Utah does not disappoint

Can I just say -- when we left the airport today and endured Friday rush hour Salt Lake City traffic, I had NO IDEA the varied landscape that awaited us on the subsequent four hour drive to our first stop in Moab?!? Shocking! It literally felt like a present waiting to be unwrapped with every turn we made because some new jaw-dropping and "wow" inducing scene unveiled itself to our naive East-coast-selves. Some examples below....

I was astounded at the scenes, colors, textures around us. At some points in the desert it literally looks like God just took a paintbrush  with soft colors and painted the Earth. Unreal! And let me tell you - there are wild sunflowers everywhere here! I would have pulled off the road more times (more on that later...) to capture probably 50 pictures of wild sunflowers everywhere, but alas the two six year olds in the car were sleeping and everyone knows that when a kiddo needs some sleep, you do not wake the kiddo. Not even for wild sunflower pictures :)

p.s. many times during our trip, looking at the desert landscape, I thought I should be Scully and Aaron be Mulder, and we turn off on one of the random dirt roads leading off into the middle of nowhere in the desert to explore for unidentified life forms - but I held myself back!

But back to where we left off on my last blog post....

It was Brie's first plane ride today, as well as the first of her each of her cousins. Brie was hesitant to get on the plane and, once seated, was very quick to get her seat belt on and cover her ears (THANKS nana for telling her how LOUD the plane would be ahead of time! ha) Below was her beautiful, but a tad bit anxious, smile to me as we waited for takeoff.

During takeoff, she closed her eyes nearly the entire time. But I do.not.blame.her.one.bit. I absolutely despise takeoff - it is fast, loud, pummels quickly through the air to rise higher, and did I mention it is fast? But we all made it and enjoyed some gorgeous scenery from the windows while flying over Colorado and Utah.

We could not have had an easier time once we landed. SLC is a small airport and our plane taxied right to the gate closest to the baggage claim. Jenni and I took off to get our rental car while the guys got our bags. Well, by the time we got our rental car (which took all of 10 minutes)....there came the guys rolling our bags! So within 30 minutes of our plane touching down on the runway, we were heading off in our rental cars. Not bad!

As I stated earlier, the car ride that followed was stunning. I was not expecting it and I definitely surprised Aaron and the kids by quickly pulling off road a few times at the last minute for pictures :) Thankfully Aaron is a great husband and joined in the spontaneity. I love him!

We pulled into Moab around 7pm. Because we are planning to wakeup at 6am tomorrow, we were short on time and grabbed some fast food to eat at the rental unit. Also, as soon as I dropped the kids and Aaron off, I turned around and drove straight to the grocery store for lunch stuff for our hikes tomorrow. It made for a bit of a hectic evening! But here I am now, ready for bed in our amazing unit (we love Airb&b and VRBO!), and I could not be more pumped for tomorrow: Arches National Park!