Southern California Vacation 2026 - Days 0, and 1

It's time to begin the slightly daunting task of writing about our trip to Southern California. This was such a fun trip. I'm really looking forward to writing about all of it. But there was so much. So much. It might take me a while to get through the full 10 days of the trip. 

First of all we have to start with where this trip started. There's a few places we could start. 

We could start with Christmas day 2025. After all the gifts were opened, and the presents examined, and a couple naps were had, I suddenly felt like planning our trip to California. I didn't have to worry about that big pesky holiday taking up place in my brain. I could plan fun things like camping on a beach or visiting the Griffith Observatory. 

So I spent the evening of December 25, 2025 booking hotels for our trip. It was so fun to plan out where we could stay each night and what days we could do each thing. I booked everything on Hotels.com so I didn't have to pay in advance. Later, I would switch out three of the hotel nights for three nights in a vrbo house. (You have to pay in advance for those so I had to make sure I'd saved up the money for that.) And a week before our trip I realized that one of the hotel locations should be changed. But the basic structure of the trip was in place on December 25th. 

But that's not really the beginning of this trip. This trip was following in the footsteps of the vacation Brandon and I went on for our second wedding anniversary 17 years ago. In fact, three planned stops on this trip were the exact same things we did on our anniversary trip; the Griffith Observatory, the LaBrea Tar Pits, and camping at San Elijo Beach. We wanted to bring the kids to these places that we'd loved. 

But even 2009 is not the beginning of this trip. No, the true beginning of this trip was probably the summer of 2002. That's when my family was invited to go to California with our good friends the Whiting family. They had family in California that they visited every year but they didn't have a super reliable vehicle at the time. We had a huge 15 passenger van. So they invited us along so that they could use the van. 

On that trip we went to Magic Mountain and visited the beach. We had a blast. I'd already been to California for a trip to Disney with my high school's music program. But this trip was the one where I felt like I visited California and not just Disney. It was that trip that I wanted to rediscover with Brandon in 2009. And that 2009 trip was the one that I wanted to revisit with the kids in 2026. 

So there's the back story. Let's catch up a bit in time to Friday March 20th. This was "Day Zero" for our vacation. We didn't leave for our vacation until Brandon got home from work around 4:00. I also went to work for a few hours. When I was home the kids and I got last minute things ready.

We'd done most of the packing on Thursday, but we got all the last things in the car. Here's the packing job. The lower half of the back was full of our camping things that we wouldn't need for days. 

 

We were all so excited to leave when Brandon came home. We hopped in the van and started driving to Nevada. 

Here are three very important things to bring up. 

1. Our van. This trip is one reason I wanted to buy my brothers van. There was no way the grey van with nearly 300,000 miles was making it to California. On our previous two long road trips (to Texas for the eclipse in 2024 and Northern Idaho in 2025) we rented a van. But in this case it was better to just buy my brothers van rather than rent another van. 

2. The date we left. Anastasia the musical would still run through Sunday March 22. We left on Friday March 20th. That meant we missed the last three performances of Anastasia. This was intentional. When I auditioned for Anastasia I told myself. "If I get into the musical - great! If I don't, then we get to have a longer spring break." And that's exactly what I did. Thanks to not being in Anastasia our spring break was able to cover 2 weekends, not just one. 

3. The date we left - part two. We actually were leaving about 12:00 hours ahead of schedule. Originally Brandon was supposed to be in Ohio for a training all week. So we weren't going to leave until Saturday morning. That training was cancelled and I immediately booked a place to stay for Friday night. (Because remember not being in Anastasia = as long a spring break as possible.) So we left as soon as we could on Friday rather than Saturday morning. 

We were so eager to get this thing started that we just brought dinner with us. We drove about 50 minutes south and crossed the boarder into Nevada. Then we found a park in Jackpot, Nevada and had sandwiches for dinner.

The kids had fun running around on the little playground. 

Here they are goofing off on this volcano thing. 

We all got up there and took a group picture. 

Then we kept driving. We were going down Highway 93 to Ely. We've done this drive before. This is the way we drove to Las Vegas 4 years ago. We had another quick stop at a little interpretive spot for the Pony Express. (Mostly we were there for the bathroom.) 

