Austin TX! Had such a nice visit here – longish drive from Fairhope, but feeling like we’re more or less used to those. We stayed in a condo in east Austin — in a very walkable area. Close to Suerte, Via 313 and many other fun spots. WOW – the development that is in progress there. Felt like the area we stayed in may be unrecognizable in a couple years.

We arrive on “pi day” 3/14 and enjoyed Detroit style and Uber thin crust pizza at Via 313 – and mostly crashed after the road trip.

On Monday, William took the boys to the zoo which was more of an animal rescue experience (some hands on which they enjoyed). We walked to Reunion – Mexican spot not far from where we were staying. Loved our dinner here – debated this spot vs Suerte but opted for what felt like a less dressed up concept.

Tuesday the boys spent a bunch “PE” time in parks and we walked to another east Austin lunch location – Cenote. That night we walked along a fun Austin bar scene // lots of front porches, some live music and mostly 21 and up (so we just looked :). We watched the warm up for a band (first “live” music in a year?!) but had to head to our dinner spot before they started. S enjoyed venmo-Ing a tip. Loved loved our dinner at Emmer & Rye. The boys were incredibly adventurous eating everything from umeboshi, to grilled cabbage and orange butter, and the amaze homemade pastas/cacio e pepe is one of their specialties.  Rivaled FIG in Charleston for “best family dinner”.

The next day it was William’s turn to pick lunch (bbq) and the boys to pick dinner (home slice pizza). But the highlight of the day was kayaking and swimming / swinging into the river.

Loved the morning time in Austin walking with Shepherd each morning to get coffee and breakfast (he woke me up to stay on schedule!). Good time with just him to talk about life.

William scouted a Boudin place, Kartchners, on our drive to ATX – Lafayette, LA specialty.

Arriving to East Austin on “pi day” (March 14th) – Detroit style pizza and a super thin crust “bar style” pizza.

Reunion 19 Taco spot – we LOVED the green salsa, street corn, amazing vegetarian tacos (E) and shrimp aguachiles.

Walking around Austin, music, and Emmer and Rye!

Time on the water and ending our trip at (boys choice!) Home Slice

Leaving TX – William saving a turtle in the middle of the road

Fairhope – a city with interesting history. It was founded in 1894 as a utopian socialist community and has evolved to be a quirky cute coastal town in AL. We stayed slightly outside of Fairhope at the Grand Hotel – a beautiful property, but feels like it’s clinging perhaps too closely to heritage. We were encouraged to visit a confederate memorial just offsite and they performed daily, military rituals for “entertainment”. Mixed feelings on the location, but we were able to talk to the boys openly about this – and then mostly recharged a bit after a full few weeks. We went into the Fairhope town on our last day and wish we’d explored a bit more. A few great spots and nice walkable downtown area. The boys wore themselves out at the pool – Shepherd went down the slide more than 100 times and they both made friends with other kids. First time we’ve ever met two other Shepherds. Same spelling!

We decided to take a week long road trip to accomplish a few things – visit Charleston and a few restaurants we’d been wanting to try, take the boys to see snow/ski and chill in Brevard a bit. More of a mixed trip than previous adventures.

Highs

• The most amazing family Valentine’s dinner at FIG in Charleston. Started the night with a drink at Charleston Place where William and celebrated Valentine’s together 12 years prior. The boys were amazing adventurers with their dinner, befriended (nearly) the entire staff and all around perfect experience.
• Capped off with “date night” in the lobby of our awesome hotel with William. In addition to FIG, we loved lunch at the ordinary and good dinner at butcher and bee the night before. Boys maybe most enjoyed the make your own Belgian waffle on our way out.
• Fun cabin and nice seeing snow in Beech mountain. Boys did well on bunny slopes
• Always love seeing Shepherd’s Ridge in Brevard – little slice of heaven

Not so High

• The weather was terrible! Rained all week and icy cold in NC
• Skiing on ice isn’t much fun and scary for beginners
• S and I came down with a bug in NC so laid low there (brightside – lots of reading)

Still glad we made the trip – good family times

Charleston (Stayed at the Dewberry, Restaurants: Butcher + the Bee, the Ordinary, FIG, belgian waffle place 🙂

Cabin + Ski attempt near Beech Mountain

Brevard (visiting with Tom Shipman, playing D+D)

Since we had nearly a month in Santa Fe to settle in, I’m breaking up our family notes into three sections 1) all the eating 2) all the hiking and 3) some of the exploring. We were able to largely enage in all of the hikes and food fun we’d hoped to do, but there were quite a few places that, in normal state of the world, we would have loved to visit in Santa Fe (Georgia O’Keefe museum, Meow Wolf, more galleries on Canyon Road, peformances) — but we knew this aspect would be more limited.

Outside of eating and hiking, here are some random things we did 😉

Wandered around downtown and checked out public art and interesting buildings around the Plaza:

Got invited to paint (Shepherd) at a local gallery

and made a cake to celebrate the election outcome

Visited a (quiet) Canyon Road and then picked out a Shaman to come home with us.

Participated in a virtual music recital with friends and family

and had some silly, fun times

We loved Santa Fe and hope to return before long!

Hiking options around Santa Fe are plentiful and we foundt the landscape once you were out of the city area quite different than we were expecting — Aspen trees and evergreen are lush and everywhere. We had a period where the weather got to be quite frigid and we paused on doing too much outdoors, but sharing some of our favorites. William used the AllTrails app to download maps so that when we were in areas without service, the phone’s GPS could still keep us on track – found this to be clutch a few times.

Dale Ball North Loop – This hike is just north of Santa Fe — it meanders a bit, reaches a peak and then drops back again — and then you get to turn around and go up, down and up again.

Afterwards, we drove up above 10K feet elevation and let the boys play in the bit of snow that clung to the ground:

Borrego Bear Wallow Trail – This trail is just north of the Ten Thousand Waves Japanese village — the Aspen trees along the path are stunning. Rawls decided this day was just too darn cold to hike (and since I kind of agreed with him) so we detoured to visit the village of Tesuque while William and Shepherd conquered this trail 🙂

Atalaya Trail – This trail leaves off from a local college — the first part takes you through an arroyo that during rainy seasons, would be full. The vegetation in the arroyo was like nothing we’d seen on the trip. Rawls enjoyed finding sap from trees along the way to theoretically contribute to gluing his iron man costume together.

and for William’s birthday we decided to head back to Borrego-Bear Wallow (his request) to all do the trail together, adding cousin Sean into the mix. We all loved it, some especially when it was over!

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!