Last week was spring break for the kids. A few days prior, we’d been talking about what to do. The leading plan was to head down to southern Colorado and do some hiking, then find a hotel with a pool and hot tub and enjoy an evening soak.
Our plans changed when Laralee’s sister Cil called to announce her engagement, and the wedding date of… a week later. Wow, talk about a quick engagement! Luckily the wedding was the week of spring break, so instead of Colorado Springs we found ourselves loading up the van for a trip out to St. George, Utah.
Despite the fact that it was April, the mountain passes were pretty snowy and I-70 was treacherous in spots. There was apparently a bad accident a little before the Eisenhower Tunnel, and it backed up traffic a long way. This was the view we had for nearly an hour:
We followed this Jeep at a snail’s pace, and in fact we were third from the end of the miles-long line of cars because the State Patrol had closed I-70 behind us and diverted traffic to side roads. Good times. However, when I get stuck in traffic due to an accident, I always remind myself that the guy in the accident is having a much worse day than I am.
Eventually we crawled through the Tunnel and made it to the western slopes, where we stopped at the awesome Hanging Lake rest area and walked along the river for a bit.
Continuing west, we drove through the San Rafael Swells in central Utah. I really like the geology of the area, and we stopped at all of the scenic views.
All told, the 700-mile trip took almost fifteen hours. To their credit, the kids endured that time in the van well and we had a lot of fun. Kyra’s best friend Hannah joined us because she didn’t really have anything else planned for spring break– it was fun to have her along for the ride.
In St. George the weather was really nice: mostly sunny with temperatures in the 60’s. We went walking around the neighborhood, played ultimate at a local park, and even did some service work at the church. Saturday was the big day, and the wedding was held in the backyard of a house a few blocks away. Here are Cil and Jim saying their vows as Cil’s kids and grandkids look on:
And of course in the end, the happy couple smooched:
Today we drove back and made much better time, arriving back in Longmont after only eleven hours. Although it wasn’t quite what we’d had in mind for spring break, it was a lot of fun to see the family and celebrate Cil’s marriage.