Ours anniversary happened while COVID restrictions were lessening, and people were still a little unsure how to proceed. So, I decided to reduce uncertainty and just plan a road trip for our big celebration instead of an excursion to some exotic locale. Still, with six million visitors each year, my pick certainly wasn’t akin to the world’s largest peanut. You may have heard of the Grand Canyon? Since Jason and I only had vague memories of visiting it as kids, I selected that acclaimed chasm as our main destination. But what’s a road trip without a few* extra stops? *Disclaimer: “Few” in the preceding sentence may refer to any number between 17 and 726. Yes, our journey to the Grand Canyon formed a much squigglier route line than Google Maps would have tolerated. Here’s how our path ended up looking like the scribbles of a toddler.

Before we were even on the road, this trip proved convoluted. How do you pack for temperatures oscillating between the 40s and 90s? Eventually, we were in the car with way too much stuff in our trunk. It was a wet drive to our first lodgings with rain turning into slippery patches of snow off and on, not a typical April day.

A treehouse in Orderville, Utah was our accommodation that night. Yes, an actual house built in a tree not some figurative or misnamed edifice. Most treehouses fit about a kid and a half; this structure was comparatively spacious… I’m talking at least two kids. It was way too much fun being in a treehouse though to whine about minor inconveniences like having to literally crawl into bed. The only food we could get from town that night was homemade pie. So, with that as our single option, we ate pie for dinner in a treehouse, which is every child’s fantasy. If my ten-year-old self could have seen me, she would have thought I’d made it to the big leagues for sure.

The next day, we were back on the road fairly early and thought we would reach our rented home in Williams, Arizona fairly early. The drive was only supposed to take four and a half hours, but it ended up taking eleven hours. How did our travel time nearly triple? Stopping at points of interest is a slippery slope. Our first step onto that slick decline was a detour to Pipe Spring, a small national monument not far out of the way. Pipe Spring has been a home and source of water for desert people for centuries including Ancestral Puebloans, Kiabab Paiutes, and Mormon ranchers. Although not large, this monument is flowing with historical information. As I am an unashamed sucker for historical information, we ended up lingering at Pipe Spring for two to three hours.

A bit further down the road, somewhere near the Vermillion Cliffs, we got sidetracked again by Blanche Russell’s Stone House and its surrounding structural oddities. Almost a century ago, Blanche utilized chunky boulders and mushroom rocks from the landscape to form portions of the walls and ceilings of buildings that were at first temporary shelters. Eventually, these became permanent residences and finally a restaurant and a trading post before the property changed hands several times and ultimately was abandoned. These manmade deviations from the desert caught our curiosity, but there were no signs nearby explaining what we were looking at. We weren’t sure if they had been constructed by bored teenagers or ambitious travel promoters. The facts we discovered later told of a much richer history.

Besides some small diversions for viewpoints and meals, our next pause was at Navajo Bridge. Navajo Bridge is a pair of bridges that cross the Colorado River near Lees Ferry. The older of the two bridges was built in 1929 and is only used for pedestrians these days. Not only is it a historic span, but it is also one of the highest bridges in the United States at nearly 470 feet above the river’s surface. Need another reason to justify this road stop? Navajo Bridge provides a rare chance to see California condors, one of the scarcest birds, as it is a common hangout for the species. We caught one taking a break on a nearby outcropping.

Enough sidetracking? I guess not. We rerouted again to visit Horseshoe Bend near Page. Horseshoe Bend is a u-shaped meander of the Colorado River that can be viewed from a cliff about 1000 feet above the water after a short hike. Although Horseshoe Bend was dramatic and tummy tingling, the crowds distracted from its elegance. Apparently, social media posts in recent years have exponentially increased its popularity. We encountered a couple taking a barrage of selfies every 10 feet, which perfectly sums up the downside to this sinuous wonder. Still, Horseshoe Bend is worth seeing.

