July 2019 - Moab, Yellowstone and visitors

On the 7th of July, Rens & Stan, 2 of our boys best friends (they go way back!) from Belgium arrived for a 2 week vacation here with us. Both of them never had been in the States, so they were pretty excited. But so were we!

Oh, but wait, I'm going too fast! Right before the 'small' boys arrived, Geert went on a bachelor weekend with the big boyzzz.

With the 5 of them (one went with the motorbike, hence not on the photo above) they headed to Wyoming for a weekend full of beer, poker, BBQ and some white water rafting. As I wasn't there, there isn't much more I can say about that, but I was able to snatch some pictures though 😜.

On the road

Poker night ... I guess there is a reason why this pic is so blurry 😏

The day Geert took off on his trip, a new Belgian family arrived, Thomas & Evelyne. They are the replacers of Anouchka & Loic.

You know, when you live far away from your family, these Belgian families who are brought together because of a job assignment, become your surrogate family ... but it does have a temporary character as these assignments only take 3 to 4 years. So every now and then your 'family' is replaced by new 'family' 😏. And so together with Els, Alain & their kids (one of other Belgian families), I went to the airport to welcome our new family members.

Meet Thomas, Evelyne & their cat Archi

2 Days later I would return again to the airport to pick up our young guests, and Geert got back just in time to join us.

Hendrik drove the 3 boys back home ... must have been special for all of them!

(In Belgium you can only drive as from 18 and Hendrik is 16).

Moab

4 Days later they even went on a road trip to Moab with the 4 of them, which is a 4 hour drive south of us. We gave them the address of the AirBnB where we would meet up and off they went!

Patio of our AirBnB, not bad at all!

We arrived there in the late afternoon, but just in time to eat something @ 'The Broken Oar' (which I can highly recommend!) & hike up Delicate Arch, located in Arches National Park (NP), to watch the sunset ... an asolute must!

We already visited Arches NP with our boys in the summer of 2016 (ref. post July 2016), but you just never get tired of the beauty of this park!

On the way up

Gorgeous view on Delicate Arch on pour way down

The next day, we got up at 5.30AM to beat the heat (around 40°C) ánd the crowd, to do the Devils Loop Garden Trail in Arches NP. Once we got the teenagers out of their bed we just needed to get them out of the sofa, ...

... and then out of the car, ...

... but then they were ready to go!😏

The complete hike with its spur trails to several Arches (there are 7 in total) is 7,5 miles (12,1km). We only did 3 of them (Double O Arch, Partition Arch and Landscape Arch) and did a total of 6 miles (9,6km).
About half an hour into the hike, we stopped for our breakfast, which we didn't take at the house as our stomachs were not awake enough to handle food at that time 😝.

We took the primitive trail on our way to the Double O arch, and the main trail back out.

Short stop on our way to Double O Arch on the primitive trail

I've read reviews were people say that you don't have to go as far as Double O Arch because it's not worth it, but they are sooo wrong!! I think those people only saw the Arch from one side. You need to go through the Arch, as the most beautiful view is on the other side!

View of the Arch from the trail

The boys inside the arch

View inside Double O Arch

View from the other side ... now you tell me whether this is worth it our not?!

We even got a group picture ... which is not a given with 4 teenage boys 😅! I guess we caught them by surprise.

On our way back (and mostly down ... yay) via the main trail, we took the short spur trail up to Partition Arch. These extra 0,4 miles (0,6km) rewarded us with an arch which is like a window with spectacular views on the northern stretches of the park.

On our way back ... this is one of the few parts that doesn't go down

On the spur trail to Partition Arch

Partition Arch with its magnificent view

From there it was a short hike to our third and last arch of that day.

At about 0,8 miles (1,3 km) from the parking lot, we passed it ... Landscape Arch, which is the 5th largest arch in the world. Since 1995 the trail underneath the Arch is closed as there had been several large rockfalls, but I think that large arches like that are better perceived from a distance anyway.

At the left you've got Landscape Arch, and at the right you see Partition Arch

On our way back to the AirBnB ... awake this time 😏

By the time it got too hot (around noon), we were back at the AirBnB, where we relaxed until the temperatures became bearable again.

