Utaventure

October is a great month to enjoy Utah. It's not that hot anymore and you get treated with the most vibrant fall colours you'll ever see! Perfect hiking time! I'm not going to harass you with all the hikes that we did during that month, because we do a lot of hiking around here whenever the weather permits. I'll just harass you with my favourite one of that month 😬,   Lake Blanche Trail. I highly recommend this hike when you're in the Salt Lake area, although with its 2746ft (837m) elevation gain over 3,4 miles (5,5km) it might be hard for those out of shape ... an out of shape reviewer on 'Alltrails', the app I mentioned in my previous post ( Dead horse point SP & Canyonlands NP ), stated "... to say that this trail was hard doesn't begin to hint the hell unleashed on me the day I hiked it." 😂  The trail climbs through beautiful canyon scenery to a photogenic alpine basin, dug out by a glacier during the last ice age, at 8920ft.  ...

A s I said in my previous post, we combined Arches NP (National Park) with Dead Horse  Point SP (State Park) & Canyonlands NP. I mean, it's all so close together, that you just  háve to visit all of them. But again, as we only had 2 days, it was going to be limited to a sampler. Dead Horse Point State Park The day after Arches NP, we drove to Dead Horse Point early in the morning. As it is a State Park and not a National Park, we couldn't use our annual pass for this one (at that moment we didn't have a annual pass for the SPs yet). However, we were so early that there was nobody yet to collect the $10 entrance fee. Although we were the only ones, as  good housekeepers,  we put the fee in a box ...  😇.  We just drove to the Dead Horse Point overlook point at the end of the paved route in the park. This main overlook point sits at 6000 feet above sea level with the Colorado river winding 2000 feet below.  The legend   This point p...

Our first road trip was headed to Arches National Park (NP), Dead Horse Point (a state park) and Canyon lands NP, in that order.  I'll only cover Arches NP in this post. As we only had a few days, this was only going to be a first taste of what these parks have to offer. So I'll definitely update this page once we've visited these parks in more depth! Arches NP This NP contains the world's largest concentration of natural  sandstone  arches ( hence  the 😏,merely  a 4hour drive from where we live, so in US terms really close by. We stayed, like most people do (as there is really no other city nearby ), in a hotel in Moab, a little city next to the NP. You could also camp inside the NP @ Devils Garden campground (which offers toilets, but no showers) which I would prefer, however not during those hot summer months. By the way, the campground is closed until Nov 2017 due to construction works. Like in all NPs in Utah, there is a paved scenic road...

Emilie, our first Belgian visitor, arrived and with her Geert left to Belgium and Norway for work. It was sure nice to have company while Geert was gone. Although I've been used to Geert being gone a lot when we lived in Belgium, I was very curious to see how that would feel here, without my family, my friends, my work, ... I'm very happy to say that, although I missed him, I didn't get depressed nor was there any drama 😆. Goes to show that when you feel good, it doesn't matter where you are, or who you have around you, you can handle things just fine! 👊 Mid September Emilie went home. Now that we were kind of settled down and the kids were going to school, it was 'just me' during the day ... 'me', without my work, my social activities from back home, my family, my friends ... 'just me'. Am I comfortable in my new role as a 'stay at home mom' like they call it here? First of all, I dislike that term! It doesn't really ...

August, the month our boys would start in their new school. I think most kids don't really look forward to going back to school, and when it is a new school, with all new kids, another language and when you probably have some high school disaster scenario's in your head from movies you've seen ... it must have been terrifying for them! They did however not show this! I dropped them off - there was NO WAY I could come inside with them 😆 - and off they went ... When they came back, they seemed relieved with how it went. I did not get that from their typical short (male?😏) answers like 'good', 'ok', 'boring'... on all my questions, but they were relaxed & that was the most satisfying answer I could get. School starts here @ 8.10AM and ends @ 3.00PM. During this time they have 4 classes, each time with different kids and different teachers, no breaks and a lunch break of 30 minutes. Very different than in Belgium and hard to really get to kn...