We were expecting Santa Fe to be a food highlight of the trip and it was! We very much want to return to Santa Fe when the world has returned more to normal and we can safely enjoy peak activity time here. Capturing here what we enjoyed (most all of it), but we also enjoyed having time in Santa Fe to cook a bit more ourselves.

New Mexican Food:

• The Farmer’s Market – Open Tuesdays and Saturdays – we visited the Farmer’s market twice and can imagine going every week if we lived here. Many great local produce stalls, red and green chile products and a fun setting in the Railyard. Loved the stand with vegan/veggie breakfast burritos, tamales and the amazing warm salsa.

• La Choza – This was the first place we tried – takeout on our first night in town. I ordered poorly (fish tacos / they weren’t amazing) and William had v. yummy enchiladas (Christmas style – red and green chile!). Expect with a different order, we both would have loved this place.
• The Shed (same owner and similar menu to La Choza) – this is a fun setting and has a great courtyard. We went for an early drink before a dinner we weren’t sure the boys would love — and let them have food there. I loved my mezcal negroni and William had a great blood orange margarita.

• Tia Sofias – just off the Plaza – this was our favorite food-wise – very chill/casual setting. William’s smothered burrito was delicious and I loved the huevos rancheros!

• Tomasitas – Takeout on our second to last night of the trip — I loved the build your own chile bowl, Sean enjoyed their chicken flautas special and William their “Tuesday” (but really every day) special.
• William’s amazing enchiladas with local red chile powder and a play on huevos rancheros– My favorite enchiladas of the trip were… William’s! He scouted out some local red chile powder (we brought some back from the Farmer’s Market to recreate in Jax),

Other GREAT spots:

• Ten Thousand Waves – Izanami – our favorite meal of the trip . This is an upscale version of an izakaya located in a Japanese spa and makeshift Japanese village, just north of Santa Fe. We all tried A5 Wagyu beef for the first time (nearly melts like butter) and had so many other amazing tastes here. Shepherd asked if we could go back for the Wagyu! The sake selection was really impressive.

• Paloma – modern Mexican – Outside of Izanami, this was my favorite restaurant visit of the trip. Amazing salsas, fish tacos, huitlacoche blue corn quesadilla + drinks! Love Shepherd’s expression here – feels like it captures his storytelling.

• Cowgirl – Great Margaritas (says William) and tons of options – this was the best menu for the kids — Salmon, mashed potatoes and other veggie options. Low key spot and nice outside patio area with heaters.

• Dr. Fieldgoods – casual lunch spot with great sandwich options and brick oven pizza. The boys loved their pizza with fresh mozzarella and crispy crust (#2 best ever said Shepherd) and now we know they will happily eat beyond the fast food options. Kimchi spicy potato salad and a bacon burger were other highlights.
• Raaga – This place is always a take-out spot and we enjoyed everything we ordered, although realized how lucky we are in Jacksonville to have so many great Indian spots – this was the only option here that we came across. The chef was apparently on some Food Network specials including Top Chef

• Kohnami – Sushi on our last night — we needed something easy and we were looking for a change in pace. We were surprised by how much we enjoyed this place — special option: Shrimp + Green Chile tempura roll.

Sweet treats:

• The Chocolate Maven – we picked up William’s 40th birthday cakes here: flourless chocolate torte and tres leches cake – both great!

• Kakawa Chocolates – amazing local chocolate spot – really great. Bringing home their chocolate elixir beverage to share with the cousins. Their chocolate peanut butter and chocolate pistachio log-shaped candies were heavenly.

Places that were recommended that we didn’t make / would love to in the future: Compound restaurant (off canyon road), Geronimo (also canyon road, close to Compound), Restaurant Martin, Sazon (this was supposed to be William’s 40th birthday treat – cricket tacos – ha!), Los Poblanos (restaurant associated with a lavendar farm ~an hour outside of Santa Fe), Opuntia and Tea House (Canyon Road)

We woke up from our yurt camping and it was time to make our way to the final part of our “fall break” National Park tour. We arrived at the entrance to Zion National Park just before lunchtime and drove through the windy thoroughfare to the town at the south entrance of the park. Lunch was at a casual spot — MeMe’s Cafe – nice spot for salads, creative sandwiches and yummy vegetarian (and not-so) crepes. Recharged with some food in our bellies, we decided to spend the first day at a few lookout spots in the park.

