Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

-Posted by Isaac

I love it when a plan comes together.

Remember that weekly Hannibal quote from the A-Team? (Those of you over 40.)

I really do love it. Especially when I do zero of the planning. I’m so thankful that Jayne not only loves to travel, she can also orchestrate a trip like the one we just took. We’ve been doing this for, I think, four years now. Traveling around Memorial Day. At first I thought it was a little nutty… do you realize what we do, Honey?? We’re beekeepers! It’s the height of the season! But I’m used to it by now and I’ve adjusted the schedule accordingly. Anyway, I’m usually so overwhelmed and burnt out on bees by late May, these little getaways are probably healthy for all of us. I don’t do any thinking or logistics. She handles it all.

Let me tell you about this one— Seven days, four kids, seven national parks! If you permit me, I’ll share a picture or two from each park and maybe a memory to go with it.

In chronological order:

Arches

-Crowded! (As you can see.) But still beautiful.

-In the visitor center, we ran into an old geology professor from Wittenberg. Small world! He was surrounded by summer field studies students from Santa Barbra, CA. Talking strata, of course.

-One of the view points on the map was called The Garden of Eden. Our Eden made sure we got to that one.

Canyonlands

-Spectacular views! Windy!

-This park made me remember Edward Abby and the characters in The Monkey Wrench Gang. I did a lot of preaching… which nobody listened to.

Capitol Reef

-Another awesome geology talk in the visitor center. This one given by a cute young park ranger, and lasted a full half hour because some annoying guy from Ohio kept asking questions.

-The morning we left Capitol Reef, we were greeted with the biggest, most beautiful snowflakes ever—

Up around 9000 feet, those big flakes stopped being beautiful. 15 mph, 10% grade. This was how we spent Memorial Day.

No need for sunglasses.

Bryce Canyon

-We had a nice long hike in Bryce. It was still cold, but the kids managed without too much whining.

Zion

Eden! Get away from that hippie people-hugger tree!

-Of the seven we visited, this was my personal favorite with its massive red sandstone cliffs.

-It was crowded in the afternoon, but the next morning about daylight, I took a run up some trails. Had the place to myself.

Mesa Verde

-Another long hike. Probably three hours. We had to get to those petroglyphs! Our kids were troopers

-Leaving Mesa Verde and traveling across beautiful southern Colorado, we had the chance to officially make this a business trip.

Great Sand Dunes

-For the kids, this park was the highlight of the trip. They had been here two years ago and I guess the memories were good.

-It’s just a big sandbox, but if you feel inclined, it makes for a pretty intense workout.

Ironically that day, the last of the trip, I had Dylan’s You Ain’t Going Nowhere rolling through my head. I think it came to me because of one line in particular: We’ll climb that hill no matter how steep…

When we come up to it.