where she went.: i can see for miles and miles...

I’ve mentioned my love for the American West several times, so I was thrilled to take a family vacation there this summer. We sped to the airport to catch our flight to Denver after Diana and I took our last exams of the year, and spent the first night at a dude ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming. We rode horses for two days in the beautiful Medicine Bow Forest before returning to Colorado Springs to drive up Pike’s Peak, which was a mistake--we were all nauseous upon reaching the summit, and I had to drive back down the narrow, winding, and unpaved roads. We then drove through the Garden of the Gods just as the sun was setting before heading to the Flying W Ranch for an outdoor cowboy (“chuckwagon”) dinner, complete with live music. The next day, we began our journey to Utah. We visited a ridiculous amount of National Parks, beginning with Arches National Park just outside of Moab, Utah. The four of us went on a sunset hike to one of the arches, which took about an hour round trip. Diana and I signed up to go to canyoneering the next day, which consisted of repelling off of a large rock face into a small cavern, and then off of one of the arch bridges. I’m really glad I did it, but it was slightly terrifying. We drove through Canyonlands National Park on our way out of Moab, which, like Arches, was mostly just red rock, but was still beautiful.

Next, we went to Four Corners Monument, which is operated by the Navajo Indians so our National Parks pass wasn't accepted. At the monument, you can stand in the states of Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado at the same time. Native American vendors were selling jewelry and souvenirs at stands surrounding the monument, so we enjoyed shopping while eating traditional fry bread. We moved on to Monument Valley, where my dad's cowboy dreams finally came true. He always talks about "spaghetti westerns" and John Wayne, and he and I rode horses through the Valley for about an hour. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking, and it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

We made our way to Zion National Park, which reminded me of Yosemite, where we went on vacation in 2009. A free one-hour bus tour around the park allowed us to admire all of the scenery, and we spent the rest of the evening browsing through shops downtown. The next day we travelled to Bryce Canyon, which was also beautiful, but I was really too exhausted from the entire trip to care about taking pictures at every look out area.

I was pleasantly surprised by Capitol Reef National Park, which, in addition to the mountains and rocks, had a small house next to a fruit orchard selling delicious pies. We skipped lunch and went straight to dessert before going on a brief walk through the park.

We decided to go back to the Dead Horse Point part of Canyonlands on our way back to Denver, from where we flew home. Canyonlands Park is near Moab, so we stayed the night there after going to Dead Horse Point State Park at sunset. It was absolutely beautiful, with rock that reminded me of the Grand Canyon, and would have been a perfect picnic spot had there not been mosquitoes everywhere.

I did a little research while we were there about local rodeos, because we went to two in Cody, Wyoming last summer and we had a blast. I found one in Colorado that was just a little bit out of our way on the journey back to Denver. While the rodeo in Cody was more of a tourist attraction, this one was pretty authentic. Unfortunately, it started raining and we ran back to the car, and watched the fireworks from inside.

The next morning we drove to Denver, where we had a lot of fun going through security, sitting through a flight delay, and then missing our flight. During our two week adventure, we did a ridiculous amount of driving and exploring, and I had a great time with my family and managed to escape from the real world for a little while.