We and especially the boys spent some time exploring around a beautiful river

and visited the lookout for the Checkerboard Mesa:

Then it was time to settle in at Zion Mountain Ranch, our home for 4 days. We rented a two bedroom cabin with a beautiful lookout (two porches!). The Ranch is a working buffalo farm and has a great restaurant at the entrance to the property.

Since it was the 2020 election our first night of the visit, we cozied in and ordered takeout.

On our second day, we went back into Zion and took the boys on a hike to a beautiful lookout. The entrance to the hike was just on the east side of the mountain road tunnel – very tough to find parking in Zion. Along the way there were a number of rock outcrops for the boys to explore — an interesting and not too challenging trail.

After the hike, we headed back into the town at the south entrance of Zion. We grabbed cold drinks at the Zion Pub area and enjoyed an early dinner at Whiptail Cafe — Mexican with a twist — and the most amazing goat cheese chile relleno!

On our last full day in Zion, we purchased shuttle tickets so that we could visit the north area of the park where all of the notable hikes begin. Typically the shuttle in Zion is open for anyone to take, but to keep crowds down in the park, shuttle tickets were limited. The hike we targeted was to Angel’s landing — there’s a several mile, very steep hike up to an outlook and then a dangerous section of hike from there that we agreed William would do solo. The general portion of the hike was our hardest and most rewarding of the trip. The boys continued to enjoy all of the hiding places along the way (and of course surprising other passerbys).

While the boys played on the outlook and I read a bit, William took the last ~mile of the trip up to Angel’s Landing. For a good portion of Angel’s landing, hikers must hold onto a metal chain to stay safely on the mountain. We were all happy to see William return!

We were all a good bit zonked and headed to the restaurant at Zion Mountain Ranch for our last meal. We loved trying the buffalo raised on the property (best burger’s ever, said the boys.. or at least top 10). First pictures are our cabin and visiting the horses just outside of the restaurant.

While we were (so) enjoying Zion, Tater man was happily prancing around at Cinder Hills outside of Flagstaff. We loved seeing the daily pictures:

We loved our full day in Bryce Canyon – talk about an otherworldy spot. We headed out very early from Lake Powell with plans to hike during the day and spend the night in a Yurt just outside of the National Park. Upon arriving at the visitor center, we realized we were benefitting from low season here — parking is notoriously terrible in Bryce (one parking spot for 5 cars typically in the park at a time) and at the visitor center, the lot was nearly empty.

We visited a handful of the lookout points – Sunrise and Sunset, Bryce Point and then headed out on the Navajo Loop -> Queen’s Garden Trail.

The Navajo Loop hike went down into the Canyon (and back-up!). We paths were covered in reddish dust and generally pretty easy to navigate. Glad we went down where we did (it was crazy steep) and back-up where we did (it was a bit more prolongued in the ascent).

We had a late lunch and store trip at Ruby’s Inn, just outside of the park (nothing to write home about 😉 and made our way to the Yurt site. The Yurt was quite large and had a great setup inside. The wood stove was setup to keep the inside of the Yurt warm through the night and there were two burners for cooking (our Ramen noodle dinner). The only rain we’ve seen on this trip came while we were here, but passed through quickly and the Yurt solidly protects from the rain.

Loved this day!

Nearly every place we’ve visited has over delivered on some aspect of the time there.. perhaps until Lake Powell, partially because of unreasonable expectations (mine – I mean google Lake Powell and the photos are just incredible) and partially because of when we were visiting. We stayed at Wahweap Marina, along the Lake, and the Marina Hotel area itself hasn’t been maintained very well over the years. Add on low tourism season (Lake Powell sees 3 million visitors over the summer and nearly shuts down late October) + COVID season + staff who doesn’t seem to know much about the place and.. not our favorite stay. But we’ve been spoiled by a bunch of great locations and we did have some of our favorite day hikes around Lake Powell.

Pretty sunsets + boys running around in the sand + wild hares:

We visited Horseshoe Bend – iconic location but some majorly doctored photos out there. Short walk to visit < mile round trip.

