Tag Archives: vacation

Trip to the Pacific Northwest

August 19, 2014TravelsButchart gardens, ferry boat, flower gardens, flowers, gardens, lavender farms, pacific northwest trip, Port Angeles, Sequim, ships, travel, vacation, Vancouver Island, Victoria, wildlife farmRita

My husband and I just got back from a trip last week to the Pacific Northwest. We drove a total of 2,915 miles! It was insane! Our plans were to drive to Port Angeles in Washington and then take the ferry over to Vancouver Island. We were then going to drive the 101 coastal highway down to San Francisco and cut across California and come home to Utah. After driving the 101 for a couple of days, we totally changed our plans because that road is so curvy and slow and we could not even see the ocean much of the time because of all of the trees, so we changed plans and cut back to the interstate to come home! But, the drive up to Port Angeles was beautiful and so was Vancouver Island, so it was worth all the driving!

As I mentioned yesterday, I got a new camera before we left on our trip and I took over 500 pictures and videos! It was so fun to learn to use my new camera with all of the beautiful places we visited. I apologize in advance for all of the pictures, but I did put a lot of them into collages, so you can see several pictures all at once! Continue reading →

Sunny Arizona

March 26, 2013Christmas, Family, Quilts, Scrapbooking, Sewing, Shopping, TraditionsArizona quilt shops, Arizona vacation, Christmas, crafts, quilt shop hop, sewing, shopping, shopping finds, spring training baseball, traditions, trip, vacationRita

My husband and I just got back from our annual trip to Sunny Arizona! We go every year for Spring Training Baseball, well at least that is what we say we go for, but we pack a whole lot more into this trip than just baseball! My number one favorite reason for going this time of year is for the beautiful sunny skies! It is always so warm and wonderful every year when we go and I love just soaking in all of that gorgeous sunshine. It does make it a little difficult to come home when everyone back home (Utah) says that it is snowing again, but after a glorious 10 days we did decide to come back! :)

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A Grand Getaway!

December 27, 2011Christmas, FamilyChristmas lights, Grand America, Temple Square, Trax, vacationRita

A couple of days ago my husband and I decided to do something different for Christmas Eve, Eve. Because it is our off year with all the married kids and we had already celebrated Christmas (and we found a great deal) we went to the Grand America in Salt Lake City! It is beautiful and we certainly felt pampered! Let me give you a tour of our rooms! Here is a picture of the sitting room.

The rooms were all so lovely and warm and inviting.The bathroom, with me taking a picture in the mirror!And the beautiful, peaceful, relaxing bedroom! We were on the 17th floor, and this was our view out of the sitting room windows. It was really beautiful at night with all the lights everywhere!Trax went right by the hotel. My husband has never ridden on it, so I made him take a ride and we went to Temple Square to see the lights.On the historic Temple Square, they have this beautiful nativity with the narration of the first Christmas story.These are the majestic spires of the Salt Lake Temple.We went into the visitor center for a little while to look at the displays and to try to warm up a little bit! It was quite a bitter cold night! When we came out of the visitor center, all the lights had come on and they were so beautiful! I love Christmas lights! There are thousands of lights on every tree!

We actually ran into some old friends and their children, that used to live in our neighborhood, another guy that went to school with my husband, (and they have not seen each other in over 40 years and still recognized each other!) and another guy from our home town that we knew. It is such a small world, and it was fun to visit, if only for a few minutes!

(Sorry about this blurry picture, I did not have my tripod and my camera was having a difficult time with all the different light sources, but you can still get the idea of how many lights were on each tree!)

We had a GRAND getaway and enjoyed the sights of the city! We rode Trax back to the Grand America and enjoyed a wonderful dinner at the restaurant there.

Sometimes the simplest things bring the GRANDest memories!