.6 earthquake in the Mojave Desert. We were heading there and had just missed it. The trip was going to take around six hours and for the first few hours, I was fine just listening to the music, but then the playlist ended, and I didn’t want to eat all of our food in one drive. After the playlist ended, it started to get boring because nobody wanted to play the games I wanted to play. We couldn’t find the visitors center going into Nevada, so we decided to try the one leaving Nevada. Unfortunately, it was closed for the 4th of July. We had just gotten back on the road when we realized we were now in Arizona. We hadn’t realized that we had to go through a little bit of Arizona to get to Utah. The scenery in Arizona was beautiful!! We passed through a mountain river gorge, and the view was remarkable.

Virgin River Gorge, AZ

We got to our hotel and went to Cracker Barrel for dinner. After that, we went swimming! We weren’t there for very long (Anna got cold), so we went to bed.