Trip to Utah (2015 Summer Adventures Part 2)

We got back from IL at 10pm on a Friday night and we were back on the road Tuesday morning.  I am not sure if I have perfected the art of packing for a camping trip, but I am getting better (essentially I just pack the whole apartment).  We had a good drive to Utah.  Some things to note:

• I thought it was cray cray that the speed limit in Colorado was 75 mph.  It is 80 mph in Utah (and Wyoming).
• If you enter into Utah and see a sign on Interstate 70 that say, "No services for the next 110 miles".  Believe the sign - it is true.
• If a bird flies into your windshield when you are driving 85 miles an hour, the bird will die.  And if the driver happens to be Alissa, the driver will scream {loudly}. 

They had a Welcome to Utah sign at a rest stop

We arrived in Richfield, Utah and set up camp at the KOA by 4 or 5pm.  We used Richfield as our "base camp" for the first part of our trip.  We were hoping to catch the USA Women's Soccer Game (it was during the World Cup).  We drove about 20-25 minutes and found a restaurant on the side of the road (not in a town, just in the middle of nowhere on its own) and got our fix of Women's Soccer - success!

Our campsite.  We were thankful for the shade!

Wednesday we had a relaxing morning with going for a run, showering, making breakfast, and reading.  In the afternoon, we drove to Bryce Canyon and went hiking.  Wow!  It was beautiful.  The rock formations called "hoodoos" are really incredible to see.  It is hard to believe that the rocks can "balance" on top of each other.

There were so many spectacular views!

While we were hiking, we started talking to some other hikers.  They happened to be 2 guys that were studying to be priests in Cleveland, OH.  And they also happened to be from Daegu, South Korea (which is where we lived!!)  We ended up hiking with them for about a mile.  They were so much fun to talk to.  And Augustine (his English name) had a selfie stick.  

After hiking, we drove around to a different side of the park and did another short hike.  We found a place for pizza and then headed back to the main park. Once a year, Bryce Canyon has an astronomy festival.  They purposely schedule the festival during a new moon so that the sky will be really dark. There were volunteers from the Salt Lake Astronomical Society who had telescopes set up.  You could walk around to different telescopes.  We got to see Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn.  The telescope viewing did not start until 10:30 and we are old so we did not hang out for too long.  We were about 2 hour drive from our campsite so it was a late night, but it was fun!

We slept in (as much as you can while camping) on Thursday.  We went for another run, showered, read, and relaxed.  In the afternoon it was pretty warm, so we went bowling (in air conditioning!).  Ian beat me.  We had  a good time.  In the evening we headed up to Sanpete County.  We wanted to check out Ephraim and Manti, especially during the Manti Pageant.  It was very encouraging to see so many Christians loving on Mormons and talking to them.  We saw a few missionaries and some high schoolers having really great conversations.  After we got back to our campsite, we had a fire and then headed to bed.

On Friday we broke camp and headed north to Salt Lake City.  I decided that our trip was too long for one post so stay tuned!