Chasing Bluebirds

grand council fire and spring camp out

a whirlwind of events right now, spring camp out (where families camp together at our local day camp)
emily finished her sixth year of camp fire, wow!
my goofy middle schoolers, such fun!

i never tire of seeing my girls up there singing... the camp fire law this time
love all the tents, watching the sun go down in the middle of the city...
lizzie flys up to adventure level (and will attend grand council fire next year... no more winging ceremony which is just for kids in k through 2nd grade)

lizzie liked when i pointed her out during my little speech

we are just weeks away from our trip to italy...been really addicted to this site and daydream of visiting all the places she writes about. ciao for now!

cathedrals and castles

on our way to one of two cathedrals we visited (canterbury and rochester), i love the architecture on even a simple block of houses...i guess these are like townhomes but so hearty and lovely at the same time
rochester cathedral
the SECOND oldest church in england, canterbury being first. i wish i had the patience to read more than just superficial info on these places but there is just so much to absorb on a trip like this
unfortunately while looking at this floor (which is usually covered up i was told) my mom took a tumble behind me and broke her camera!! luckily it was near the end of our trip but she was so bummed!
rochester castle next door...


climbing up to the top of this castle was a highlight of the trip for me. it was one of those things where you get there with only 40 minutes until closing so you rush rush rush and try to soak it all in. one big intense fast experience... like a shot of caffeine. i flew up to the top so fast and then spent 15 minutes just gazing down at the view. there was only one other person in the whole castle so it felt surreal, like being a kid in a playground all by yourself
view on my climb up... rochester cathedral nextdoor
view from the top
i highly recommend a day trip out to canterbury and rochester if you're ever staying in london... best day ever!

London

So after our camping trip to Bryce Canyon in Utah... I was lucky enough to take a 10 day trip to London with my mom. Just the two of us (we have traveled together before many times). I was looking forward to it and I had the best time just hanging out with her, riding on the bus around the sights and taking trains out into the countryside. One of my favorite day trips was to Rochester Cathedral, Rochester Castle and Canterbury Cathedral...

Canterbury Cathedral is the oldest church in England (Rochester is second)
It is a gloriously large building and i found myself just quietly sighing and breathing deeply as i wandered from hall to hall


It's a powerful place and the shopping area on your way to the cathedral was fun to check out as well. We were lucky enough to be there on their outdoor market day which was full of antiques, veggies and plants.
(the walk to the cathedral from the train station)

lovely little shops along tiny streets that lead you to the "gate" of the cathedral
wow! I hope to visit this cathedral again someday, i highly recommend it to anyone staying in London for a few days. The train ride out was an hour at most and the countryside is gorgeous through the train windows. Rochester Castle and Cathedral next! (there are more photos of my trip on flickr!)

slow travel

taking it all in... slowly

heading out to canterbury today... our trip is almost over... so much to post... stay tuned!

horses horses horses!!

i was FINALLY able to take a real horse back riding trip with my girls, lizzie hit the age requirement of 7 so she could be included and we found a highly recommended guide near the KOA in Bryce. when we did our first visit to the park and saw horses riding down into the amphitheater, emily went nuts requesting to go too. after some research i found that we could get a longer trip out into some really unique wilderness so we booked a trip outside the park. 

the three nicest horses, ever!! lizzie was really new to all this and her horse just didn't sweat anything. she stayed close to the guide and never wavered...
emily had a paint

my horse "navajo" was an appaloosa
lizzie had a gorgeous chestnut names "bally"
we started our trip walking along a clear blue river, passing wildflowers and sage, gorgeous cliffs all around, heading for "the slots" our guide said. at one point we turned off one river and followed another, the water was bright orange and our guide said it was because this river flowed from Bryce canyon and was orange from all the thunderstorms we had been getting each afternoon. it was surreal to see orange water flowing... so many colors in southern utah
heading into the slots! this was by far the coolest thing ever. most of my photos came out blurry because my horse was bobbing up and down so much through the river...

i hope it's clear that these slot canyons are cool!!
we headed back out of the canyon (i had a small mishap on a "run" up a small hill... my horse decided to jump the river before doing a few more jumps up the hill causing me to lose my stirrups and slide off one side. luckily he stopped when i yelled "whoa!" and i just dropped softly to his side. totally embarrassed though, i hopped back up and resumed the climb up. emily laughed at me from behind and a few minutes later she had her own mishap: her saddle was not tight enough and slipped around and under the belly of her house tossing her to the ground as well. luckily she just hopped off and wasn't hurt. our poor guide was mortified but with these calm and docile horses, it was really not a problem. we had a great laugh and talked about it for days after) we made it to the top and had a nice long pause with the view
then headed back across the valley to the truck and trailer. our guide told the girls they will never remember the first boyfriend they have but they will always remember their first "real" horseback ride with their mom. so cool!
hoping to take some riding lessons back here in the city, i think we were all inspired to continue riding.

trailer time

loving our new trailer

 

