oh so nifty: Our trip part 1: Making our way to the Canyon

Since our trip to the Grand Canyon was a 12 day adventure, we did a lot more than just the Canyon. We went though Yosemite, Sopped by Mono Lake, hit a few alein obsessed towns, explored Zion, found an AMAZING hot spring and THEN made it to the Grand Canyon! It was a busy and super fun 12 days! AND since I have well over a thousand pictures {don't worry I'm not sharing them all!} I'm breaking our adventure into two posts: pre-canyon and Grand Canyon.

Now, our trip was a lot of fun, but we still drove a lot, a whole lot! So, there were plenty of bored in the car pictures like this...

This was actually when we first got going, hence the clean hair and enthusiastic smiles!

Just outside of Yosemite was this funky little town. Pretty much all of the buildings had murals and all of the stores had something interesting.

This guy was in the corner of a little boutique...

He seemed a bit grumpy.

As soon as we got into Yosemite we saw a coyote! He ran straight up to our car and then sat on the side of the road, and somehow this is the best picture I got...

See him? Off to the side. Sad, I swear he posed and everything, but that is what I got! LOL!

We were driving through at a pretty perfect time. Look how beautiful the lighting was.

It was even better in person, but that turned out pretty good. Did I mention that this entire trip was documented with my Iphone! Yup, no fancy cameras here, all Iphone pics! It was pretty funny stopping to take a picture with my Iphone next to someone with a fancy-shmancy camera with a super zoom lens. They must of thought I was nutty!

We pulled into a campground the first night at dark, so when we woke up to see this, it was pretty amazing!

We were planning on making it to Mono Lake the first night, but stopped when we ran out of light. Turns out we were about 20 minutes away! So, we made a stop, and was not disappointed! Mono Lake has these natural formations called Tufas and were seriously a sight to see! I felt like I was in The Little Mermaid while I was there! See...

It was pretty neat, wondering through those towers of rock! I took waaaay to many pictures there, but it was so pretty! I couldn't help it!

We stopped pretty much anytime something looked interesting. Which meant lots of exploring random spots.

and Matt acting like he's falling off a cliff...

...boys!

We found a few alien hot spots along the way...

It was kinda fun checking out all the alien stuff! We ended up camping in the desert not far from here and were hoping to see a UFO... didn't happen. Maybe next time. ;)

After our night in the desert we made it to Zion!

We thought we'd camp there, turns out there was no camping allowed where we were. SO, we went in search of a place to stay and ended up at an amazing Hot Spring where we stayed for a few nights. It was back in a canyon carved out by the Virgin river. The springs were coming straight out of the side of the canyon from two little caves, flowing down to the pools and into the river. It was amazing!

We were rained in for most of the next day. There was a huge thunder storm causing flash floods and everything! We were pretty excited to be 'stuck' at the hot springs for most of the day. We did end up getting in a short hike at Zion though.

He has to be a daredevil! Even looking at this now it makes my stomach turn!

We got in a few more hikes the next day. I'm pretty sure we could've spent a whole week at Zion. It was beautiful! There is so much to see, and it's something new and different at every turn!

Aren't those steps amazing?! I felt like I was Indiana Jones or something!

That picture, that looks like a little puddle... it's big pools at the bottom of the canyon. the trail was so narrow you could look straight down. They had a chain there for you to hold as you were going around! It was a little scary, but neat at the same time!