Shepherd and my failed trip to take a kayak out on the lake. Pretty 3 mile trip to get to the Boathouse that wouldn’t give us a boat 😉

And so maybe I lied — maybe there was an ultimate highlight. Birdhouse Fried Chicken apparently lived up to it’s reputation as one of the best Fried Chicken spots in all the land (sorry W + S for the action shot).

Coming out this way, we’d read many recommendations to visit Antelope Canyon or any number of less visited, but still stunning Slot Canyons. These canyons are created from fast rushing water running through the sandstone rocks — during periods of potential rain (not a remote sign of at the moment) these canyons can be extremely dangerous and prone to flash flooding. Many of these are located on Navajo Nation lands and are currently closed to the public, but we read about a comparably beautiful one on a stretch of hike from Wirepass trail to Buckskin Gulch.

We drove into Utah, about an hour from where we’re staying, and took a very rough road (should have gotten that 4WD on the Tahoe) ~10 miles to the Wirepass trailhead. We walked along a currently dry stream bed to the Wirepass slot canyons — which lead to the Buckskin Gulch slot canyons. During the first mile or so of the hike, the boys were really NOT into our activity of the day. Rawlings leg was hurting him and ~30 minutes into the hike we sat down so that I could massage some medicine into his leg (sage, moisturizing balm) which miraculously improved his status (please don’t read this, Rawls!). When we arrived to the start of the Slot Canyons, we were all entranced — the hike felt otherworldly from there on.

We’d read about one challenging spot, with a 10 foot drop into the canyon, but since the last hiker reviewed this path, a very kind person stood up a ladder to easily cover this drop. I’m not sure if we did the beauty of this spot justice, but I’ll let the photos try to represent.

Some favorite things to check out below:

• Rawls teardrop shaped rock finding
• The helpful ladder into the canyon
• Secret hideaway spots for the boys – they kept describing how we’d use each of the canyon hideways for different purposes (“reading nook”, “slide”, “family room”)

and then they crashed – around mile 6, fortunately not far from the parking lot — really both of them, but Rawls is still small enough to be carried for a short while!

Rawls was dead set on his costume this year – Iron Man! Shepherd tossed around a bunch of ideas and couldn’t settle on anything he liked.. so he’s a “hiker”. Trick or treating this year involved visiting a few candy shops in Sedona and Flagstaff on our way to Lake Powell. Rawls.. so into – love it!

and just so we don’t forget this place, Proper Meats + Provisions – so darn good:

William, early on in the planning for this trip, decided to plan a surprise, special morning in Sedona heading up as a family in a hot air balloon – bucket list activity for both of us and something we hoped the boys would love.

We woke up around 5am to finish packing up at the Sedona house and headed to the meet up spot. Sedona is one of the few areas in the world where hot air balloon conditions are a 12-month a year possibility — and Red Rock Balloons has a number of ‘captains’ who have been doing this for 20-30 years. We met our captain and immediately felt at ease and also LOVED how welcoming he was to the boys. He made sure they (and we) felt comfortable and involved them in the setup and breakdown process.

So to start.. the setup! There were 2 other balloons taking off as we were. It was incredible to see the balloons taken out of the trailers and setup in ~20 minutes. The boys were able to walk around in the balloon while it was being initially inflated with a fan. They got out of there before the flame started to heat up the air!

The take-off was incredibly smooth and the balloon’s movement was without any hint of turbulence. We saw Sedona from such a beautiful perspective. Shepherd was entirely comfortable throughout the trip. Rawls, I think, had some nerves looking out over the balloon’s edge and spent a good bit of time watching the journey from the peepholes at the bottom of the basket. Towards the end of the trip, Rawls became more comfortable sitting on the interior basket edge.

We were airborne for at least an hour and the view was magical. William and I didn’t feel any nerves throughout, but admittedly were unsure what to expect with the landing. No need to worry here — our captain landed the basket gently in the middle of a dirt lane, 50 feet from where the Red Rocks team was waiting.

Then began the boys favorite part of the trip – breaking down the balloon:

Cheers to an amaze morning! Feeling like living in a dream during some points of this trip and especially this morning.

