Tenth Anniversary Trip

Since we have an anniversary in November we thought we'd go on a road trip to some of our favorite places to celebrate. November is on the cold side for weather so we took our trip at the beginning of October. We started with driving to Capitol Reef National Park. We took pictures along the hike...

and ended this hike at Hickman's Bridge.  It was like an optical illusion because at first I didn't notice the bridge.  It just blended so nicely with the background.  Then we hiked partway back and proceeded hiking up to the rim.  This was a spectacular lookout!  We were 1000 feet over the valley below...

...and I decided this was a nice place for a rest.

After Capitol Reef we went on to drive the scenic highway 12 toward Bryce Canyon.





It was just beautiful with the fall colors and vistas. It took us most of the day to get to Bryce Canyon because we had to keep stopping and looking around.

We enjoyed a hike down into Bryce canyon among the hoodoos...

 We stopped along the way and found a log upon which to perch for eating lunch and more importantly it had a nice view...
 



We got up close to many great formations.

Queen on her throne

 

We made our way to the top and then enjoyed going to each of the lookouts.

After hiking for a few days we thought it would be nice to end the trip with relaxing in the city.  We headed back home and took up lodging in Salt Lake City so that we could enjoy some of the sites downtown.

We walked around temple square.  Of course since I like flowers so much we lingered around the gardens a bit.




We went over to the City Creek Center to explore it a little more.  We also went there on the 4th of July and realized how big it is and decided we'd have to take more time to see it all.  The water features were interesting.  We went into Tiffany's and decided it was out of our price range :-)

We had a very nice view from the 22nd floor of our hotel of the city county building and the Wasatch Front.  
I won't forget how truly filling afternoon tea was and what fun we had with mom and dad at Sunday brunch.  It was a nice way to get away from everyday life while enjoy beautiful places and excellent food.  Somehow it always works out that leaving home makes me excited to be back!