What’s Up Wednesday

Linking up today with Shay for What’s Up Wednesday. I answered a few of the questions:

Eating This Week:

This week my friend is staying with me and it’s so nice to have some girl time. We had her work friend over last Friday and we made guac and a salad bar and watched our favorite episodes of Friends. It was perfect 🙂 We have a bunch of leftover salad to eat this week and a Blue Apron meal of salmon.

Reminiscing About:

So before we moved to Seattle, we went on a big trip to Zion National Park in Utah with my brother, his fiance, and my best friend and her husband. We went sightseeing, hiking, and camped. One of these days I will blog about our amazing road trip.

I’m Loving:

Living in Seattle. I’m so happy here. We have good friends (another couple we are friends with who are from Chicago are moving here next month! That makes 8 of our friends here Chicagoans!) and there are a ton of things to do and see. We have a running bucket list of things to do in Seattle and the surrounding areas. That’s another blog for another day. 🙂

What I’m Dreading:

As glad as I am to be getting my health in order with all my upcoming doctor appointments, it still makes me nervous. I get a pit in my stomach while sitting in the waiting rooms. So much could be going on within my body and it always makes me nervous until I get the all clear from the doctors. I don’t do well with medical stuff.

What I’m Listening to:

I’m currently obsessed with a few country songs this week:

Run Away With You – Big & Rich

Heartbeat – Carrie Underwood

Thunder – Adam Sanders

Break Up in a Small Town- Sam Hunt

What I’m Watching:

I can’t remember if I’ve written about Aziz Ansari’s new show: Master of None. It’s on Netflix. It is hilarious and so well written! It’s set in New York in actual locations and not on a sound stage like a lot of other sitcom shows. It’s also super relate-able with my age group with our friends having babies, being in relationships, divorce, and appreciating our parents.

I’ve told multiple friends about it and they all binged watched it like we did. We watched all 10 episodes in 2 days. It’s gotten rave reviews and everyone is talking about it. It’s one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long, long time. Dave and I can’t wait for season 2. You can thank me later. 😉

What I’m Looking Forward to Next Month:

So much is going on next month and I’m so excited! I love having things to look forward to.

• The first weekend in February our friends Erin and Richard, who live in LA, are coming to visit us! We used to hang out with them all time when we lived in LA and we really miss them. It will be great to catch up and show them around our new state.
• The Super Bowl is always fun to watch. Two years ago we watched the Super Bowl in Venice Beach, and last year we watched it in Orange County with our roomies. And both years I wore my Bears jersey. 🙂 I will always root for the Bears no matter how bad they are. (The last time they won the Super Bowl was before I was born in 1985!)
• My friend Mich is coming to town and I’m really looking forward to catching up with him and meeting his wife and kids. I haven’t seen Mich since our big trip to Togo in May 2014.
• My brother, his fiance, Dave and I are going to visit our dad and stepmom in Georgia! It’s been a long time since we’ve all 6 been together (I think the last time was when we moved to California in October 2013) so I’m really excited to get the band back together. Haha.
• I’m also really excited for Fuller House at the end of the month, and the Oscars. I love seeing what everyone is wearing.

 

 

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Our Road Trip Recap

Here is a quick recap of our road trip with two of our best friends from Chicago. We were all over the map and had the best time.

Our road trip started in Arizona, visiting our old roommate in Tucson on Thursday of last week. Then the next morning we picked up our friends Melissa and Nico at the Phoenix airport. Then we grocery shopped at Trader Joe’s and then hit the road for the Grand Canyon. We camped there overnight.

The next morning, we took off for a tour of Antelope Canyon.

We stopped at Horseshoe Bend in Page, Arizona after lunch.

Then we drove to Zion National Park, and did our usual jumping pose. 😉

We spent 2 days in Zion National Park. We went hiking and camping and my brother and his fiancé joined us too.

It was a dream road trip and I’ll fill you all in with more details asap! Happy weekend everyone!

As always I’m linking up with these lovelies:

Hill Collection and Running 4 Cupcakes

Travel Thursdays: A Week Out West Part 2

In case you missed my post last week on Thursday, I shared pictures from the first part of our week on our week long road trip out West. You can read it here. We drove from LA to Glendale, Arizona to Taos, New Mexico, then to a wedding in Albuquerque. Today I’m going over the second half of our trip:

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Day 4 – We had plans to meet up with some friends for brunch at the Grove, which has a huge menu. It was a great place for brunch and I would recommend this place if you’re in town.

Afterwards we went to BJ’s and hung out with our friends to watch the World Cup (remember this trip was from July last year.) I don’t keep up with soccer on a regular basis but I do enjoy going to a bar and hanging out with friends. It’s fun to have everyone cheering and clapping.

After the game we went back to our hotel and got ready for the wedding of our friends who are currently living in the UK, so it was great to see them. It was an intimate wedding of 100 people and even though it was drizzling for a few seconds it quickly passed and it was a night full of love and laughter.

