2014 Roadtrip Day 4 / Dec 28: Lehi - Salt Lake City - Evanston

It felt really good to be back in civilization after only one freezing night out in the "wild". After checking into the motel, we showered and made some dinner. I made brown rice and toss a can of chili which hit the spot on cold nights. After dinner, we took the doggies out for walk and went to replenish some supplies at nearby Walmart. We saw one guy in shorts walking into Walmart, wow in that temperature, that was a first for us.

We were also able to do one load of laundry and had a good night sleeping in warm comfy bed. In the morning, we walked the doggies around the motel and it was funny to see their reaction toward snow.

As usual, they're excited to go out for walks, but after a couple seconds in snow, they started to lose the excitement, especially Matthew he started crying and can't decide which paw should he take off from the snow! 

After packing all our stuff back into the car, we drove around and spotted photo ops, these are my favorites:

After that we headed north toward Salt Lake City which is only half hour drive. It began to snow slightly when we were on the freeway driving toward SLC. The road looked like they were just recently ploughed making it safe to drive at regular freeway speed. The falling snows were mesmerizing as you drive into them, hypnotizing you of its gracefulness. It continues to fall harder reducing visibility forcing me to slow down but we were approaching the Mormon HQ so no hurry there.

We found a parking spot right outside the compound. It was so cool to walk around while snowing, even managed to catch one snow falling in action. 

They also have nativity staged in the compound, it looked pretty awesome in the snow. 

It started to get a little wet so we went inside one of the many buildings to warm up and also restroom. Chit chatted with one of the volunteers and found out they come from all over the world, saw one from the Philippines. 

The lot the church and other buildings sit on are quite big. I can only imagine how much money they're making to maintain all this.

After we were warmed up, we walked around the compound to try to gauge the size of the lot. 

Simply put - it's huge!

All that walking made us hungry, we yelped around to see what's good, first option what Vietnamese based on reviews, even drove to the restaurant only to find out they ran out of food and couldn't accept more customer. Bummer!

Yelped again and this time we settled for Thai. Not too far but the restaurant was empty. By this time we were famished and just decided to try anyway. 

We ordered green curry, cashew chicken and pad Thai. Oh ya we also got a yelp deal for half off on the pad Thai. Food was not bad, ta pao whatever we couldn't finish and continued on to Evanston, Wyoming. Just can't beat these kinda views. 

2014 Roadtrip Day 3 / Dec 27: Zion National Park - Provo - Lehi

The This was possibly one of the longest nights of our lives according to Tal and I have to admit he is right. Did not expect the temperature to drop so drastically, it was -9F at its lowest. Our sleeping bags was not built for this kind of weather - if I remember correctly, it was only good up to around 10F.

Our tent was more like a summer tent with vents so that was not good for us. The only separation between us and the ground was just the tarp and I bought a twin size comforter but did not help much. Milo actually went inside Tal's sleeping bag and slept with him by his feet. Since there's extra space where the feet is, Tal said that's why it's always cold. My feet was frozen most of the night and it was hard to get them warm. I tried to get Matthew to sleep with me but he was fussy so he goes and sleep by himself on the bed.The heater was literally life saver as we took turn to warm up our feet and rotate between the doggies, thank goodness Tal brought it!

Poor Tal, he had worse time than me, he couldn't get comfortable at all and he even wrapped his face with one of his thermals to keep himself warm. He didn't get as much sleep as I did. This was also the first time I felt claustrophobic because of the sleeping bag. We had the mummy ones and I would zip it all the way to my head and there were several times that I woke up gasping for air as if I couldn't breathe - it's also because my hands were on the inside and I wasn't able to quickly open up the bag. It was not a good feeling at all.

In the middle of the night, I needed to pee and there was no way I was going to walk all the way to the restroom, I didn't think I'd hold it for that long. It was cold and I was desperate so I just went behind the tree. I only wore my flip flop with socks of course and to my amazement, the stars were so bright and the skies looked like they were lit by them - it was so beautiful! I only managed to admire this during the 4-5 secs when I ran out to pee. After that it was just too cold so I went back inside the tent to warm up.

Before the sun came out, I started making soup for breakfast. Thank goodness for the rice cooker - I was able to boil the water and pour in sachet of instant soup that we got from Israel. This really warmed us up. I also managed to make fried rice - brought some eggs and leftover rice with us, this was heavenly on a freezing day like this.

