14 Hour Drive

In my previous post (a while back), I wrote that we were going to Disneyland in October.

Well it didn't happen, and we changed the plans to February!

The week after we were supposed to go to Disneyland, Andy had a business trip.

So when we cancelled our California trip I couldn't let Andy have all the fun and leave for almost a week.

So I decided to take time off work as well and head to St. George with Emily.

We decided it could be fun to take the scenic route down there this year, 

instead of the normal 3 1/2 hour drive down I-15.

My parents did a similar drive a couple weekends before and said how pretty it was.

We planned out our route, with times and everything.

We would leave Sunday at 6:00am.

And go from...

Spanish Fork-->Capitol Reef National Park-->Grand Staircase, Escalante National Monument

-->Bryce Canyon National Park-->St. George

And hopefully arrive in St. George by 10:30pm.

We got a late start, and headed out around 7:30 instead.

When we got to Capitol Reef we were doing great and full of energy.

In Capitol Reef we lost service on our phones (maps) and forgot that to get to the next step of our trip we had to back track a little bit back out of Capitol Reef.

Instead, we kept on driving, and driving, and about an hour and half later we finally got service and checked if we were still on the right track.

Which we were not.

We had to head back an hour and half the way we just had come to get back on the right trail.

At this point, we were very behind schedule seeing as we didn't leave until an hour and half after we wanted, and we went out of our way an hour and half.

By the time we got to Escalante though, we were way ahead of schedule!

No clue how that happened ha!

So we continued our way onward to my favorite National Park in Utah....

Bryce Canyon National Park!

Emily had never been so I was pretty excited for her to see it, seeing as we are very similar, I knew she'd love it.

We left Bryce Canyon about an hour before the time we thought we would, so like I said, we made great time and we have no clue how it happened!

By the time we made it to I-15 close to Paragonah, we were both hangry (hungry/angry).

We both thought we were going to die of hunger.

Now let me back up for a second.

The night before we left, we headed to Winco to grab some snacks and treats for our long drive.

We bought $50 worth of candy/munchies for our drive!

We also bought 2, 1 gallon bottles of water. 1 for each of us.

(Note to everyone: don't go shopping for a trip at 1:00am the night before your trip, 

you make dumb decisions like that ^)

1 gallon of water is A LOT OF WATER. But not only that, instead of being smart and getting even a milk jug type gallon, we bought the worst bottle ever.

Needless to say, it was impossible to drink it while driving, and when we stopped it was to take pictures and we always forgot to drink!

Back to getting on I-15...

We were HANGRY!!

We hadn't eaten real food since 6:00am when we got McDonald's!

So we stressfully made our way to Cedar City where there was the only thing that sounded good to us...Little Caesars.

Around 9:30-10:00pm we finally made our way into St. George.

Our bodies were sore, our minds were mush, and we were beyond excited to get in bed and sleep until we had to come home!

And that's just about what we did the rest of the week.

That's a good enough summary!

Now onto the pictures, with some side stories in between!

All of our food for the trip, and our 2-1 gallon bottles of water.

Our beginning of the trip classic picture!

Sunrise in Nephi, UT

7:30am...the only good thing about that time is the sun rise we got to watch!

Why oh why don't they see this and turn off the water?!? Everything was frozen!
Very cool looking, but so weird!

Despite what this picture looks like, we could NOT get gas at this gas station.

I had to pee WAY bad, but we both refused to go in any bathrooms that they hand you the key and you go out back.

So onward we went without the gas we needed and without a bathroom!

In almost every little town there was a bunch of fake people! We couldn't understand it!

While we were driving through all the little towns we kept saying things like, 

"Everybody is in church so they had to put fake people out."

It was eerily quiet our whole drive through little towns, but we loved it!

Gunnison, UT

As we were driving through Gunnison, UT-

 we saw this guys at a gas station so we had to stop and snap some pictures!

Welcome to...
Captiol Reef National Park

Such a pretty park!
I'd love to go back one day and do a hike here!

Chimney Rock, Capitol Reef National Park

The start of our 1 1/2 hours of going the wrong way.

"Wow, look how cool those grey rocks are!"

The end when we realized we needed to turn around and go back through those cool grey rocks.

"Wow, I hate these grey rocks, they are soo ugly. Maybe cool, but way ugly. Get me out of here! Ugh!!"

Finally back on track!!

Escalante Drive

What do you do when you are not even close to civilization

 and you feel as though your bladder is going to burst? ^^^

Escalante, UT

We LOVE Peachi-Os!

Welcome to...
Bryce National Park

One thing to know when going to this park, there will always be a million tourists!

Seriously the hardest bottles to drink out of while driving!

In high school, my nickname was Smokey the Bear.

So I thought this was appropriate.

Sunsetting as we were leaving Bryce Canyon

Panguitch, UT

This was about 10 minutes before we pulled onto I-15 to head the rest of the way to St. George.

---

Monday morning, we woke up and needed to eat breakfast, so we "got ready" 

and headed out to Egg and I.

We jumped in the car and pulled out of the garage and noticed something didn't sound or feel right, so we pulled back into the garage, and saw that my driver side front tire was flatter than flat!

Luckily, I've changed a tire before, so I got started.

We lifted it up on the jack and then unscrewed it, and while I was trying to pull the tire off, the car rolled back and off the jack and my hand/arm got stuck! 

Panic set in and I started freaking out, and so did Emily.

Her motherly instinct set in and she lifted the car up and I slid my arm out.

At Discount Tires

iHop

Since  discount tires was in Washington, we ended up going to iHop instead since it was a lot closer to where we were!

The Legacy

And those were all the pictures we got the rest of the trip until the drive home!

---

Wednesday morning we woke up and got ready/cleaned the house, to head home!

I highly recommend doing the drive down like we did.
It was so pretty and fun to do something different.
Next time I would maybe bring some different things to get us through the long drive, but with the way we did it, we had some great stories to tell!

Until next year!

Love, B