True love is when I, the health-conscious hiker, told him to
pull over for an impromptu slice of Ho-Made pie, and when he, the glutinous
acrophobe with one bad knee, agreed to scale Angel’s Landing.
True love is when he planned a sunrise photo
expedition to Horseshoe Bend, and when I researched the best (and possibly
only) location for cold brew in Southwest Utah.
He avoids waking up early with me at all costs, I roll my eyes at his
caffeine dependency.
True love is when
he handed over the steering wheel of his beloved car, knowing full well of all
the risks of having an Asian girl in the pilot seat on twisting canyon roads
with no passing lanes.
True love is when
I stayed under 80 mph.
It is not when he deliberately snapped Go-Pro pictures of me
while I was attempting to urinate while standing waist-deep in the rushing
Virgin River, and not when I wasted an inexplicable amount of time shopping for
deerskin moccasins at the trading post.
But when I made a silly face at the camera, and when he jumped in and
scooped up a pair of clearance rack moose-skin moccasins in my size that I
hadn’t seen—that’s love.
Someone once told me that a good way to tell if a couple is
going to last is by whether or not they can survive a road trip together. The metaphor, though somewhat cheesy, makes a
lot of sense. It’s not really about
whether we could stand each other’s company in the car for all of those hours,
but if we could agree on decisions on the fly and simply be flexible with
whatever we ended up doing. All of our
energy was going into wedding planning, which left very little set in stone for
this post-wedding road trip. We had
barely reserved one of our motels and did not have anything else booked for the
other three nights that we would be on the road, and we had no idea how many
days we wanted to spend in each stop. We
pretty much threw every piece of hiking apparel we owned into our suitcases,
grabbed our camelbacks and cameras, and took off, leaving heaps of
wedding-related odds and ends all over the apartment. Were we crazy? This was a situation rife with potential
disagreements. But it turns out that
going headstrong into something so spontaneous was surprisingly easy and such a
refreshing experience after a year and a half of intensive wedding planning. Our pictures say it all – we had a super good
time. And through all the days together
in the middle of nowhere, we each made our sacrifices and showed each other a
lot of true love.
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| Taking the tram into Zion - shot with our Go-Pro |
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| Bye-bye Zion |
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| Checkerboard Mesa - on our way out of Zion National Park |
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| Wes and his favorites at Thunderbird Restaurant - home of the Ho'Made Pies |
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| Thunderbird Restaurant - Mt. Carmel, UT |
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| Woke up to this. Panguitch, UT |
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His usual country-fried steak, her usual pancake stack with REAL DINER BUTTER!
Kenny Rays Diner - Panguitch, UT |
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| Bryce Canyon |
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| Ended up taking out the telephoto lens to get better photos of the hoodoos |
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| Navajo Loop trail - Bryce Canyon National Park |
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| Him getting this next shot: |
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| Me getting this next shot: |
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| The rock pieces actually wiggle around quite freely... |
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| Backerei Forscher (German bakery in the middle of nowhere) - Orderville, UT |
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| Very scared of this place - Kanab, UT |
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| Somehow found some upscale-ish food in Kanab, UT |
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| It's 4 in the morning and we are hiking to Horseshoe Bend! |
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| Met another photo geek/enthusiast from Seattle |
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| Just a Go-Pro photo - but dang... watching the colors fill in was enchanting. |
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| Horseshoe Bend, AZ |
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| Navajo breakfast at Cameron Trading Post - Cameron, AZ |
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| Wish that this wasn't a phone picture. Navajo flatbread in all of its freshly fried glory! Also great with honey. |
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| Navajo taco, Navajo stew, and a blue corn pancake. |
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| Everyone who worked here was a Navajo native. |
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| He gets his Ho, I get my Kocoum. |
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| Visibility was...nonexistent. |
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| The clouds beginning to part over the Grand Canyon |
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| Squirrel |
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| Caught the sunset, it was magnificent. |
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| Late-night vanilla custard at Freddy's - Flagstaff, AZ |
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| Clear Arizona skies, last day on the road. |
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| Lilo's Westside Cafe - Seligman, AZ |
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| Jager schnitzel - breaded pork loin with mushroom gravy. "Germany's take on country fried steak!" -Wes |
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| Somewhere along Route 66 - Seligman, AZ |
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| Somehow found Dole Whip, and somehow my wedding manicure is still intact - Happiest Chevron on Earth, AZ |
And that's the end of our mini-moon!
-Marilyn
LOVE the combination of scenery pictures and food pictures.
ReplyDeletePlease please also post recipes (even if they're guesstimate measures) when you post home-cooked food if possible ... or I will be hunting you down for them cause they're always looking delicious!
Beautiful photos!!!!
ReplyDelete