We love the beautiful scenery we are surrounded. These trails are close to our place. We enjoy walking in the nature. Y mount is good for even children to climb. You can enjoy beautiful view all the way along.
Y was looking for the trip with daddy since K went at 10. She researched and decided to go to San Francisco. It seems like they had a lot of fun!
Another spot we visited was Dinosaur National Monument. This is the place people actually found and digged lots of dinosaur bones. We could see the actual fossels half buried on the ground. It was fascinating. Another interesting on the way was that maybe a mile of the road in Colorado was covered with tons of crickets. We were scared to drive over the crickets but what else we could do? We just remembered the story about how seagulls saved pioneers from out numbered mormon crickets.
On the way back home, we visited Rocky Mountain National Park. Just because I heard it was the most popular park in US, I really wanted to see once. And it was awesome!! I am glad that we were able to go! This park located on top of the high mountains. The highest trail in the park is as high as the Mt. Fuji, which is the most famous mountain in Japan. I felt very close to the sky. It was cold and windy on top of the mountains. I saw snow still sitting there. Anyways, it was maginificent! By the way, you usually need to purchase a pass to get into the popular National Parks nowadays. It goes on sale at 5pm on the day before. We sticked online to try to get a pass. Luckily, we got one but all morning passes (more than 500 spots?) were sold out within 3 minutes. It's crazy!!
We love Minnesota! We drove for four hours in corn/soybean fields and got to our camping site. It was so nice to get to see friends and spend time with them. Ken had a lot to talk. We spent two nights but time flew. After leaving campsite, we attended our old church where we used to attend. We stayed at our best friend's beautiful house for two nights. Our dear friends got together. We could go on and on forever!! Ken had two play dates with friends next day. My friend and I took other kids to Valley Fair. Kids walked a lot but they got never tired. Truly, we all had a blast!! So grateful.
We were able to do the most famous trail, the Notch Trail in Badlands this time. This trail locates in East ends. Last time, we entered in the West ends. We didn't have energy left for this trail, so we skipped it. It was both beautiful and fun. It is very dry and looks as if we were in the different planet. We stayed in Sioux Falls that night and finally got back to Minnesota on the next day.
This National Park is only one and half hour drive from Arches National Park. However the view is totally different. It reminded me of Grand Canyon. There are some short fun hiking trails available. It is great for kids. We climbed on the big rock. I wanted to see the Indian ruin there but we didn’t have time. Maybe next time!
Shin decided at the last minute to drive down south to visit National Parks for Memorial Day. And we did. It was beautiful and so fun. Weather was perfect. We hiked a little and climbed. Daiki and Asa did so well. We didn’t have time to explore every single spot but I’m sure we will go back there again.
I quit my job right before we went house hunting trip at the end of January. Airfare got so expensive but we had to see the house as family. We flew to Utah on Tuesday and started seeing houses on Wednesday. On the evening, there came the house that has everything on our list. It is not the glamorous house but had everything we needed, and that’s the house that we were able to buy later on! I felt so blessed. During moving process, there were some unexpected events like snow storm canceled our flights and moving company broke the light switch. Even those became the time to reflect God’s love and care. We had to say goodbye to all we love in Minnesota and moved to Utah. We still love Minnesota to pieces and I feel that we will love Utah just like that.
