A long way and a lot of stuff

Posted on August 18, 2010
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Our vacation was over Sunday night. In nine days we drove 3,000 miles through seven states seeing four national parks. Of those nine days, we spent six nights in a tent, three of them really cold, one really rainy, and one oddly really windy.

It was a fast and furious vacation. It wasn’t meant to be restful. It was meant to drive a long way and see a lot of stuff. And we did. And we liked it.

Yellowstone is huge and diverse and beautiful and scary. Yes, scary (Read THIS!). Yellowstone is a HUGE volcano. The reason the ground spews steam and boiling water (AND boiling MUD) is that the geothermal activity is right UNDER your feet, and your car, and your tent, and your bathroom. Such active geothermal activity means, to me, see the place and get outta there. Shelley thought I was strangely hypersensitive to all this.

The Grand Tetons rightly earn the name grand. Wow. So big, so tall, and so impressive. Our intent from the entry gate was to see a moose. And we did. It took some doing. We asked a Ranger and he gave us four spots in the park to look. We found one in the fourth spot. Then we saw lots of bison a few minutes later. We say even more bison in Yellowstone, along with herds of elk, a bear, prong horn antelope, and a coyote. We also saw a beaver in the Tetons.

Zion National Park surprised us. It’s a small National Park, but full of places to explore and discover. This was where we spent a very windy night. Yellowstone was the cold nights (mid 30’s!!).

We hadn’t planned to see the Grand Canyon, but we wanted to see one of our churches college students who now lives in the Phoenix area, so we stopped by the north rim of the Grand Canyon on the way. It’s much smaller than the south rim, but less touristy with equally impressive views.

We also stopped through Las Vegas and saw Hoover Dam. Pictures don’t do the place justice. It is an amazing feat of engineering and construction.

It was good to get out of town. It was good to see and experience the four National Parks. It was better to see so much beauty and majesty created by God to show his greatness. It’s good to be humbled in such a way.