Girls' Weekend

Less than 36 hours after we arrived home from South America, I hopped in the car and headed down to Fredericksburg to meet up with my mom and sister for our first-ever Girls' Weekend. We had so much fun shopping, eating, visiting wineries, catching up, and laughing. I'm so thankful to have such wonderful women in my life!

Fiesta Winery

Lunch at Vaudeville's underground bistro

Samples at Quintessential Chocolates

Four Point Cellars

Pontotoc Winery

Dinner at Rathskeller

It was way too hot to hike, but we enjoyed the drive out to Enchanted Rock.

Celebrating National Ice Cream Day at Clear River

Delicate Arch

We made it over to Arches National Park this morning before it was too hot to be able to enjoy it. Our goal was to hike the Delicate Arch trail and see the famous arch that most people probably associate with the park. Round trip, it is a moderate three-mile hike. The terrain reminded us a bit of Enchanted Rock, if you're familiar with that well-known hunk of granite in central Texas. The hike was fun and the reward of seeing the gorgeous arch was well worth the effort to get there!

The Delicate Arch Trail begins at Wolfe Ranch

The creek at Wolfe Ranch

View along the trail

Tadpole pool 

Interesting formations at the top of the Slickrock area

Happy Hikers

Almost to the top of the trail

Our reward!

Proof that we made it

Max always finds the highest accessable point

We always find lots of rock stacks when we hike,
and Clay decided he wanted to try his hand at it today.

Ute Indian petroglyphs

All the Mexican food, after a strenuous morning

Sadly, this is the last day of our Epic Summer Road Trip, but ending it at Arches was a good way to go out. Ruth and I will get on a plane back to DFW tomorrow and jump back into sports practices and CC tutoring prep work. The boys will continue on in the RV and will have a couple of days of Man Trip, before they head out to west Texas for the family's annual gathering near Ft. Davis. Thank you for following along on our journey. It's been amazing in so many ways! Stay tuned for future adventures.

Arches

Let me start by saying, sometimes it's totally worth it to get up for the early run:

Sunrise

Good morning, sunshine!

They don't call this neighborhood
Rim Vista for nothing!

Sights and smells of the morning

Little Bunny Foo Foo

Later in the morning, we paid a visit to Arches National Park. Wow! What an amazing place! It is so incredibly beautiful and unlike any place we've ever been. We took a couple of short, easy hikes and saw Park Avenue, Double Arch, Turret Arch, and The Windows up close. We also drove down the main road of the park and viewed from there lots of other interesting formations, like Balanced Rock and The Petrified Sand Dunes. We can't wait to go back tomorrow and do a longer hike.

Park Avenue

Petrified Sand Dunes

Balanced Rock

Making arches under Double Arch

Double Arch

The Windows

Turret Arch

I don't know if this formation
had a particular name, but I called
it The Three Wise Men.

This one I called The Lion

Until tomorrow...

Hiking in Yellowstone

We enjoyed our hike on Friday so much, we decided to fill up Saturday with several shorter hikes. We started with a lovely 2.4 mile hike to Natural Bridge. Then we did the very easy one mile hike at Pelican Creek. After that, we decided to take a break at Yellowstone Lake Lodge, where we had a delicious lunch, watched a sweet mama mule deer and her fawn, and played a board game. In the afternoon, we explored the 2.3 mile Storm Point Loop, where we enjoyed watching the cute little marmots, skipping rocks on a beach of Yellowstone Lake, and climbing out on Storm Point, overlooking the lake. We also loved how the trail took us through open meadows, thick forests, and along the cliffs above the lake. We have discovered that hiking is an activity that all our people enjoy and that is something we can all easily do together. Family bonding plus exercise plus fresh air for the win!

Natural Bridge

Hiking buddies

Mule deer mama and fawn

Lobster sliders and fancy fries

A view of Yellowstone Lake from the Pelican Creek Trail

Marmot 

Reward for the first half of the Storm Point Trail

The rare beach rhino, which we haven't
seen since we were in Scotland

Boys and rocks go well together

Storm Point

A gigantic wish

Hot and Cold

We spent the morning hiking the Angel Rocks Trail with our new friends we met on the cruise. It was a beautiful hike, and we had so much fun hanging out with another family we seem to have a lot in common with! I have been very surprised at how warm it is in Alaska, and we did work up a sweat. I always just have Alaska pictured as frozen tundra, but in truth, it has been one of the warmest places we've visited this summer.

Ruth and the "bear" rock

On top of the world

Max the mountain man

Little man on a big rock

After the hike, we headed over to Chena Hot Springs Resort. We grabbed some lunch in the restaurant, took a tour of the greenhouses, animal pens, and geothermal power plant of the self-sustaining property, and then visited the Aurora Ice Museum, where we definitely had a chance to cool off. The building is kept at 25° F all year long and is a fascinating ice wonderland. We loved seeing all the ice sculptures and watching the sculptor work. Today, he was turning out ice martini glasses, which the ice bar serves Appletini's in. The whole experience was so delightful!

Donkey love

The resort is trying to build its reindeer herd,
so they can start serving the meat in the restaurant.

The lettuce room

Aurora Ice Museum

Jousting knights ice sculpture

A full size igloo

Weston jamming on the ice xylophone

My little Eskimos

Polar bear bed

Aurora Ice Bar

Cheers!

Just chillin'

Mesmerized by the sculptor at work