This summer we made the most of the last month of having a national parks pass. We started by visiting the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. I went to the North Rim once as a teenager and our family has been to the South Rim multiple times but this was a first for our family to visit the North Rim. The North Rim is in a very pretty wooded area but the view of the South Rim was a little lackluster due to off and on rain. We did luck out however that even though it was raining for our drive in, it did stop raining long enough for us to put up our tent.
The next day we drove up through Zion National Park. John and I hiked the narrows when we were in college and we fell in love with it. However we only had a few hours so we didn't quite get to the narrows. John's great grandfather was the engineer that designed the tunnel that goes through Zions. It was neat to drive though and show the kids the tunnel and talk about their great, great grandfather.
Then after a very quick trip to visit family we headed up to Yellowstone. We spent 5 days there and really loved it. With so much to see we were gone all day sometimes not getting back to our campsite until 9 or 10 at night. While we got to see all the major sights next time we will skip a lot of it and spend more time hiking.
After Yellowstone we drove through Teton National Park, had another quick visit with family and then headed down to Lake Powell. It was a short visit but we had a blast with family and playing in the water. Lake Powell is such a beautiful place we will definitely want to visit again.