Around 5PM we went for a pizza @ 'Antica Forma', which has a very good rating on Yelp, but which I cannot recommend at all! It's way overpriced, the pizza wasn't good at all, and to top it off, the interior isn't appealing neither! After this disappointing dinner, we headed to the overlook point of Dead Horse Point State Park, located at 40 minutes from Moab. If you want to know more about the legend of this point, check out my post from July 2016 (Dead Horse Point 2016).

Hendrik trying to see the view up side down, as if it wasn't impressive enough!

After that, we wanted to continue to Canyonlands NP, but teenage boys can only handle that much nature in one day apparently, and with 4 against 2, this meant the end of our day 😑.

The next morning it was time to go back home. But the next weekend we had another trip planned with them. This time we were heading up North to Yellowstone.

But first Hendrik's braces were finally removed after 2 years and 8 months!!

Look at those pearls! 😆

Yellowstone National Park

Again the 4 boys traveled separately. We met at Buffalo campground USFS in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Idaho, 4 hours North from our place and 30 minutes South from the West gate of Yellowstone, where we would stay 2 nights.
We put up our tents & hammock, and went for an evening walk in the campground, which is beautifully located on the banks of the Buffalo River.

sunset at the Buffalo River

Our dinner: pasta chicken Alfredo with toasted garlic bread

While we prepared our dinner, the boys made a campfire, which isn't only cozy, but also a great way to limit the mosquito attacks ànd a perfect way to introduce an American classic to our guests ... S'mores! They are thought to have gotten their name from frequent requests for “some more” whenever they were made.

A perfect S'more

You simply toast a marshmallow above the campfire until it's golden brown ... and as we're already equipped like real Americans by now, we did this with extendable telescopic marshmallow skewers ... and then you lay it on a piece of Graham cracker and use a piece of chocolate to pull it off the skewer and add another layer of Graham cracker to make an extremely gooey sandwich! None of us really like it, as it's extremely sweet, but you at least need to try it once. The boys preferred just to eat the toasted marshmallows without the cookie and the chocolate.

The next morning, before we made breakfast for the boys (bacon & eggs), Geert and I did a morning walk up to the Buffalo River again. We were hoping to see some moose, because it's during the coolness of the morning that they are the most actively in search for food and water, but we were only rewarded with the beautiful sight of the early morning sky and mist above the river.

But I think we took a little too much time for our breakfast, because by the time we got to the West gate of Yellowstone, it was a real traffic jam to get into the park ... and this even continued once inside. We knew that Yellowstone gets really busy in July, but we never expected this! It definitely takes away some of the charm of the park, and it also seems to have an effect on the amount of wildlife encounters, because we hardly saw any, and that was of course what the boys were looking forward to! 😑

However, even without many wildlife encounters, Yellowstone is a magical place with all its geysers and hot pools. That first day we took them to the Grand Prismatic Spring which is the largest hot spring in the US and the 3th largest of the world. But it's not its size that makes it a must-see. The spring's stunning colours give it a surreal, other-worldly appearance.

This is the view you get from the overlook point that can be accessed via the Fairy Falls Trail. It's a 1,2 miles (1,9km) round trip walk and definitely something you need to do if you want to see the complete spring with all its bright rainbow colours.
You can also walk next to it via the Midway Geyser basin trail, but if you do only the latter, you might be disappointed and not understand what the hype about this spring is all about since you just can't see the whole thing from there and the steam will obscure your view even more. On the other hand, experiencing the warmth and smells up close like that is also a fun experience and it's not that you have to do a big effort to get there ... a relatively flat walk of 1,3km on a wooden boardwalk which loops around the spring is all you'll have to do.

And along the way, you'll see some more pretty springs like these:

The best moment to see it, is in the middle of a sunny day because the colours will at their most vibrant. It will of course also be the busiest moment, so if you're there in the summer, be prepared to have a crowd!

Our next stop was the 'Old Faithful Geyser'. As I already said in my post of October 2016, it's not the biggest geyser in Yellowstone nor the most regular, however it is the biggest regular geyser 😆! The Park Rangers are able to predicts its eruption fairly accurate which makes this one of the easiest geyser to see in action!
We got there just too late, so we decided to do the loop through the Upper Geyser basin which starts from the Old Faithful. It's an easy walk on boardwalks through a basin full of geysers & hot springs (by the way, geysers are hot springs with constrictions in their plumbing 😏, which causes them to periodically erupt to release the pressure that builds up).

One of those hot pools along this boardwalk is called 'The Belgian Pool', named after a Belgian guy who fell into it in 1929 with fatal results 🙄.

The most impressive one is the hot spring 'Morning Glory Pool' at the end of this loop.

It is named after the flower that it's color resembled ... indeed past time ... the pool suffers from inconsiderate visitors who have thrown in coins, bottles, and trash into the pool for over a century.

Morning glory flower ('Blauwe Winde')

The trash has slowly built up and blocked some of the thermal vents and reduced the heat of the pool, allowing bacteria to begin working their way in at the edges, creating a red and yellow ring around the pure blue center. While these rainbow colors are absolutely gorgeous, it is a fragile beauty, because the invasive yellow bacteria continues to close in. Therefore the pool recently has started to go by another name ... 'Fading Glory' 😞

The loop took a bit longer than expected, so we only saw the eruption of Old Faithful from a distance 🙄. But thanks to our bad timing, we did get to see another geyser which only erupts max twice a day and is less predictable, the 'Beehive geyser'. We just arrived at the moment it suddenly started erupting. Because the boardwalk is really close to this geyser, I thought it was more impressive than the eruption of The Old Faithful (which we saw in October 2016). The jet of water coming out of this beehive shaped geyser, can reach put to 200ft (60m), but when the wind is blowing (like that day), the top part of the eruption will be blown away into a fine spray that will drench you to the skin if you try to pass on the boardwalk.

Our last stop of that day were the Lower and Upper Falls of Yellowstone. First we took the South Rim drive and stopped at 'Uncle Tom's Point' to check out the Upper Falls (the smallest of the 2), after which we continued to 'Artist Point' to get a first view on the impressive Lower Falls.

Upper falls seen from Uncle Tom's Point, and Lower falls seen from Artis Point

We got another view on the Lower falls from the 'Lookout Point' at the North Rim drive at the other side of the canyon. This last stop was something we just had to do, because we wanted to make the same picture of our family as we did in 2016.

That night we had some burgers, beer, marshmallows and another campfire ... the perfect dinner!

So the first day we did the south loop in the park, and the next day the North loop was on the agenda, with the hope that we would encounter some more wildlife there as the North-East part of the park is known for that. But it wasn't meant to be ...

Day 1

Day 2

For that second day, we got up early to beat the crowd, and instead of losing time by making ourselves a breakfast at the campground, we got ourselves some breakfast sandwiches on the way to the park and had a breakfast picnic at the 'Gibbon Falls', the first stop of that day.

Second stop was the 'Norris Geyser Basin', which is one of the largest thermal basins of the park, covering an area of 6 square miles.

It’s split into two large basins: 'Porcelain' (0,86 miles or 1,4 km) and 'Back' (2,6 miles or 4,2 km).

The boys didn't want to walk too much 🙄, so we just walked up to the museum from where we had a nice view on the Porcelain basin.

After this short stop, we continued to 'Mammoth Hot Springs', where we only visited the Mammoth terraces, a large complex of hot springs on a hill of 'travertine', because that was what we remembered as the most interesting part of this very popular area.

At that moment we hesitated whether we would turn back and head home, or if we would continue and do the complete North loop. As we were still hoping to see some more wildlife, we did continue, and made one more stop at the 'Tower Falls', but sadly no wildlife at all! A little bit disappointed we headed back home.

On our way home, Geert and I had lunch at the 'Trout Hunter', a nice restaurant with a terrace with a great view (which we couldn't take advantage of as the wind was too strong 😔), where I had the best vegetarian portobello burger ever!

After the long drive, I definitely did not feel like preparing something myself, so we took our teenagers to 'Twigs', one of our favourite restaurants here in the neighbourhood.