After breakfast, we couldn't sleep anymore and went outside then realized the sun has already came out. To my astonishment, my car was frozen too! Didn't think that it would happen to it:

It was good to get out of the tent and stretch. The doggies went to do their business and we thought we should start packing our stuff and be on our way. We didn't even bother to go deeper inside the park, just did our business and off we go. My car happily started with no glitches but I couldn't spray the windshield because the fluids were frozen! So I just used a piece of cloth to scrape the ice off, it wasn't that hard.

We see small chunks of snow here and there but as we move north toward I-15 the landscape changed drastically to this! It was just beautiful to see everything blanketed in white powdery flakes.

Only an hour into our drive we're back to civilization and the first thing we saw that prompted us to exit the freeway was Panda Express at Cedar City! Haha good ol chinese food does the trick to get us back on track. We got our food from the drive thru and ate in the parking lot. It was freezing but I was really excited to see snow, I just went outside to grab some water from the trunk and almost slipped from the ice.

We continued on to Lehi carefully with icy and snowy road condition, total drive was around 3 hours from CC. Gotta say the ploughers did a great job on clearing out the snow to make our drives safer. 

2014 Roadtrip Day 2 / Dec 26: St. George - Zion National Park

We didn't do too much after checking into the motel as we wanted to get a good night's rest before driving to Zion National Park which is only about an hour's drive away. We googled and found out there was a Walmart closeby so we went to get a couple items such as lettuce and thermal for Tal. We even stopped at the local Autozone to get chains in case we need it which cost over $50 for my type of tires.

Toward the park, there is a little town filled with hotels and motels on both sides of the road. About half mile before reaching the park's entrance, there were two lines of cars trying to get in. Entrance fee was $25/vehicle, RV is more. After paying the fee, we asked for direction to the campsite and there was another booth but unattended, we drove up to it and found that we just need to slip in our payment for the night which was around $12 with electricity access - a steal compared to the motel 6 we stayed in.

We drove around, there were a few campsites and found a slot, which was far too big for us, but we parked our car in it and start setting camp. I was very excited since this is the first time camping since the days of girl scout which was over 20 years ago! OMG, feel so old.

The doggies too were happy to get out of the car and started to roam around. I went to the nearby restroom and not happy to find out that they did not unlock it. That was another reason why we chose the spot because of its proximity. I had to walk all the way across to the other restroom to relieve myself which was a pain because I know I'd never be able to do that in the middle of the night.

Tal didn't take long to get the tarp laid out and the tent set up, right next to the outlet, of course. We unloaded all other stuff that we brought with us - sleeping bags, doggie's bed, rice cooker, space heater, and two bags of food. I teased Tal for bringing the heater as we were supposed to be camping and that should be done without these luxury.

It took a couple hours for us to settle in and rested a little more. We started to walked around the camp area and found a river, it was cold as you can see how much we're bundled up in the photos. There wasn't much to do at the campsite so we were looking at how everyone set up their area. Since it was winter, it got dark early so that doesn't leave too many things for us to do and we went back to our home that day.

The colors were amazing with the sun setting.

2014 Roadtrip Day 1 / Dec 25: Las Vegas - St. George

We woke up late since we got in late, showered, then gathered our stuff and check out. Took the doggies for their walk around the motel. Didn't realize we were not too far from the strip since we could see the Pyramid from where we stayed.

Called Koral - Tal's nephew who now lives in Vegas to see if he wanted to meet us for lunch before we head out to St. George. He asked to meet him in Chinatown, not too far from the strip because he was craving for pho.

The entire shopping strip where the restaurant is packed due to the holiday. Wait to get seated was 30-45mins, so we just hang outside by the patio heater since it was windy and chilly. The doggies had to stay in the car.

Finally when our number was up, we ordered pho and a dry noodle dish for Tal. It felt so good eating hot and brothy noodles on a chilly day.

After late lunch, Koral couldn't get someone to pick him up from the restaurant so we told him that we'd drop him off at one of the hotels and his friends can pick him up from there.

Figured it'd be easier for him to take the wheel since the backseat was packed with more of our stuff, doggies and their bed. But the doggies decided to climb to the front to sit with the boys.

It was close to 5 when we left Vegas, good thing St. George is only a little less than 2hrs away.