Next stop, Sedona! With a quick visit to pickup Tater and grab lunch from one of the best sandwich places EVER, Proper Meats & Provisions (seriously, ahi tuna sandwich perfection. and William said the Muffalletta is amaze – all that deli meat + olive spread, mmmm ;). But most importantly – let’s get these feet into some real hiking shoes.

Welcome to Sedona – Drove in through Oak Creek canyon and felt like we entered a different world – years away (yet only an hour away) from Flagstaff.

Settled in our first day and walked from the house to an arts and shopping district, Tlaquepaque. The shopping area is gorgeous and very much decorated for the fall holidays. I could have wandered around the art galleries for acrull day! We grabbed a drink at a local favorite, Oak Creek Brewery (or according to William, they forgot to put up the Denny’s sign 😉

The tunnel picture looks like William is walking into a heavenly location.

Back to hiking the next day — We wanted to check-out the Devil’s Bridge Hike ~4.5 miles (start at the Mescal trailhead — much prettier start to the hike than the Devil’s Bridge trailhead which is along a road). Most of the hike was a slight incline with the end of the hike quite steep (hands required) up to the Devil’s Bridge. The lookout was absolutely beautiful and while the bridge itself was much wider than it appeared, William very kindly walked the boys to the center while I photographed. The boys have become troopers — no more grumbling starting a hike, but this one definitely stretched Rawls a bit. He counted down his leg energy from 30% to negative % on the last stetch of the hike. Shepherd could have kept going for a long while.

We cooked dinner at the house the prior two nights and opted for a treat this night — Dellepiane — an Argentianian burget spot. The elote was perfection and everyone was happy with the burgers. Rawls become a new person again after he got some food in his belly.

Opted for a chiller hike the next day, ~2 miles up to the Birthing Cave. As we approached I hear William “oh… I see why it’s the Birthing Cave” and Shepherd “it looks like a heart to me.” The temperature had warmed up a bunch and we didn’t realize that Rawls had put his jacket on and taken off his t-shirt before starting the hike. So the boys got comfortable!

The last stretch up to the birthing cave was pretty steep but definitely worth it. The cave had a “belly button” that Shepherd insisted on climbing into. After he came down, with some help, another hiker climbed up into and couldn’t get down — the step to get onto the ledge beneath it was just out of reach

After the hike, we recharged at the house – the outdoor setup here was great.

For dinner, we went to Creekside Bistro and sat on the patio outside — James Beard regional winner. Solid menu and we enjoyed all – especially the ahi nachos.

Of the places we’ve visited so far, Sedona is at the top of list to come back to!

Some video clips of the Devil’s Bridge hike (walking the bridge and playing with fire… I mean cactus) and Rawls narrating the Birthing Cave visit:

To make our second visit to the Grand Canyon happen, Tater man went on his own little vacation to Cinder Hills Kennels. We dropped him off and grapped lunch in Flagstaff. Tried out a place, Sosoba — great cauliflower dish, bao buns and boys loved the dumplings. Shepherd says he wants to go back… badly! Quick treat visit to Mozelle’s bakery afterwards. There’s an open set of outdoor tables around the area and many local spots to grab a bite + eat outside.

We drove from lunch back to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and checked into El Tovar — oldest hotel in the area and felt like a piece of history. When we’d booked this several months back, I hadn’t been able to find availability on the National Parks site. I’d called asking if they had a wait list and found they had one room available (at the time I assumed someone had just cancelled a reservation). Upon check-in realized that I’d booked us into one of the rooms they don’t post for web booking — they have a series of rooms that highlight the history of key people to the area. So we checked into the Zane Grey suite – ha! J if you’re reading this he was famous as a Western author and a dentist 🙂

The first night, we settled in and walked the opposite direction along the rim from where we’d gone the previous weekend. The sunset over the canyon was beautiful!

El Tovar has one of the only solid dining areas, but we learned it’s very popular with lots of visitors — there was an insane line to put in your name for a table, starting at 4:30pm, but after letting this die down, we sat down for dinner around 7pm and had such a nice dinner with the boys. Shepherd and Rawls tried french onion soup (just a taste), Rawls helped me eat some of the crab and avocado appetizer, but mostly they were very happy with the plain pasta + parmesan.

