We spent an entire day driving and hiking around the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone” they call it. The amazing water falls, dramatic canyons and steep cliff trails wore us out. We took some video and a lot of photos....

“Suspended on the edge of Glenwood Canyon’s cliffs, the clear turquoise lake and the waterfall that spills into it are a breathtaking sight after the uphill climb. Geologically speaking, there are few places in the world that can compare to this marvel of Mother Nature. Hanging Lake is a rare example of a lake formed by travertine deposition where the natural geologic and hydro-logic processes continue to operate as they have done throughout the history of the lake. The site is also noteworthy for its thriving hanging garden plant community.” See more at: http://www.visitglenwood.com/hanging-lake#sthash.ur2gVq9j.dpuf How could you possibly not be excited and intrigued by that description. We certainly were, but we were not alone. Despite its steepness, the Hanging Lake Trail is also one of the most popular hikes in Colorado which is why the gift of getting one of the last parking spots in the lot at the trail head felt like a small victory in and of itself. Our parking spot was a half-mile away from the trail head, but the actual hike to the lake was just 1.2 miles, not an intimidating distance until you pair that with the starting elevation and the change in elevation. For weeks Ali and I had been waiting for our lungs and hearts to finally show some evidence of improved conditioning, some noticeable result of all our hiking. Hanging Lake was not that day. At each stop we made to catch our breath, I tried to remind myself and Ali about the altitude and how it was most surely playing a role in our ability to plow up this hill. Besides there was so much beauty along the way, we NEEDED to stop often to take photographs. To give you a comparison: Hanging Lake, CO...

Sometimes you can put a “y” on the end of someone’s name and it creates a cute, young, friendlier sounding nickname, like Linny. It sort of takes the serious out of it. You can do the same thing to a noun, add the “y” and it turns into a cuter, and easier to laugh at adjective. The sky was tornadoy the day we headed to Grand Junction. See, it’s cuter! It blew and rained so hard for spells of the drive that our windshield wipers must have thought they’d joined the military and were suddenly in boot camp. However, we have noticed, especially when on a big interstate highway, that you can drive through these land squalls relatively quickly. Instead of sitting still waiting for it to pass over us, the RV chugs on through it and in minutes we come out the other side to find friendlier skies. Friendlier as in not trying to blow our tin house over onto its side or poke holes in its roof with steel-tipped rain drops, but still grey and drizzly. We pulled into the KOA in Grand Junction during a lull in the storm so our set up at the site was merely moist, rather than drenching. Nonetheless, we surrendered the afternoon to a grocery store run followed by an HBO movie and microwave popcorn and hoped for better weather the next day. We’d gotten a small paragraph of suggestions on how to entertain ourselves from our friend Leanne who used to live in town, but at the top of our list was a visit to the Colorado National Monument. Neither of us had really heard or read much about this smaller park, we’d only just found out about it through Leanne, but its significance increased...

Nature has thousands of cycles in motion at all times, weather patterns, hibernating bears, star alignments, caterpillars on their way to be a butterfly, even long, long cycles like the 17 years of dormancy for the cicadas. We humans, at least us female ones, are subject to a cycle too. I always rail against it, sometimes with frothy, rabid, vehemency, a color and suit that isn’t in my normal deck of life’s emotions. It sneaks up on me every month. I’m happily playing along with a couple of aces, a red king, a queen of spades and a ten in my hand, and then out of nowhere I’m dealt a purple square root of Chucky card. WHAT THE F***! Pardon my language, but there’s no sugar coating this. One day I’m fine, the next, frothy. It’s like being dropped into a new country with all the wrong currency. Hello Republic of Relationship, I’m Lin. I have two pennies of patience and a hundred dollar bill of irritability – can you make change? To put the icing on the cake, and not the good kind, the sickeningly sweet and almost plastic tasting icing you get on drug store cakes, Allison and I now SHARE the timing of our cycles. My frothy day or three overlaps with her sensitive days and we end up throwing all the cards in the air and playing 52 pick up with fake smiles on our faces. We do not have the most complimentary of symptoms. Back to the drug store. You know those really cheap, plastic poncho and a mask, costume sets they put out at Halloween? It’s the last-minute costume where the mask is that super bendy thin plastic, almost see through, it only covers the front of your...

Dusk dripped its way down the horizon on the heels of the sun while we ate dinner at Arch View RV Resort which is outside Moab, Utah. We were inside doing dishes and getting ready to plan our tomorrow, our first day at Arches National Park, but we’d left our Fodor’s Guide of the National Parks of the West book in the car. I opened the door of the RV, took one step down and out of the corner of my eye, through the screened oval window I saw it, a huge amber glow in the sky. Now the power of the written word is that I can force you to enter slow motion with me while I drag out the next eight-tenths of a second. What an incredible moon I thought as I brought my other foot down to the next step and started to turn to face it full on. Nearly full and putting off an amazing red aura around its edges, it seemed so close that I imagined it sitting on the ledge of the mountain that was just across the highway from our campsite. I sucked in a breath, focused my gaze and opened my mouth to call out to Allison, when my brain finally connected with my eyes. It wasn’t the moon, it was a big lit-up shell on a tall pole, the sign for the Shell gasoline station that was a couple hundred yards away at the entrance to our RV park. Ali got a huge laugh out of that one. I guess after spending weeks in national parks, hiking, biking, driving through wilderness, seeing amazing natural beauty every day, my mind’s first instinct was to attribute that beautiful glow to something natural. Oh well, the warm yellow...

For the price of 20 extra miles on the way from Capitol Reef to Moab and Arches National Park, we were able to visit Goblin Valley State Park. The first time we’d heard of the Goblins was in the Glen Canyon Dam Visitors Center. There was a display that mentioned several of the other parks we were planning to visit and talked about hoodoos and goblins. As soon as we got home that day we searched the map and figured out where and when we’d visit. I think Alex and Deb also tipped us off about this fun park via a comment on our itinerary post, but even without a recommendation the park totally had us at goblins, we had to see them. We don’t usually do long sightseeing stops on our drive days, so in order to give ourselves a couple hours inside the park and still get to Moab in plenty of time to set up before dark, we left our campground a little earlier than usual. It was much more chilly at 8am. With numb fingers and red noses we pumped poop, coiled cords, slid slides, rolled rugs, hitched up the hybrid and then rolled out onto Highway 24, the sister-friend of the newly named Scary Scenic Highway 12. I was driving that day and determined to try to be less of a freak. It turned out to be a gorgeous drive, the road followed the river most of the way, mirroring it’s big corner-rounding curves, and only the wind gave me a little trouble. I had to keep both hands on the steering wheel to make sure we didn’t boogie off onto the narrow shoulder. We had just poked out of the canyon into open fields and sand dunes when...