Rathbuns Go west

A long time has passed since our family took this trip.  I keep this blog online, however, because people regularly ask me about our trip out west. They are interested in taking a trip like this with their family or friends and they want advice for what to see and what to miss.  So I'll keep this blog online.  I hope it's helpful.  Even if no one else looks at it, it gives me a chance to stroll down memory lane now and then.  :)  Here's to discovering God's beautiful world with family and friends!

Labels: Bryce Canyon, Cross Country Family Trip, Grand Canyon, Half Dome, National Parks, Old Faithful, Redwood National Forest, Seattle, Touring the United States, United States sight seeing, Yellowstone, Yosemite

This is the official wrap up of Rathbuns Go West. Thanks for reading our blog and sharing our trip out west with us. If you have any questions or want our opinion about planning your own trip out west, feel free to send me an email.

For our last post, we decided it would be fun to list the top five spots of each person in our family for the entire trip. Everyone complained a little bit that they could not possibly narrow it down to five places, but we did it anyway. Please note that the top five are not in any special order. They are simply the top five of that person. You'll notice a lot of similarities on the lists

BROOKE
1. Focus on the Family - Whit's End
2. Yellowstone National Park
3. The Space Needle in Seattle
4. Warner Brothers Studio Tour
5. Laguna Beach, California










BRYAN
1. Laguna Beach, California
2. Focus on the Family - Whit's End
3. Yellowstone National Park
4. Grand Canyon / Bryce Canyon
5. Seattle Mariners Baseball Game - Safeco Field








Brandon
1. Yellowstone National Park
2. Seattle Mariners Baseball Game - Safeco Field
3. Focus on the Family- Whit's End
4. Bryce Canyon
5. San Francisco - Cable Car, Fireworks at Fisherman's Wharf







Sandra
1. Yellowstone National Park
2. Bryce Canyon
3. Warner Brothers Studio Tour
4. Bainbridge Island - Seattle
5. Laguna Beach, California








Alan
1. Yellowstone National Park
2. Yosemite National Park
3. Laguna Beach, California
4. Seattle
5. Bryce Canyon

Here's a view from Pikes Peak looking down on Colorado Springs. We were planning on taking the railway cog up Pikes Peak, but ended up driving up the Pikes Peak Highway. I'm glad we made that decision. Some people had told us it was a nerve-wracking drive, but compared to our road to Yosemite on California route 120 and the road through the Grand Staircase of Escalante in southern Utah, the Pike's Peak climb was a piece of cake. We had two highlights from Pike's peak, our first opportunity to see Bighorn Sheep and the experience of viewing a lightning storm approach and overtake us at 14,110 feet. The darkness on the right of the picture below is not a bad camera shot, it's the storm approaching. I only wish I could have gotten a picture of the lightning.

On our second day in Colorado Springs we visited Focus on the Family. If you know our kids, you know they have a habit of listening to "Adventures in Odyssey" every night when they go to bed. "Adventures in Odyssey" is an audio series produced by Focus on the Family that teaches great spiritual principles. At their massive office in Colorado Springs, they have a huge play area built around the "Odyssey" stories. Our kids loved it! They played and played and Bryan and Brandon had an opportunity to make their own Odyssey show with their two cousins Laura and Stephanie. Here are some pictures from our time at "Whit's End", named for the ice cream shop in the Odyssey series.
For those of you who attended First Alliance with us in Harrisburg, you might like to know that we visited Jerry and Melva Dupree and their family at the end of the day. They moved to Colorado Springs in 2000. It was great to catch up with them. We also made a quick trip to the C&MA national office. That trip must have inspired Bryan. Notice he is in deep prayer in the picture:)!

Our next destination was Breckinridge, CO for a couple of days of R & R. We purposely planned 2 days there in case we were worn out from all our travels. On the way, we travelled through Capitol Reef National Park, a park I had not heard anyone talk about before our trip. We also stopped at Wilkerson Pass, a pass between the eastern and western Rocky Mountains. Breckinridge is a beautiful town at 9600 feet, filled with small shops and, of course, tons of skiing. They have a ski lift that goes to a peak over 13,000 feet. There is also a river walk through the middle of town which is relaxing stroll. Below are pictures from Capitol Reef, Wilkerson Pass and a couple pics from Breckinridge. By the way, in Breckinridge I enjoyed ice cream at Greta's on Main Street that has become one of my favorites, Coconut Crunch made by Boulder Ice Cream. Wow!

On Monday, we travelled back into Southern Utah to Bryce Canyon. Truth be told, we enjoyed Bryce even more than the Grand Canyon. It's not because Bryce is a greater natural wonder. The sheer size and depth of the Grand Canyon is amazing, but Bryce is brilliant in its color and you get can right up close to its features. I highly recommend a visit to Bryce. I would love to hike in the Grand Canyon someday and see it from the bottom up, but for a short visit, Bryce is a super experience. By the way, the weird looking formations like the one below are called hoodoos.

We were not near a church to attend worship but the Grand Canyon inspired us with God's creative power on Sunday. The most visited side of the Grand Canyon is the South Rim, but we decided to visit the North Rim, which is 2000 feet higher than the South Rim and has an elevation of 8800 feet. We visited Port Imperial and Bright Angel Point. Here are the views we enjoyed.














