Robert and I left last Thursday, September 13th to fly to LA. We picked up Greg's car (Holly's boyfriend) at the airport. We left LAX and drove into Santa Monica where Holly treated us to a special night at the "Hotel California"! We had a delicious meal across the street at Chez J's. The next morning we headed out on Ventura Highway to Ventura. The drive up the coast was beautiful. We checked into our hotel and spent the day relaxing by the pool and walking. Ate a great meal at the pier restaurant! Watched all of the surfers hitting the waves. Beautiful sunset, the night lights on the pier and downtown Ventura.
We left Ventura and headed east to the valley area of California to see some of the agriculture. We passed groves of lemons, oranges, avocados, almond trees and grapes and tomatoes. We ended up at Bakersfield and could look back over the valley to see where we had been.
We now start our drive out of California and head to Utah. We started our time in Utah in Zion National Park. It was stunningly beautiful, magnificent, majestic......words and pictures do not describe it.
Next we headed out towards the Red Canyon and ended our day at an inn at Torrey near the Capital Reef National Park. From there we headed towards the Arches National Park and Moab.
Robert and I named the picture above the three Wisemen. The whole park was awesome!
Now we are headed out to cross over from Utah into Colorado. We followed the Colorado River for a ways and ended up in Grand Junction. The next morning we headed south and went through Montrose, Ouray and Silverton and ended up in Durango. This leg of the trip took us into the Rocky Mountains and an entirely different look. We hit Colorado at the right time to see the beautiful Aspen trees in their golden glory. It was breathtaking views!
In Durango there was a wonderful steam engine. We enjoyed spending time there at an old depot station and museum.
From Durango we started driving towards Santa Fe and hit I-40 in Santa Rosa. We were on our way home. We drove through Texas and stopped at a place called Groom Texas. There is a park called The Cross. It is a giant cross and three different artist have made sculptures depicting the walk of Christ during his crucifixtion period. It was an amazing thing to see and my pictures do not do justice to the works of art. Personally when I walked up the stairs to the three crosses I could not help but feel an overwhelming sense of grief at the thought of what our Lord Jesus endured for all of us. It felt like I was there in that time when Jesus died. I will never forget how my heart felt at this spot in the park. There is a website for this place at www.crossministries.net.
As you can see we had the trip of a lifetime. We have been to the Grand Canyon and I love Sedona, AZ, but this trip was the most beautiful one yet. Every hill you went over, every curve in the road opened up to an ever changing breathtaking view. If you can ever make this trip, it is worth every minute. I would recommend flying into Las Vegas, renting a car and taking the drive through Utah and Colorado. You will be amazed. We live in such a beautiful country and everyone we came into contact with were so nice. Every place we stayed was clean and very comfortable. My pictures do not do justice to the beauty we saw. I have close to 700 pictures that I took. We saw farms, animals, funny whimsical places to stop, where we met some very unique people. I hope you have enjoyed my pictures and the memories that will last me a lifetime!
