My wife, kids, and I took a vacation to the west coast last summer for our tenth anniversary and it was definitely the most exciting family trip we have taken to date. The west coast has a ton to offer and we did not even begin to see it all. It was a 9 day vacation and we drove instead of flying.
We took off from the Minneapolis right after the state track meet and I drove through the night all the way to Denver. I slept for a brief couple hours and then continue driving through the mountains. That is a great experience and my kids loved the high peaks and low valleys that you could see out of the window. I drove all the way till we got to Arches National Park. This was an amazing place to visit. Beautiful, warm, and you can see a long way from many different parts of the park. After this we stopped at a hotel for the night. The next day we got in the vehicle and drove to Antelope Canyon and toured the underground caves. The kids loved walking through and seeing all the different views in the lower canyon but if you are claustrophobic, you may want to go to the upper canyon because the lower canyon is tight on space at times.
After we left Antelope Canyon, we bolted to the Grand Canyon. I have always wanted to go and it was everything I expected and more. I would have liked to stay and really tour many of the sights but since we were heading to San Diego, we only stayed for several hours and hit the road again. I drove all night again and we got to San Diego in the wee hours of the morning. We stayed at a hotel right near the beach. During our three day stay we went to the San Diego Zoo, toured the USS Midway, and went to the beach. These were highlights for the kids as they loved the animals, especially the pandas, and my boys were enthralled over the massive ship with planes on it. We started our slow journey home by first going to the Queen Mary. My wife’s grandmother came over on the Queen Mary from Europe as a war bride so it was a very unique visiting experience to try to imagine what it was like to be on the ship back when it was a war time ship.
After the Queen Mary, we cruised north and made a stop in Yosemite National Park. This was the highlight of the trip for me. We walked to a waterfall and the sights at the park were second to nothing I have ever experienced in my life. We stayed here for most of the day and then proceeded north again. I drove the night all the way to Yellowstone National Park. We got to see Old Faithful erupt and look at many of the hot springs. We did not unfortunately see much wildlife but were not there for enough time to really experience the full park as well. We left the park through the mountain road and that was quite the driving experience. We drove through snow in the middle of June and the kids loved the lakes in the mountains. After leaving here, we drove with one overnight stay in Billings, MT back home. We put on over 5000 miles and saw so many amazing sights.
I am not sure why we decided to see them all in the same trip but I actually enjoyed doing it. We never once got bored at one location because we were never at any of them long enough to get bored. We could have spent the whole 9 days at any one of them and probably had a blast but the ability to see them all was a lot of fun. My wife and kids would say they would have rather flied but I would drive 100 times out of 100 myself. By the time we got home, we were ready to be home. The next trip will probably be to Oregon as it was going to be our honeymoon location but got switched last minute. Is there anything that we missed seeing that we should have stopped to see?
Till next time, Christmas is one week away and I have not even begun shopping. Of course I only have to shop for my wife as she has already gotten everything else. 🙂
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