Another break or two for food, and we were at our destination. Exhaustion didn’t keep us from catching a view from the top of the world, or at least from a mile up, the following day. Next time, I will discuss our experience at the Grand Canyon from the prospects to the people.

I’m a fan of succulents, and I’m a fan of snowboarding. Never would I have anticipated those two interests intersecting, but a few months ago, they did.

It was Jason’s turn to plan our Valentine’s Day events this year, and he thought a long weekend of snowboarding would be well received. He was correct. In addition to a couple days of staying and boarding at Snowbird, he gave me books about succulents to read during our trip’s unhurried evenings. Whatever Jason sacrificed to the snow gods, his Speedo or flip flops perhaps, must have been appreciated because a massive blizzard came in just in time for our outing, maybe the best storm of the whole season. There were 11 new inches the first day and 18 inches the second. In case totaling snowpack isn’t your thing, that’s 29 inches of powder in 48 hours. Essentially, Snowbird’s base depth increased by about 50%. Our evenings may have been succy, but our days were not.

We chose to spend the bulk of our first day in Gad Valley and found some tasty deposits at the ends of the Gad Chutes. The lift line was fairly long in the morning due to social distancing guidelines. When it cleared out around lunchtime, we couldn’t resist utilizing that lull even though our own tummies were grumbling, our legs were exhausted, and our feet had gone painfully to sleep. We ended up boarding for four hours without a break or any food or water. Sometimes you have to surrender more than just icky summer attire on the altar of brumal deities.

After our delayed lunch, we went to the top of Peruvian Gulch for a little more time on the mountain. I’m pretty sure the mountain was there, but we never saw it. Thick clouds and blowing snow created a dizzying whiteout as we attempted to descend. I’ve never had the topsy-turvy sensation before of not being able to tell where the sky ends and the ground begins. If you’ve never experienced that, it is much more disorienting than you’d imagine. Although Chip’s Run was unfamiliar and obscured, we eventually made it past the masking mist to our cozy room at the bottom.

The next morning, we decided against getting up at 6:30 to be on a lift at opening since only one inch had fallen overnight, and the accumulation was supposed to accelerate as the day progressed. By the way, it did. By late afternoon, 15 more inches of feathery glory had wafted down on us. Is that why we skipped lunch and boarded for five hours straight in 20-something temperatures? Actually, it wasn’t just the stockpiles of powder; it was also the inadequate visibility. Allow me to explain. After a bit of time in Peruvian Gulch, we were curious about the heaps in Mineral Basin. Signs indicated that due to poor visibility, Mineral Basin was limited to experts that day. I’m not sure I would call myself an expert, but I was willing to give Mineral Basin a whirl and see just how far below the expert bar I fell. Our range of vision was indeed narrow during our first Mineral Basin run, so much so that we immediately began debating going back to Peruvian Gulch. However, in the end, the appeal of a new lift overpowered our common sense.

Neither of us had ever been on Baldy Express, a smaller lift most often used to access Alta Ski Area. So, when we noticed it sans line, we agreed to give it a try whether we would be able to discern its terrain or not. While it was challenging to see at the top of the ridge where the lift plopped us, we soon found a path with manageable visibility. It proved to be our favorite run of the day, and the trip… and maybe our whole lives. We didn’t know its name at the time but later learned it was Claim Jumper. The best thing about this corridor? Only a handful of people on the entire mountainside and barely trod powder at least two feet deep. It was almost too much powder. I know, such a thing doesn’t really exist any more than Sasquatch or mermaids, but this came close. No people? Powder so deep it could bury you? Yes! Bury me, and send me to that fuzzy heaven. It was easily one of the best days I’ve ever boarded.

After two days of pushing ourselves through almost every hour of daylight, and reading books, writing, eating takeout, and playing games for the many dark hours of the evening, we headed home while the storm still lingered. And that is how I got a weekend of snowy days and succy nights for Valentine’s Day.