A couple of weeks ago you may have heard about the fires close to the North Rim of the grand Canyon. The fires were actually still smoldering a little when we arrived but, thankfully, we were able to travel the road that leads to the North Rim through the 60,000 acres that were burned. The last picture is a picture of our kids and their cousins inside a fort they made at our cabin at the end of the day.

We had a fun time Zippin' through Zion National Park today. We decided to park at the visitor center and use the parks free shuttle service to get around. Here are some fun pictures from the day. First picture, our kids underneath Weeping Rock.

Next... Bryan and his cousin Jo playing in the North Fork of the Virgin River which runs through the park. The picture after that is the same river looking down through the Park.


Zion National Park contains lots of formations with Biblical names. Below are two of them, "The "Great White Throne" and then the three rock mountains called "The Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob". Interestingly, the biblical names do not come from Christians, but from Mormons, who settled the large majority of Utah. The faded mountain behind Isaac and Jacob is called Moroni, named after the angel whom the Mormons believe gave the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith. The first place Mormons get off track is holding the Book or Mormon above the Bible. From there, they confuse many doctrines, which do not allow them to be called Christians.

"Great White Throne"
"Abraham" "Isaac and Jacob"

We only spent about 5 hours in the park, but we saw a lot in this short time and the drive out of the western exit of the park is beautiful! God's creation is amazing!

After our our trip to Laguna Beach on Tuesday, we thought we would take in Hollywood.
Our first stop of the day was The Warner Brothers Studio... what a great tour! It was over two hours of behind the scenes fun. We were amazed how they used the same sets with small variations to film hundreds of movies and TV shows. The first picture above is where they filmed the famous upside down kiss between Spiderman and Mary Jane in the first Spiderman. It doesn't look like it in the day time, but they transform it for the movie.
The next picture you see is the "high school" currently being used for the Gilmore Girls TV shows, but the same building was used in the 70's as the town hall for Boss Hogg in Dukes of Hazzard. The same town setting around this building has been used as Latham, Massachusetts for the last Seinfeld show and for the the small Colorado town for the movie "Jack Frost" with Michael Keaton.
The next picture is, of course, the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard TV series, which I watched as a kid. They informed us that they had to use 300 different Dodge Chargers because they wrecked so many of them in the show's run. We also had to take a picture of our kids in front of Bugs Bunny.
The next stop after the Warner Brothers Studio was not so great. We wanted to see the Kodak Theater where they host the Academy Awards, but unfortunately, we arrived just as the sports stars were arriving for the ESPY awards. As you can see by the fences, security was tight. The stars are chauffered up in their big limos and dropped off inside security and walk the red carpet into the theater. After we walked by the Theater, we went next door to Grauman's Chinese Theater. That's obviously Jimmy Stewart's handprint.
All in all, though we had a blast at the Warners Brothers Studio, we were not impressed with Hollywood. For all the talk the stars do about poverty and world problems, I would be more impressed with them if they did some work in their own city. Hollywood is pretty dumpy once you leave the immediate area of Kodak Theater.
The last picture is all the kids jammed in a phone booth in Downtown Disney, a shopping area right next to Disneyland which was 1 mile from our hotel.

(By the way, I wrote this from a Best Western in Kanab, UT in between Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon. It has a population of 3000 if they count the livestock and I have best internet connection I have had on the whole trip. I find that kind of weird.)

We left Yosemite and headed to Los Angeles and along the way we broke the 3500 mile mark on our journey! The first thing we did in LA was leave the smog (yes, you can actually see it in the air) and head 30 minutes south to Laguna Beach. We wanted so much for the kids to play in the Pacific Ocean and chose Laguna Beach because Sandra and I visited Laguna Beach 13 years ago and loved it because of the cliffs and rocks all along the beach. The Pacific Ocean is a unique from the Atlantic because the water is clearer and the the waves are bigger! Here are some pictures that show the fun are kids were having.

We had to travel windy and hilly roads along the edge of deep canyons to get to Yosemite from the West. Sandra hated it so much we tried to find a different way to leave Yosemite, but no matter which we went we had to go up or down one of these.

These four pictures are well known sites in Yosemite National Park. The family picture is at Mirror Lake. You can see a nearly perfect reflection of the mountain in the background. The double waterfalls is actually one long Waterfall, Yosemite falls. It is the third largest waterfall in the world, dropping a total of over 2400 feet. The picture at the left is El Capitan, the "largest granite monolith in the world". It rises over 3000 feet straight up. Crazy people from all over the world travel to this rock to CLIMB IT! We actually saw some people climbing it, but they were so far up they looked like little specks. The picture below is a view of the famous "Half Dome" from Washburn Point.
This picture is from the lesser known Vernal Falls. This turned out to be one of my favorite spots. My picture doesn't show the whole waterfall because I wanted to capture the beautiful rainbow in the mist of the waterfall. It was absolutely beautiful. the grass around the waterfall was the greenest green I have ever seen. This last picture is from the Big Trees of Mariposa Grove. These are Sequoia Trees which are different from the Redwood trees we saw north of San Francisco. There is a story behind why Sequoia Trees are endangered which I am sure will end up as a message illustration someday:)