We made it to Ely around 9:00. (Heads up, time gets really fuzzy on this trip. We'd crossed the border and so were in the Pacific Time Zone, so I'm not sure if that's 9:00 Mountain or Pacific.)

We were staying in a Motel 6 because this part of the trip was booked so late. Plus I'd liked the two that we'd stayed in on our trip to Texas two years ago. We were checked in with a virtual agent. I'm not sure if she was real or AI, but she was on a screen. We just put our ID's on a scanner and I paid with my card. The machine spit out our room keys. It was cool, but also kind of annoying. I would have liked to talk with a person really there. 

Brandon was in one room with Charlotte and Lydia. I was in another with Derrick and Veronica. The rooms were small, but perfect for one night. And the bed spreads were the same as the Motel 6 in Carlsbad New Mexico. I'd really liked that one so seeing those bedspreads made me happy. 

The kids watched the Disney Channel for a while. I read my book. (Dark Summit. Yes, I was on another Everest kick.) Then we went to sleep. 

Veronica had complained a little about sharing a bed with me. But she didn't seem to mind when she was asleep. She cuddled right up to me most of the night.  

Real Day 1 (Saturday March 21)

We had breakfast in our hotel room, which was a little tricky because I'd planned on their being a microwave and so I'd brought Jimmy Dean Breakfast sandwiches. But there wasn't a microwave. So those stayed in the cooler. Fortunately, we had tons of food with us so we moved onto the other options. we had orange flavored yogurt, fruit, gogurt, and muffins. There was also orange juice. 

Then we took all our stuff down to the car and stuffed everyone back in. Because we had so much food it didn't all fit in the back. We had the cooler and a bag of food in the space between Charlotte and Lydia's seats. 

We kept driving on Highway 93. It went west for a little while and then continued going south. We were heading to Cathedral Gorge which was less than 2 hours away from Ely. Or original plan had been to drive this all in one day on Saturday morning. But since we'd left Twin Falls on Friday night we didn't have to drive as far. 

We arrived at Cathedral Gorge and stopped at the overlook parking area.

Here's the view from the top. 

Here's Charlotte. She and Lydia and Brandon had come here on their road trip to get driving hours during Christmas break. They'd camped a few miles away and woke up with a snowy tent. They'd come to this overlook and hung their stuff out to dry. 

We had lunch under a little shaded pavilion. 

Here are the kids eating.

We'd packed our big water cooler because we wanted to make sure we had a lot of water with us in Nevada. Each of the kids got a water backpack for Christmas. We were using these as their water bottles on this trip. So they'd already drank a lot of water on the drive. We got the water cooler out and the kids refilled their bags. We also loaded them up with some snacks. 

And then we started down into the canyon. 

I knew these stairs would be brutal on the way back up. But it was such a great view on the way down. 

Here I am. 

And here is the scenery. 

This area was so cool to walk through. 

There were more stairs before we made it to the bottom. 

When we did get down to the bottom we walked along the banks of a seasonal river. 

After walking through the canyon we came out to an open area. This was the moon caves area. We'd been here before 4 years ago. We'd arrived just as the sun was setting so we hadn't had much time to explore. This time we had a lot longer. 

We went into some of the little slot canyons. 

There were some really cool areas. 

Brandon set up his phone so we could take a group picture. 

Here's the result. This was so fun!

Here's a fun one of Charlotte going through a tight spot. 

And Veronica being extra. 

We got out of the canyon and went to a water tower that I think was built by the CCC. 

The day wasn't too hot, but we were doing all this in the afternoon. I could feel that I had about 45 more minutes left in my ability to stay in the sun. So I started hiking back. Brandon and the kids explored a few more things. 

Here's some of the view of the area from further away

This is what the trail looked like a lot of the time. 

Derrick and Veronica caught up to me and we went through the canyon together and then started up the stairs. 

Veronica said this little bump looked like a finger pointing. 

We made it up the stairs - which were pretty brutal. At the top was a shaded structure (also build by the CCC.) We sat there. I went to where we parked the car and got the gatorade. That was good to drink after all the hiking in the sun. Brandon arrived with the twins. He had the audacity to run up the stairs. I was like, "What?"  Then he told me that he's been taking the stairs at work every chance he gets. 

