Xav and I “officially” discovered Parks and Rec (the TV show) several Thanksgiving Days ago on our way to a family lunch… but it wasn’t until our honeymoon that we became true fans. On one of the days, we were planning to hit the road early and go to the dunes before it got too hot. But we turned on the little TV in the corner of the kitchen while we were packing our picnic basket and ended up standing in the kitchen, watching Parks and Rec for over an hour because we were laughing so hard. When we returned from our honeymoon, we started at the beginning of season one and made our way all the way through the whole show. We’re currently in season 4 for the third time and there are some episodes we have seen more than five times (mostly season 7 episode 10 “The Johnny Karate Super Awesome Musical Explosion Show”). All that to say, we haven’t found another “grown up” TV show that beats the humor, semi interesting/semi clean storyline, and characters of Parks and Rec.
Andy and April are our FAVORITES and in episode 6 of season 4 they visit the Grand Canyon. When we first saw that episode over two years ago, I loved the way they just up and decided to go see it. Xav and I like planning, structure and strategy so the time it took between deciding to go to the Grand Canyon and actually making it there was a bit more extensive than Andy and April. We knew it would take A WHILE to drive out there so we wanted to plan a two week trip that included several stops to break up the driving hours and give us more to see.
After making S E V E R A L different potential routes… we landed on one that led us to four main stops: Texas, Arizona, Utah, and then Colorado. It was such an amazingly sweet time together, exploring nature, hiking and walking all over the place, making jokes, creating random games, and inventing a billion inside jokes. I think recaps are more fun with photos, so I chose a small portion of our favorite highlights to post here. We tried to keep a detailed “day to day” journal on our Instagram (@xav_and_em) and I saved most of the stories to our profile (if you care to see more photos). It was crazy how rarely we got cell service (Sprint is THE WORST and New Mexico is EMPTY)… but it was a good chance to *mostly* unplug from life and appreciate God’s creation.
While planning our trip, we somehow happened to find two random photos on Google. One was of a place in Colorado and one was in Texas. The place in Texas was Hamilton Pool and it looked so stunning that it made us add it to the route. After researching it, we found out that you have to have a permit to hike down to see it and they only give out a few permits per day. Thankfully, we were able to get one for the last of the three days we were going to spend in Texas. It was SO neat and it totally felt like a Jurassic World setting!
Then we drove like a BAJILLION hours through west Texas and Utah (the most intensely boring part of the U.S.) to get to the most brilliant, weird, insane thing I had ever seen… and the reason for the whole trip. I honestly can’t even believe I was there because it was such a massively different place from anything else. We hiked down several miles (maybe 6?) so we could stand way above the Colorado River on the edge of the cliff. It was an exhausting climb back up but so worth it!
We spent Memorial Day weekend between Bryce Canyon and Zion doing several short hikes, trying to take it all in and also resting our legs from the damage done by climbing back up the Grand Canyon .
The other place we had seen a random picture of on Google was Conundrum Hot Springs in Colorado. It looked super exquisite and we managed to get a permit to camp there so we were really excited. The hike was 8.5 miles out and back and over 3000 ft elevation change – but it was the most beautiful and unique hike we have ever been on. The scenery changed from Sound of Music trees, to fields, to babbling brooks, to raging rivers, to quiet ponds, to pine forests, to five foot deep snow piles, to bridges, to avalanche rock beds, to fords… all while hiking nearer and nearer to the base of two snow covered mountain peaks where the natural hot springs exist. We set up our tent 7 times on this trip… but this site was BY FAR the most precarious. Not only were we on a steep hill overlooking the raging river but our tent itself was partially on a snowbank. We hiked during the day and got pretty warm, but as night came, the air got frigid. All of our food was cold, our clothes were cold, the air was cold and our tent was cold… but the hot springs were 102 degrees so we spent the evening sitting in the little, natural hot tub watching the sunset dance on the mountain. UNREAL. I cannot get over that this place exists. Despite the lack of food (we really underestimated how many calories we would burn hiking up a mountain carrying all our stuff), no toilets and the surprisingly bad altitude sickness we got, it was still our favorite part of the whole trip!
From there, we drove to Estes Park and spent a few days Whitewater Rafting and exploring the Rockies. We were whooped by the end of the trip and our legs were so sore but we could have kept going for two more weeks – it was so fun!
