Another Summer, Another Epic road trip in the books.
After a great vacation last year, we decided we could do another 10 day, drive across the country cramming in a as much as we could. Spend all day doing stuff, then load into the truck and drive another 4-6 hours... why not!!! I think I spent the entire vacation on almost no sleep and all coffee. I was dehydrated the whole trip since bathrooms were sparse while driving and hiking. Almost no water just coffee!!
After losing track of time it's time to get back and finish posting about this vacation. I can't believe its been 20 days since my last update. I know I avoid these since they take so much time to put together, but I need to finish this off in the next few weeks!!!. This will be day 6 of the 10-day trip and it started to feel like time was running out. While we still had plenty of stuff planned you could fell the end starting to creep in. I need to vacation more like 
- Pre Drive Friday Night to Altoona IA
- Day 1 Drive to Denver Co - Red Rocks Amphitheatre
- Day 3 Part 1 Drive to MOAB, Hike Corona Arch!!
- Day 3 Continued - Jet Boat Tour and Sunset at Dead Horse State Park
- Day 4 - Sunrise at Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, Part 1
- Day 5 - Star Gazing at Arches National Park then an afternoon at Capital Reef National Park
- Day 6 - Day 5 Sunset and Day 6 Sunrise at Bryce Canyon National Park
- Day 6 - Evening Drive to Zion National Park - The Road of Tunnels
Had to Break these out specifically because of the tunnels
It's supposed to slightly different than most of the previous posts and slightly smaller. But as I was going through my photos and trying to figure out where to put things I felt that these would get lost in the previous Bryce canyon post. I also felt like they are going to get lost in the Zion National Park Post. These are something that I personally felt were really cool and made part of the vacation very unique. While much of the Southwest is very stunning different in landscape, at some point you start to feel like it is also very similar. Maybe it was just the vast amount of rocks and red that I saw with very little green or trees but this was something that really stuck out as unique on our trip.
Amazing Drive Filled with Tunnels -
Driving from Bryce canyon to Zion National Park was a pretty easy drive. The drive was only about 85 to 90 miles, and only took about 2 hours. There were three total tunnels. One of them is the classic Mount Carmel tunnel that gets you into Zion park. That is the biggest one that is sometimes shut down and requires an escort for RVs to get through.
Random Archway tunnel driving to Zion
The Other Side!!
Mt Carmel Tunnel into Zion
Emerald Pool Hike
B
14
A
15
Front of Water Falls
Behind Water Falls
Top of the Trail
Reached the pools
Pool 1
Pool 2
Total Drive
Vacation Stats
No updates to the stats since the count of the drive in the last post, and I'm not counting and driving this post.
Pre Drive Friday Night
Day 1 -Drive to Altoona
- 271 Miles
- 4 Hrs
Day 2 - Drive to Red Rocks & Hike - Drive to Look out Mountain and Eldorado Springs
- 694 Miles Red Rocks
- 10 Hours to Red Rocks
- 65 Miles Round Trip
- 2 Hours Round Trip
Day 3 Drive to MOAB - Hike, Jet Boat Tour and Dead Horse State Park
- 342 Miles
- 5.5 Hours
- Corona Arch, Pinto and Bow Tie Arch
- Jet Boat Tour
- Dead Horse State Park
Arches National Park
- Sunrise at Delicate Arch
- Sand Dune and Broken Arch Trail, Balanced Rock, Windows Trials, Double Arch
- Mesa Arch
- Sunset at Whale Rock
- Driving 80 Miles, 1H 50M
Day 5 Sunrise at Arches, Drive to Capital Reef and Bryce Canyon
- Drive to Capital Reef 156 Miles 2hrs 45m
- Hickman Land Bridge
- Petroglyphs Panels
- Dixie National Forest
- Drive to Bryce Canyon 107 Miles - 2 Hrs
- Sunset at Bryce Canyon
Day 6 Sunrise at Bryce Canyon and Drive the Tunnels to Zion
- Sunrise at Bryce
- 7 Mile Hike on most of the trails.
- Drive 85 Miles (2 Hrs) to Zion
- Hike Emerald Pools
Vacation Running Stats
Are running stats or getting up there, with a drive time of at least 28 hours and at least is 1700 miles excluding all the day driving to trailheads and activities and back and forth to be a pretty massive trip so far. It's a good thing my Chevy Silverado is so good on gas at an average of 17.2 miles to the gallon.
Here is the overall view of the drive excluding many of the small excusions
Tracked Totals including excursions
Total Miles - 1800
Total Time Driving - 30 hrs
Summary
So far I've been loving this trip that day five I'm getting a little anxious as I know we're halfway through but I'm looking forward to the next day in Bryce canyon and then on to a few more really cool places. I wish I would have tracked how many gallons I put in the truck, but I forgot on the first day of driving to track that. I did run a total trip odometer to give me a rough idea of how many miles I had even though I started it late on the first day. I'll work on getting the next post out on the next cool location that we visited in utah.