road trippin' {part 1}

our family loves a good road trip, and this year we got to take one amazing road trip! we started planning our trip over skype while stan was still deployed. we'd decided last year to change our summer plans up a bit. we wanted to revel in just a bit of the amazing beauty that is sprinkled across these great Untied States. our first two stops were sequoia national park and the grand canyon national park.

day 1: we drove through oregon and northern california on our way to sequoia national park

day 2: we've made it! i hadn't been to sequoia since i was the girls' age, so it was super fun to share the girls at the same age. more pictures here.

day 3: our little family in front of the biggest tree in the world. as much as i wanted to capture the awesomeness of these trees, there is just no way to grasp how truly amazing these trees are.

day 4: more hiking among the giants. more pictures here.

day 5: on the road on the way to the grand canyon we watched our truck thermostat measure the outside temperature top out of 115 degrees. wowza. we took a brief stop over on route 66 to get our kicks. :)

day 6: the grand canyon. we hiked the rim trail of the grand canyon. it was the first time there for all of us, and there is a good reason they call it GRAND. standing out on the edge of such immensity really is beyond words! more pictures here.

and what fun would it be to go to the grand canyon and not flirt with disaster? :)

day 7: we hiked a chunk of the bright angel trail. (the one the mules go down.) it was so cool to see the canyon from a different perspective, looking up at it. also was cool to think that my great grandparents had gone down this very same trail on mules when they were in their 70's. more pictures here.

sunset in the canyon from hopi point

day 8: our last look at the grand canyon from the watch tower... on our way to zion national park