 

pop up

this is our second tent trailer, they are a bit of work to put up and down but over all a great way to camp. i am lucky my husband does so much of the setting up and the girls have been pretty good at helping out too. i am in charge of the cooking... i've had lots of practice from camp shiwaka... i bought two new campfire cookery books (one just for dutch ovens) and am looking forward to trying out a few new recipes (for the next camping trip). one is for a cake that uses dr pepper and spice cake, yum!
our camp site at bryce was neat, an upper and lower level with a great view
we made hobo packets, mock tacos, s'mores and donuts (didn't turn out unfortunately), cheesy potatoes and roasted acorn squash... good stuff!
so our 3 days at Bryce National Park camping went very well, i highly recommend staying in the campsites within the park. this time of year was hot but we had many afternoon thunderstorms to cool us down (and several late night storms to lull us in and out of sleep). the air was fresh and clean and the views around Bryce were so stunning i had to pinch myself to remind me i was awake and not dreaming. we spent the last night in the lodge listening to a lecture on utah prairie dogs (the ranger who spoke about the prairie dogs and other wildlife was captivating!) what a great way to end our trip at Bryce. hoping to see zion sometime soon and revisit Bryce as well... maybe when the rivers are flowing. wouldn't that be nice?

bryce

how do you describe bryce national park in utah? hmm... well it is just about the most beautiful place i have ever seen in my life

i promise to bore everyone who would ever read my blog as much as i bored all my facebook friends with an endless borage of bryce photos (borage? is that spelled right?)
so for maybe a few weeks or months on end i will post all the photos i took.. for now though here are the fabulous pool pics from the KOA we stayed in just outside of bryce:


our first 4 days we spent in the "luxury" of a koa with showers and a pool... then we moved on to bryce, no hook ups (no electricity or water), luckily we had a wonderful bathroom and showers for 2 bucks. our solar panel worked wonders to keep our battery charged for evening lights (loved reading before bed)... i think the luxurious koa eased us into the roughing it at bryce. a few more pool pix:

i highly recommend southern utah for your next family vacation, what a beautiful and amazing state. national parks have never failed us and i feel such pride every time i visit a new one. i wish we could get our government to run as smoothly as our national parks... :)

bryce

we made it to bryce and all i can say is WOW!!! it's an amazing mix of desert and forest, can't believe we drove past it a dozen times over the years and never stopped. i think this will be our new favorite place! here is a photo from yesterday and i will post a whole lot more when i get a chance:

actual arches

here are few more photos from our trip that show some of the amazing arches you see at "arches national park" emily and i took a solo hike together and enjoyed trying to stay on the trail and the wide open space, the desert is so massive it feels like an ocean when you get deep into it.

katie, chris and liz take a break
free range kids



skyline arch at our campground
one of the arches emily and i found on our solo hike

even in the rain, we pressed on to see the sand dune arch
then crossed back over our desert "ocean" to get back to camp

someone had placed stacks of rocks along this entire trail and several times it really helped us out of a jam. emily put tiny rocks on top and/or fixed stacks that had fallen over along the way
so glad we took the plunge to hike this together, 2 hours of up and down and round and round, searching for the trail and finding the hidden arches was just what i needed on this trip!

moab

we had to get our trailer from colorado to california so a trip to moab in utah was the plan. my inlaws towed the trailer to red cliffs lodge and we made the 13 hour trip to meet them. i highly recommend if you live in california that you skip the vegas trip and go through southern utah to some of the amazing national parks they have to offer. being spring, which has unpredictable weather in the high desert meant we couldn't risk seeing zion or bryce in a tent trailer (our first choice since we have never been). red cliffs lodge is next to arches national park (which we have visited before but never camped at) it was the best choice under the circumstances. i had thought canyonlands might be cool (we just watched 127 hours which was filmed there) but it has numerous entrances with very few campsites, too risky for us. so arches it was and boy did it deliver!

arches is organized in a way that is really spectacular, you see the high red rock mountains when you enter and drive a steep road up to the top where the plateau opens up to these amazing formations and colorful soil, plants and rocks. all that with snow capped mountains far off in the distance. it is truly breathtaking and the park roads take you on a winding picturesque route to see everything from different angles.

the weather was in constant motion, hot then cold then sunny then rain with the kind of clouds you can truly spend hours watching. our last afternoon there, emily and i took a two mile hike around the campgrounds and just giggled at how neat it was to be out in the middle of nowhere. it got cloudy and drizzly but we kept on going and were so proud to just muscle through even though we were exhausted. back at camp the fire was started and immediately it started to rain. sue and i decided to try and keep it going and it became quite a scene as the rain started and stopped and then began to hail with thunder and lightning flashing. the kids screamed for us to come in but we just couldnt let that fire go out. it was FREEZING and standing near that blazing fire felt fantastic.

(lizzie is crying because the thunder scares her) we used a tarp (got totally smoked out) and then an umbrella (probably not the smartest thing to use in a lightning storm) but we laughed and laughed and just had a BLAST!! that fire roared and we watched the storm blow by with a very unexpected surprise:

just like that, the brightest rainbow ever
some dirty happy kids for sure! here is a few pics from the road, check out the change in scenery and weather. this is all in one day:



and here is a shot from the red cliffs lodge museum, lots of movies have been filmed on the ranch (like thelma and louise) the museum does a great job displaying posters and artifacts from the shoots. i will try and post a few more pics once i get a chance to download, more of the red cliffs lodge, love that place! hope i have inspired you to check out utah, we are hoping to see zion and/or bryce this summer!