We all chilled out in the shade for a while. 

Here are Brandon and Charlotte. They got bored after a while and went on a hike around the mesa. 

Here are me and Veronica. 

This is the view back down. 

Brandon and Charlotte came back and it was time to continue on our journey. We'd like to come back here and do some of the longer trails some day - just not in the afternoon heat. 

We turned west and drove into Utah. We were heading into St George and I realized that our route would take us right by the Mountain Meadows Massacre sight. A year or two ago I read both Massacre at Mountain Meadows and it's sequel Vengeance is Mine. Both books are super well written, but the subject matter is so terrible I can't exactly recommend them. The first one is especially heartbreaking because it ends with the massacre. The second one is slightly better because some justice is found. I especially liked the efforts taken to return the 17 surviving children to their families. 

Anyway, I hadn't planned to stop here, but I felt like we should. I assumed that the site was right by the highway - and some of the monuments were - but the main burial site and monument was down a dirt road about a mile off the highway. 

The burial site was marked with a US flag and a Arkansas flag. 

Here's the monument. 

The perimeter was lined with stone markers naming the dead. I stopped reading them after I saw the family with twin girls. It just gets too raw knowing their story. 

Only Brandon and I went to the monument. The kids stayed in the car. 

We kept going and were soon driving by Snow Canyon state park. I've heard of this place, but never seen it. I kind of wish we'd planned a stop here. But remember, this was supposed to be the first day of our trip. I'd imagined us driving most of the day to Cathedral Gorge, spending a few hours there, and then driving into St George in the dark. I wasn't expecting to make it to the St George area this early. 

We made it to St George. The kids were not prepared for St George. Earlier in the day I'd let it slip that they would see palm tress in St Geoge, but I think they were still surprised by how many there were. They had no idea that there would be red rock everywhere. Lydia was like, "I MUST climb on that!"

We checked into our motel. It was an adorable place called the Chalet Motel. Earlier in the day someone had texted me for the details of our car's make and model. Then they'd told me the code for a lock box with our keys. When we arrived all we had to do was type in the code and get our keys. We never talked to anyone in the office. 

We were all in one room with three beds. This was a great idea for my original plan of arriving late. But it felt rather small for spending several hours there. 

This place had a microwave so we had a quick dinner of sorts with the egg sandwiches we didn't eat that morning. Brandon did some quick googling of somewhere we could see and climb on the red rock. He found Pioneer Park. 

We drove there and it did not disappoint. 

The kids were on the rock almost immediately. 

I had a minor headache from being out in the sun too long earlier so I didn't climb around. I found a shady spot and hung out. Veronica joined me after a little while. Here's one of her dramatic poses. 

There was a little arch a ways away. Brandon took the other three kids over there. 

When they got back down from there we went into a little slot canyon. It was crowded in there so we didn't stay long. 

Then we walked over to a botanical garden area. I LOVED this area. 

I recognized so many of the plants from the Orton Botanical Garden in Twin Falls. But they were living a very different life than what's in Twin. For example these are barrel cacti. I was surprised by how many there were. In Twin Falls we have one. And it needs to spend the winter in a make shift greenhouse in order to survive the winter. 

And these are desert willows. In Twin they look dead until May. But here they were all leafing out in March. 

When Lindsey and I hiked in Zion she stopped and admired every cactus flower. So I took this picture because I was thinking of her. 

There is a hawk moth in this picture. 

I really liked these purple flowers. It's a texas mountain laurel. I want to see if they will grown in twin. 

This garden had lots of cool paths and bridges and things. 

The evening was starting to get dark and we'd done enough walking that we knew everyone would settle down in the hotel. So we went back to the hotel. The kids started taking turns with the shower. Brandon and I went to a nearby Papa Murphies (or maybe Papa Johns - I get them confused. It was the one that cooks the pizza.) And ordered 1 pepperoni and one cheese pizza. We brought them back to the hotel and that was second dinner. 

Then everyone got settled in bed. Charlotte and Lydia shared a bed, Derrick and Brandon shared a bed, and me and Veronica shared a bed. These beds were slightly larger so Veronica wasn't snuggled up to me all night. 

And that was the beginning of our vacation to Southern California. 

Stay tuned for Day 2 when we get to California.