Vacations Blog

Majestic Lake Powell in Page, Arizona

With nearly 2,000 miles of shoreline, Lake Powell stretches into both Utah and Arizona. On a houseboat you can explore the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Lake Powell area. The rock canyons and towers are one of the most beautiful sites in the world. If you don’t want to stay on the water or guide your own boat, there are tours available as well as hotels RV parks, and campgrounds. All together it makes a complete family vacation package in a place with a rich history of being a backdrop for numerous movies such as Planet of the Apes and Maverick.

Family oriented activities include golf, guided fishing excursions, boat rentals with GPS, powerboat with water toy rentals and a complimentary Lake Powell Explorer pack aimed at younger kids and their parents. The pack includes a parent’s guide, hiking maps, word puzzles and a field trip to the Glen Canyon Dam Visitor Center.

Glen Canyon near Lake Powell, Page, Arizona

Book a package with days between November 5th to 8th and you can be a part of the Balloon Street Fair and watch the Hot Air Balloon Regatta fly overhead.

Photo credits both go to Wolfgang Staudt.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes

Many people think of the desert when they think of Southern Utah, but the desert can be beautiful. Encompassing over 3,700 acres, the Coral Pink Sand Dunes make an ideal location for part of your family adventure vacation. The dunes are created because winds flow between the Moccasin and Moquith mountains carrying grains of sand creating the beautiful park. The park is surrounded by the red sandstone cliffs Southern Utah is famous for. Add in the stunning blue sky and the green trees around the perimeter and you’ve got the perfect photo opportunity.

Yellow Flowers at Coral Pink Sand Dunes Utah State Park

If you go to Coral Pink Sand Dunes in your RV, there is an inexpensive campground on the premises. Kanab is nearby and makes a great place to stay if you’re not camping. You can rent off road vehicles in Kanab to play on the dunes as well as go hiking or sand tubing. Two popular places to hike are South Fork Indian Canyon Pictographs, where ancient pictographs can be seen along the sand walls, and Moquith Mountains where you can actually see the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

The park has nice, maintained bathrooms and places for picnics. Check out the other nearby attractions here.

Photo credits – Top image by Passerine, bottom image by Respres.

Kanab Utah Main Street

Many people call Kanab, Utah the Gateway. Kanab sits in Southern Utah along route 89 about seven miles north of the Arizona border and subsequently gets visitors on their way to the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park among many others. Summer finds the town packed with RVs towing boats and wave runners on their way to Lake Powell and family vehicles bursting at the seams with camping and hiking equipment. The winters in Kanab are not quite as busy but still full from people going to ski at

Coral Pink Sand Dunes

Brianhead Ski Resort and snow tubing at Coral Pink Sand Dunes. The beauty to be found in Kanab and the surrounding area is breathtaking and you usually take a little bit home with you in the form of the red dirt that Kanab is famous for.

Kanab’s population is small, about 3,500, and the residents rely heavily on tourists as the largest source of income for the city. The slow-paced small town feel is a nice change from the crowded attractions and parks and the people are friendly as you walk down Main Street to check out the stores. Frontier Movie Town is a short walk away from downtown where you’ll see authentic movie sets and memorabilia from some great western movies made there. They also have the Pioneer Museum with classic western and pioneer artifacts. Read More »

A shot of our truck from the side of the road in Grand Teton National Park.

ONE:  Hotel patrons who arrive, unwashed and disheveled and barefoot and sometimes even in their PAJAMAS (grown-ups AND children), to partake of the hotel’s breakfast.  You’re not at home.  Groom yourself, or at least put some clothes on.

TWO: Long stretches of highway that contain nary a rest stop.  We don’t want to have to pull of at some random exit, guess at which direction to turn, and drive for an unknown distance, in order to find a restaurant or gas station or handy gully in which to do the necessary.

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Well, we’re back. Ten days, 3026 miles, and 912 pictures later. I’d like to summarize my trip with some favorite pictures from each day and each stop along our route. Rest assured, you will all be regaled with details over the coming weeks!

7/30: A long-haul drive – Phoenix, AZ to Salt Lake City, UT. The picture is of the Painted Desert in northern Arizona, taken from the truck as we drove along.

7/31: Another long-haul drive – Salt Lake City, UT to Teton Village, WY; exploring Jackson Hole, WY. The first picture is of downtown Jackson Hole with a view of the Jackson Hole ski area. The second picture is of downtown Jackson Hole, by the entrance to the Town Square (one of the famous Elk Antler Arches can be seen to the left).

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Road Trip - photo by wili_hybrid

(Continued from Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.)

Back when my husband was about ten years old, his family took a road trip from Arizona to Wyoming to visit some family. Picture, if you will, the family packed in the old woody station wagon – Mom, Dad, my husband, and his two younger sisters. Picture, if you will, all of the luggage and gear that said family would require, also packed into the aforementioned station wagon. And, picture (again, if you will) two 150+ pound German Shepherds gleefully sprawled among the children in the back seat, tongues lolling, drool a-spraying. All crammed into this one station wagon. For fifteen hours straight (his dad didn’t believe in pit stops), and nearly a thousand miles. One way.

It’s a wonder my husband didn’t need therapy for this childhood experience. But, not only did he come out the other side of it (basically) normal, he’s willing to repeat the experience. Sans the station wagon. And the other family members. And the dogs.

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Grand Teton Nat'l Park, Photo by Circumerro

“Babe?” I said to my husband one weekend morning. Laptop at hand, I had the road atlas by my side, a Word document going that I was using to record our plans, and MapQuest queued up in my web browser.

“Yep?” He replied, absently reading the paper.

“We’re stuck in Cody, WY.”

“Hmm…” he mumbled.

“No, really, hon. We’re stuck in Cody and I don’t know where to go from there.” I rustled the edge of his paper to get his attention. Clearly, he wasn’t understanding my sense of urgency.

“Sorry, what?” He looked up from his paper and blinked at me. Because, obviously, we were sitting quite happily in our living room, and not stranded at the side of the road in some random corner of the mid-west.

“Okay,” I explained patiently, “Here’s the plan so far. Phoenix to Salt Lake City, spend the night there, then three nights in Jackson Hole. I’m going to try to get us lodging in Yellowstone itself for two nights, and from there we’re going to Cody to spend one night. After Cody… well, I don’t know which way to go to get us home.”

After I finished this little speech, my husband replied with, “Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” and went back to peacefully reading his paper. Which you might think is inconsiderate, but my husband knows I LOVE this stuff. So really I wasn’t expressing an issue so much as looking for validation of all of my hard work.

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Yellowstone Hot Springs - photo by Tim

(Continued from Part One.)

Once my husband and I finally decided on Yellowstone National Park as our destination, we began to try to figure out how long of a road trip – in distance and in days – we wanted to commit ourselves to. One week seemed too short, and two weeks was too long due to limited vacation time. Finally we decided on ten days total for our entire vacation, encompassing two full weekends so that we only had to use seven total days of available vacation time. That would be enough time to get there, see the area fully, and mosey on back home via a different route than we took to get there.

That last part – the whole different route thing – spurred ANOTHER round of debate. Do we go clockwise – Arizona/Utah/Wyoming/Colorado/New Mexico/Arizona? Or do we go counter-clockwise – Arizona/Utah/Wyoming/Idaho/Nevada/Arizona? Since we’re going to be so far north into Wyoming, do we want to check out any of Southern Montana? Since we’re going to be so far west into Wyoming, do we want to check out any of Eastern Idaho?

The whole vacation planning thing, fun as it all is to me, was by this point starting to drive me a little crazy.

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