Drove from Albuquerque to Zion National Park 

Day 5 – Our friends flew in from Chicago to meet us in Albuquerque. We drove with them for 8 hours to Zion National Park in Utah.

So from Albuquerque to Zion National Park, is about an 8 hour drive. We left Albuquerque early in the morning and made to to Zion early evening. 

On the way to Zion we stopped at Horse Shoe Bend in Arizona and it was breathtaking! So gorgeous. I did more of a recap here.

When we arrived at Zion, we got so lucky and got a camping spot in the Watchman campground. It was pretty hot so the people who had originally reserved the spot left early. People book campsites in the summer as early as January, so we really did get lucky to nab a spot.

There is a market right outside the South entrance where we rented our gear. We got shoes with grip, wet socks, and a walking stick. It was $21 all together.

We set up our tents and then headed out to dinner. We ate at the Flying Monkey. It was not my favorite but it did the trick for the night.

Day 6 – We spent the day hiking the Narrows in Zion National Park and I blogged about that trip here.

That night after our awesome hike we ate dinner right outside the park. To be honest I don’t remember the name of the restaurant we went to (it’s been over a year!) But it was good, but nothing super memorable. After dinner we drove home to LA which is a 7 hour drive. We thought about staying the night in Vegas but decided to push through to make it home.

It was such a great trip and we got to see so many cool things, our friends, and I’ll never say no to a road trip 🙂

Hope you’re all having a great Thursday!

Linking up today with :

Travel Thursdays: The Narrows in Zion National Park, Utah

I’m a little late in posting this, but a few weeks back I talked about our trip with our friends Ryan and Casey to Horse Shoe Bend in Page Arizona. This was a pit stop on our road trip from Albuquerque to LA. Next week for Travel Thursday, I’ll fill you in our entire trip and break down the days. It took a little bit of planning between the 4 of us to make the trip happen, but it was totally worth it and I’m so glad we did it!

Fun side note, National Geographic just named this hike one of America’s Best Adventures.

We woke up early at 5:45am (as much as we wish we were, we are not early risers) but we packed up our camping gear and headed to the shuttle. We took the 7:30am shuttle and took it for about 15-20 minutes to the Bottom Up hike, or the Narrows as people call it.

Here we are before we headed into the trail, with our walking sticks in hand.

Once you hop of the shuttle there is a bathroom to the right as well as a water bottle fill up station. Then there is a path you follow that is about a mile long that leads you to the trail head.

Then at the end of the path there is a couple of steps then you cross the river and start hiking! You can go for as long as you want and then can turn around, it is not a loop trail. You can also do the entire hike which is 16 miles and camp overnight but you need a permit to do that.

I was a little nervous going into it because you are walking in the water over rocks and the river pushes you at certain points. But the shoe and sock rental along with the walking sticks made me feel a lot better and safer.

Dave the consummate photographer 🙂

It is a truly beautiful place. The views are stunning and it makes you feel so small and humbled.

As you can see the water levels changed in different parts of the hike. Sometimes it was just by your ankle, other times it went up to my knees and mid-thigh. It also depends on the rain levels for the time of the year.

There was one section of the hike where the boys decided to go chest deep into the water. Boys will be boys 😉

I remember being there and fully appreciating it and taking it all in, but looking at these pictures is really amazing and mind blowing.

We each carried backpacks with snacks and water, nothing too heavy.

Dave had a dry bag to keep his camera safe.

Ryan and Casey using their swords to fight haha!

Here we are at the end of the hike, and you can see how crowded it got and how sunny it was by 1pm.

We hiked 2 and 1/2 hours in then headed back out. So we hiked for a total of 5 hours, from 8am-1pm. It was a little tiring at times, but so gorgeous and definitely worth it.

We loved this hike so much in fact, that we are doing it again this October with my brother and his new finance, and my best friend Melissa and her boyfriend Nico. It’s going to be so nice to revisit this beautiful place before we move up to Seattle this fall. Anyone else planning to be there in October?

It was a gorgeous hike and I highly recommend it to anyone who is thinking about doing it! Let me know if you have any questions about the hike, I’d be happy to answer them!

Linking up today with :

Travel Thursdays: Horse Shoe Bend, Arizona

July of 2014, we had a wedding to attend in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Our good friends Ryan and Casey were planning to visit us in California, so we thought it’d be fun to do a road trip with them and hike the Narrows in Zion National Park.

They flew into Albuquerque and met us. The Sunday after the wedding we took off for Horseshoe Bend in Page, Arizona. I’d see pictures of it on Pinterest and wanted to incorporate it into our road trip. Luckily it was close to Zion.

It was really epic and beautiful in person. It was also super hot that day on our little hike down there from the parking lot.

I mean, how gorgeous is that?!

Ryan safely checking out the ledge. It can be pretty scary and dangerous, especially if you have kids. There’s no gate or fence to keep you from falling, so definitely be careful when you’re here!

Of course we took a jumping photo here 🙂

Next Thursday I’ll share the Zion part of our trip with the amazing Narrows hike.

Today I’m linking up with Stuff & Things with Kadar Hower and Hodges Podges: