Roving Cooks

April 23-24: Las Vegas, NV to Heber City, UT. 416 miles, 6 hours.

April 24-May 1: Heber City, UT

We spent a nice week outside Salt Lake City as we travel north towards Yellowstone. The Mountain Valley RV Resort was fantastic – beautiful views of mountains on most sides, many kids at the playground, sidewalks to scooter around, an empty game room with puzzles and a ping pong table, and a heated pool and hot tub.

We celebrated Madelyn’s 3rd birthday with balloons, donuts, apples as big as her head, a special morning hike with Daddy, and an extended family zoom where she showed off her new Baby Yoda. Our girl has grown so much this last year! She loves her stuffie and human family, the color yellow, and learning the names of songs (her current favorite is “Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry, and she is occasionally found singing “dance until we die” loudly at the playground). She prefers to have her hair “flowing free in the wind”, especially while she wears her “super fast pink running shoes”. She is getting pretty fast now, but luckily for us is usually trying to stick with Grayson instead of choosing an opposite direction. She does not like having to go potty all the time (“I already went today!”) or when people at the store call her cute. Watch out, world; she is a force to be reckoned with.

We crossed the mountain into Salt Lake City a couple times during the week, one day visiting Tracy Aviary, set in a lovely park with a great collection of birds. The peacock was free roaming, the owls were a favorite, and there was great disappointment at the “please don’t feed the birds” signs, as Madelyn had been carrying around popcorn for any potential ducks for a couple days.

Another day we checked out The Leonardo Museum, where we would certainly be members if we lived in the area. Grayson loved the real airplane; the cockpit was original and the back was modified to have a slide exit. Both kids liked the maple leaf helicopter experiment station.

This area also has tons of beautiful hiking. Just past ski season, we saw a number of mountain bikers as well. Our favorite was Bridal Veil Falls trail in Provo, an easy paved hike out to a waterfall and then a more difficult climb up for a different view of the falls. The kids loved climbing on the rocks through the cool water at the bottom of the falls. On the incline, we found snail shells in the dirt and proceeded to seek out the best shells. What did we conclude snails must like? A hill, dirt, shade. What were we looking for in a great snail shell? Ones without snails still inside.