In between those 2 big trips, the boys just hanged around (favourite occupation of the youth I'm afraid), and tried about every type of fast-food chain they have around here!😱

But I was able to motivate the 2 youngest to go to the Pineview Reservoir in Hunstville, about 30 minutes from our place, to play & cool off in the ice-cold water.

And I took all of them of course to Antelope Island! We made a quick stop at Buffalo Point where you have a gorgeous view and where you can clearly show them how high the lake used to come during the Ice Age.

But then it was time for the obligatory 'floating in the Salt Lake' 😏 ... which they all loved!

First you have to walk about 10 minutes through excruciating hot sand, ignore all the mosquitoes that are following you around everywhere, the thousands of little flies that occupy the shoreline, ànd the thousands of little brine shrimps in the water, ... but then you can experience the unique feeling of being carried by the extremely salt water.

If you zoom in, you will seethe thousands of little flies

Brine shrimp, aka as the 'Sea Monkey', are as big as a TicTac and serve as an essential food source for millions of birds that breed or stopover at the Great Salt Lake during migration. And, in recent years, these shrimp support a multi-million dollar commercial harvest as they are used as feed by fish farms.

You don't really feel them while in the water, so it's not really bothering, but a thorough shower afterwards is highly recommended! 😜

All that stuff you see in the water, are Brine shrimps!

A brine shrimp up close and personal

As our guests didn't yet experience the sizes of the pizza's here, we ordered in on their last evening.

Rens, looking a bit flabbergasted by the size of his pizza 😆

And then, on Sunday July 21st, all 4 of them left for Belgium. This time the goodbye was a bit different than the other years. Willem would just go for a few weeks, but Hendrik will be staying in Belgium until the beginning of January!😨

He only needs 2 more terms to graduate here, and as he felt he was missing out on too much fun a teenager can do in Belgium and nót in Utah (read: partying and drinking), we decided he could stay the 2 first terms in Belgium. He's staying with Geert's mom and will be going to school as a free student.

I'm happy for him, but man did it hurt to see him leave!

But I didn't have long to whine and moan, because a few days after they left, my best friend from high school would arrive here!

I know Karen since 6th grade (1st year of high school in Belgium) and at some time in my life, we even lived together in her apartment in Antwerp for a couple of months ... good times!!

6th and 7th grade pics (1986-1987)

Pics taken in 1990 during our yearly trip to the Belgian sea where one of our friends had a vacation house

She arrived @ our place with her boyfriend Bart and 2 of her 3 kids, Lumen and Hante, on Saturday July 27th ... while I was at the grocery store! Talk about timing 🙄! On the other hand, her timing wasn't all that bad, because when I got home it was apero time 😜.

On Sunday morning, we just chilled at our place as we had a lot of catching up to do, and in the afternoon we chilled some more at the Blues, Brews & BBQs event which takes place every Sunday afternoon during the summer @ our ski resort.

On our way to Snowbasin

On Monday while Geert was at work, I took them to Salt Lake City to visit the Mormon Conference Center and the Capitol.

The visit to the Conference Center is really a great way to get to know more about the Mormon religion, or 'Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints' (LDS) as they are preferred to be called, ánd you get a really nice view on the temple from the 'park' on their roof.

On the roof, with the temple in the back

The Capitol of Utah is located on Capitol Hill, a few blocks north from the conference centre.

Utah State Capitol

It's a 10 min walk up hill, and I showed how you do this safely in Utah. At intersections where there are no traffic lights, they put these cross walk flags you can use as a pedestrian to increase your visibility when crossing the street. So I had to show them what that looks like of course 😆.

The Capitol of Utah has the the typical architectural symbols like many capitols throughout the US which represent the American democracy: the dome, the balanced wings for the divisions of government (the House & the Senate), and the decorative classical elements, indicating the roots of that democracy in Greece and Rome.

There is also a Supreme Court chamber in the capitol, which is currently only used for ceremonial purposes after it was relocated in 1998.

After all these religious and governmental symbols, it was time for a culinary symbol: cheesecake! And where better to go than 'The Cheesecake factory'.

After savouring all these delicious calories, we returned back home, still had the guts to put on our bathing suits 😉, and headed to Antelope Island for my second dip in the Salt Lake this summer.