What do you do when your kids school breaks are different weeks? Schedule separate trips. Or double check if it wasn’t an error – which I didn’t so we went two separate ways during the same week anyway:-) Lucas, Mia and I to Utah and B/Maxie to Europe. Neither of us have ever been so this was to be a trip through the parks and nature exploration.

We landed in Vegas, made our way through super long bus to car rental that felt like desert tour and got into Elara Hilton at 2 am. It doesn’t feel like arly am in LV as everything is alive all the time – but we were exhausted. Two nights and one day in Vegas felt like plenty – we walked the Strip, took the tourist pictures, walked thru the shops. Lucas was obsessed with shopping b/c supposedly buying normal American clothes in Vegas is waaay better than in Atlanta – go figure. Mia was obsessed with little escort cards on the floor everywhere and giggling that the girls are naked. Way to learn about the oldest trade in the world. Thumbs up for awesome parenting. David Copperfield was our only real entertainment, besides sitting by the pool, ordering room service and enjoying the sun. Have to give it to the first magician I saw in Prague, he still has it and pretty impressive stuff with engaging audience and mind blowing tricks.

Our roadtrip started on our way to Zion National Park. We were psyched for this stop because we were going to “rough it out” in a tent. Well, we didn’t – we glamped it out, all the way through. Under Canvas was absolutely awesome – except the initial itsy bitsy conversation with the girl showing us our tent. She made a tiny comment at the end – “close your tent as we have wildlife”. Me, suspicously “so just curious, what kind of wildlife?” – hoping for cows, coyotes, buffalos – something big. Ah – not so much, her response was “tarantulas, scorpions and ……” she said some large animal that I didn’t hear at all b/c my brain went on overdrive about all the scenarios of insects climbing into my bed. Lovely, this is going to rock! I can foresee very relaxing night sleep – not.

All around though, this place is awesome – real beds with linens, clean and warm communal bathroom, fantastic restaurant that you need as the closest one is 20 miles away. Great evenings with fellow tourists by fire or marshmallow baking, pretty much no signal. Awesome service! Definitely an experience for everyone. Hiking all around and unbelievable views.

Our next stop was Bryce National Park. Amazing drive to get there thru Zion. We didn’t actually go to THE Zion park for hike as the tour guides told us how busy and crowded it gets so we went to a different canyon. The drive was thru the actual park and stunning – I had a hard time focusing as I wanted to see and look around but also preferred not to dive off a cliff somewhere. Overall – both of these parks are stunning, truly unable to describe the beauty of the nature, highly recommend to everyone. The towers are mesmorizing and you feel so minuscule around it. Even the kids were a bit speechless.

We did have a bit of a rude awakening as we encountered close to freezing temperature, snow and half of the park closed due to snow/wet conditions. We walked on the rim of the park, drove thru and quickly rethought our two days there – not worth it as all is closed.

So, we quickly re-calibrated and off after one night to Kanab, UT – stay tuned.