On Saturday, we woke up early to start down the Bright Angel Trail — the main trail from the South Rim that can take you all the way to the Canyon floor. The trail itself is well managed and wide enough to handle hikers and mules taking people down into the canyon. We didn’t cross paths with any of these mules/groups, but we saw plenty remnants of their passing ahead. Walking down Bright Angel is a bit unnerving because the way down is easy, but you know you’ll be coming back up on the way back. Rawls had two slides (lots of trail dust) and I couldn’t wait for the third, so we turnd around ~700 vertical feet into the canyon. William and Shepherd continued onto the first rest stop and saw a funny Mountain Goat. The entire trail is 9.3 miles and 4400 vertical feet — they covered roughly a quarter of this. Note the photo below that Rawls spent a lot of time editing.

Rawls and I returned around 11 and William/Shepherd around noon. We grabbed lunch at Mastwick lodge and decided to push our luck and see if the boys had some energy left (answer: not much). Took the bikes off the back of the car which was parked right next to the GNC bike trails. Rawls is still getting comfortable biking so he and William practiced in an area while Shepherd and I went on a bike ride.. where I spent most the time coaxing him to continue. He perked up seeing about a dozen deer and then continued to pronounce their presence to every passerby for a few miles

.

After the idyllic dinner the previous night (as close as it could have been), we decided we should, of course, try it again (there aren’t many options as it is). Welp, not quite the same experience. Shepherd’s legs were cramping (we think, although they magically stopped when he returned to the room) and Rawls was crying — the only thing we could make out was that we wouldn’t let him play with his Parrot robot at home (which he hasn’t touched in months). Cut dinner short and got rest everyone needed that night!

Williams is…

• The gateway to the Grand Canyon.. and everything about the town seems to focus on this, but if you look past the obvious.. there are so many beautiful natural spots to visit near the town
• A very small town with proud, friendly residents (even in a pandemic – ha)
• On the verge of crisis — limited water source and next to no rain for years: dry + dusty!

We have had a really nice stay in Williams – although as William joked, I’m not sure anyone ever visits as long as we have. Personally, have loved the chance to see the highlights offered here and have some recharge time.

Our weekly recap!

Monday — We visited Dogtown Lake with the Boys (I know I was just talking about a shortage of water.. but the Lake legitimately used to be MUCH wider). Rawls made a natural ring toss, the boys ran out a lot of energy and then spent their “art class” drawing scenes of the lake.

Pretty much each evening this is how we wrapped the day at this wonderful home – John and his dogs Mosie and Billy treated us well!

Tuesday – We really embraced the tourist side of Williams and did ALL the things, starting with Bearizona. We were uber skeptical of the local zoo visit as a good idea, especially hearing it was a partially drive-thru zoo… but it was SO well done. Each section of the drive-thru zoo contained a different animal, some where we were welcome to keep the windows down (deer, bison, burros) and some where we most definitely couldn’t (bears, more bears and the wolves). After the drive-thru, the walkable zoo area was nicely laid out. V. sweetly, Shepherd wanted to surprise his brother with a flute (randomly Rawls has been asking and we spotted one at the zoo). Today was a brotherly love day.

We followed by heading back in town.. and caved to taking the boys on the “zipline”. Check out the video for Rawls dancing everywhere at the zoo (the 80s music was on point), meeting a white peacock and the dreaded zipline.

We visited the Historic Brewing Co — Arizona wine is a thing and it pretty tasty! The restaurant group behind Historic Brewing has a couple other spots in Williams which have been our food highlights (cooking at home has been better though!)

We walked around the downtown and bought salt water taffy (did I mention Tuesday is for Tourists). Ending the day at restaurant, South Rimms. Totally fine (not great) dinner, but nice setting minus forgetting our jackets – brrrrrr.

Wednesday – A much simpler day 😉

We visiting Sycamore canyon — a remote and often inaccessible area and outside of the Grand Canyon, the most beautiful natural setting we’ve visited to date. With the beauty also came a v. treacherous set of trails! Quite a nerve wracking hike also (for E).

Thursday – Our last evening in town and we enjoyed hanging at the house for the afternoon and went to Station 66 Italian / Historic Brewing for our last meal here. Very much worth a visit!

and back we head to the Grand Canyon manana.