Nevada and Utah

On our way to Utah, thinking the drive would be very uneventful, because there is nothing, and I mean nothing, around, we came upon this Gem.

It wasn't even on our map, but here is the town:

And here is their only "Inn." Maybe we will try it out the next time we drive through, ha!

This is what we got to enjoy on this road:

And Anthony wanted to stop to get a picture of the cactus when they started appearing, so I had to get a pic:

We also found the only other living thing besides us and a few cows that we have seen:

We also noticed when we got out for this pic that Anthony forgot to put the gas cap back on after the last fill up, 129 MILES BACK!!

We always complain that when we pump gas that the gas cap always falls on the ground when we hook it on the fuel door. Well, I don't think we will ever complain again.

And here is one thing that I think a minority of you may not know. Anthony likes to eat bananas. LOTS of bananas, most of the time with peanut butter. This is what I have been doing a lot of the trip:

Yup.

Along these roads where there is no traffic anywhere, Anthony has been saying that this would be perfect for a bicycling tour. I am thinking, are you for real?? And he said he loves this, no cars, and all you need is a gallon of water and a bike. Well, he got really excited when he did spot a few adventurous crazies, like him, along the way.

We made it to Zion National Park, and our neighbor Jim texted us that day and said he "always wanted to do The Narrows hike which is really a wade in the Virgin River in a very tight slot canyon." And he said we might want to check that out. And that's what we did. We asked the Forest Ranger at the visitors center about the hike, and he said we would need some aquatic shoes and could grab some at several stores in town. We asked would crocs do? And he said yes they would if they had toes in them. We were in luck. We just happen to have those on our feet about 99 percent of this whole trip. So off we went. We hiked a paved path to the river and grabbed us a walking stick:

(Thankfully there was a whole wall of them)

We stepped into some real muddy water, and started "hiking."  Our crocs got stuck several times. Anthony's even came off once and had to chase it down the river. 

You know how much he loves his hat?

Remember that one^?

Well, I think he loves his crocs even more. They are also his church shoes, so he for sure didn't want to lose them. He had to grab it with his walking stick. But he finally took them off and walked for awhile barefoot. 

I know. . . .

The river, I think, was pretty low and we could walk some on the muddy banks, and some places it was all river because the canyon walls were on both sides. There were also rocks under the water that we had to navigate. We were very thankful for the recycled walking sticks.

We had to get a picture, because I knew for sure I would never do this again.

We should have known this little hike Jim recommended was just no ordinary trek. Jim likes to hike too, like Glacier National Park for an extended period of time (I thought it was intense in a car).

I haven't decided how exactly to describe the tiny part of the hike that we did, but I don't think fun is the word. Maybe, it is what it is. And we did it.

Another observation about this park was that there were a lot of foreign accents, to the point where we were the only ones speaking English much of the time. And it wasn't from one particular part of the world, there were all accents, and all different colors, which was really cool, but very unexpected. Maybe Zion National Park is the number one U.S. travel destination listed in all the foreign travel brochures.

Here's another thing Anthony has been doing throughout this trip.

One of Anthony's former bosses, David, from his former work has been travelling also, kind of in the same circles as we have. So they have been keeping up with the location of each other. I think the closest we made it to each other was when we were both in the Seattle area. David, however, is back home now sleeping in his own bed.

That evening, of course, we started thinking about a place to stay and all the camps inside the park were full. I pulled up the temperature at about 9 p.m., and it was over 90 degrees:( so we decided to stay in a hotel :) Besides staying in a dorm at Seattle Pacific University where Alyssa was, we have only slept in our cozy van bed. At the hotel, we even had a king sized bed, which was so strange since we have been in tight quarters for so long. The nice private hot showers, we both took two, and big bed were really nice. 

Friday morning finds us on the road driving back through Zion, since we only did part of the park yesterday, and are on our way to Bryce Canyon. We have put 7,000 miles on our van since we began exactly one month ago on June 18th. We have started heading back east, but the "advanture" has definitely not ended.