Unfortunately our month of a zillion steps came to an end before we knew it. We got up bright and early to head back east on Saturday, September 25th. Our first stop was Cedar City, Utah, setting us up to visit Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.  One of our rest stops combined a much needed restroom visit with an interesting walk around some petroglyphs.

The next morning we got up dark and early to head to Zion as we’d read that it gets quite busy quickly and you have to take shuttles into the park with all the other riff raff. Thankfully the sun rose before we got onto the windier roads and we managed not to drive into an canyons. The intel on Zion getting busy was entirely accurate, but we got a parking spot without issue and didn’t have to wait too long before we were able to board a shuttle bus.

Angels Landing is the most famous hike in Zion, but I’d nixed that because it is a hike along a knife edge ridge with fixed chains to hold onto. Instead we hiked up past it along the West Rim trail and were super happy with our decision. The West Rim trail was gorgeous and uncrowded. When we passed the start to the scary part of the Angels Landing Hike it looked busy, but not too bad. By the time we returned past it it was an absolute zoo. We heard stories of people sitting on the chains and grabbing onto strangers when they were scared. Yikes.

We took a break after our West Rim adventure and then hiked to the Emerald Pools and checked out the start of the Riverside trail to the start of the Narrows trail, another famous hike that requires wading in sometimes chest deep water for a long way, yes, I nixed this one too.

Relive video of Zion hiking

After another night in Cedar Park, we drove to Bryce Canyon where we hiked the Navajo / Queens Garden Loop. Everything was stunning and now we have a massive catalog of hoodoo pictures.

Relive video of Bryce Canyon hiking

We needed to eat lunch on our way out Bryce to Grand Junction we stopped at the Red Canyon area. Just another gorgeous place to walk around after having some much needed PB&Js.

We made it to Grand Junction, Colorado in time to grab dinner at a local brewery, Rockslide Brewery, which had well above average food for a brewery and good beer to go with it.

From there is was time to head to Boulder, Colorado where we were fortunate to connect with an old college buddy. In one of the rare good uses of Facebook, I wrote to one of Jon’s old college roommates who we knew moved to the Boulder area after college. He and his family invited us over for a much appreciated home cooked meal while on the road. It was so good to see him and meet his lovely family. It didn’t seem like it had been over 20 years since we last caught up except for how much we had to catch up on!

Before meeting up with our friend, we took his advice on a local hike and checked out the Sanitas Loop Trail.

Relive video of Sanitas Loop hike

From Boulder we drove to Sedalia, Missouri for the night. The next day we visited Jon’s aunt and uncle in Osage Beach/Lake of the Ozarks and managed to avoid the cartel. We stopped one last time after that in Corydon, Indiana and then made it back to Bowie, Maryland on October 1st in time to celebrate our nephew’s birthday with him in person for the first time in 7 years.

We made it to Tahoe on August 28th after our (mostly) fun drive across the country. (Lots of gorgeous scenery, but some bleak areas as well.) It was a bit smokey / orange sky when we arrived. We hoped for improving conditions, but mainly we were excited to unpack after being on the road for 10 days. Our rental house in Tahoma (on the west shore of Lake Tahoe) was well appointed and had 5 bedrooms for us to choose from.

A lot of things were closed due to smoke from the the nearby Caldor and Dixie fires, but we made the most of our first full day by going to the lake.

We didn’t get to stay in relaxed or unpacked mode for very long as the next day we got an automated call saying we were in a mandatory evacuation area due to the Caldor fire. Jeff came home from work and we packed up again. I was able to find an airbnb in Tahoe City, just a bit further north of our month long rental so we headed there uncertain how long we’d be relocated or if we’d even be able to go back.

We evacuated on August 30th and quickly became familiar with the Calfire daily briefings and the El Dorado county evacuation maps, checking constantly to see if our blue dot made it out of the red.

We got the good news that we could return to Tahoma on September 5th.

We were very fortunate to have minimal impact from the fires, just 6 nights evacuated, when so many people lost so much. The firefighters and their support crews did amazing work keeping the fire at bay and I am extremely grateful for their efforts. The communication team was particularly impressive though I will admit we were all starting to get a bit salty about being indefinitely evacuated by the time the order lifted.

We did quite a few hikes whenever the air quality permitted outdoor activity. My sister turned me on to an app called Relive which “records” your hike and creates a cool video from pictures you take along the way. Here are a few videos:

Shirley Canyon Hike in Squaw Valley (now Palisades Tahoe, also ignore the last few super fast miles, I forgot to stop recording when we got in the car – lol)
https://www.relive.cc/view/vNOPYLwAKY6

Blackwood Canyon Hike
https://www.relive.cc/view/vWqBrxmExQq

Five Lakes at Alpine Meadows Hike
https://www.relive.cc/view/vXvLXm4KM7v

Jeff and Jon’s mom, Kathy, passed away in July 2019. We were able to get back to California to have a memorial ceremony at the time and planned to have another ceremony to spread Kathy’s ashes the following year. The pandemic delayed those plans along will billions of other plans, but we were able to visit some of Kathy’s favorite spots on this trip. We memorialized Kathy on a weekend away in San Francisco.

In addition to the Bay Area, Kathy loved Yosemite and instilled that love in Jon and Jeff through yearly visits at a minimum when they were growing up so we spent a weekend away in Yosemite Valley too. Jeff was keen to hike to the top of Half Dome, but I was not so keen given the 14+ mile distance and scary exposed heights/cable assisted climb. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for Jeff our two attempts to get permits to do the hike were denied. We didn’t “win” the lottery and I was more than happy to “just” do the 8 mile hike Vernal and Nevada Falls.

We had several bear sightings in the Tahoe area, but never managed to think to take a picture at the time. One was while we were on a run and I was scared the bear was going to follow us, but luckily he decided he had better things to do than chase a couple of joggers.

In one of those it’s a small world moments, our good friend Tiffany who is a fellow American/Australian was back visiting her family in Nevada. We got a chance to meet up with her, her mom and her two super cutie kiddos for a day at the lake. We missed having her husband Andy there to add in all the serious Aussieness as he was holding down the fort in Melbourne.

We had a fantastic month in Tahoe with a few bumps along the road to keep it interesting. Many thanks to Jeff for coordinating the house rental and being an all around great Tahoe guide. I’ll leave you with some more scenery of Lake Tahoe in all its glory before my next post on our trip back east.