Honeymoon - The Drive To The California

This is the first of five posts on our honeymoon that we took in June. We got married last year and spent almost a year planning a two week road trip. We drove 8,000 miles through 8 states. 

We left South Dakota and drove to Colorado to celebrate my birthday with my family. My brother had turned 21 in May so we went to the bar and took shots as a family. My brother wanted to take a birthday cake shot, which is way to sweet for me and my dad. My dad decided to pay him back by ordering shots of tequila. Drinking with family is something I have always avoided, but I must say it was actually a lot of fun.


After the bar we headed to the mountains to sleep at a rest stop for the night. Our plan was to stop at the top of Vail Pass. When we got there it was 30 degrees out so we headed down to find a warmer place to sleep for the night. Thankfully there is another rest area just past Edwards where the temp was 60. 

Day 2 of our trip we went white water rafting down the Eagle River. There was so much snow last year that the river was extremely high and we weren't able to raft all the way to the normal take out point. We had a blast and plan on going many more times.

Once we were done with the rafting trip we were on our way to Ely, NV where we planned on spending the night at a friend’s. Driving through Utah was a lot more fun than we thought it was going to be. I'm pretty sure we stopped at every scenic spot, but I am so very glad we did. 

Since it was my birthday I really wanted a treat of some kind. The original plan was to stop in Grand Junction and get some yummy fruit. This turned out impossible. Who would have thought that buying fresh fruit in the place where most of the states fruit is grown would be impossible? Since we couldn’t find any fruit stands we continued on and planned on stopping in Utah somewhere. We stopped in the biggest town along the interstate and felt like we were in Radiator Springs. To get to the town you take an exit to no-where and drive for a little ways. There was a gas station at each end of the town and nothing in between. I got a popsicle and we continued on our way.

This was one of our favorite stops, the San Rafeal Reef. It was absolutely beautiful. Driving west through it blew our minds. I am really glad that I was able to show Jason how beautiful the desert is. I have always told him how amazing it is, but he never believed me. I’m pretty sure he thought it was more like Nevada where we went over 100 miles without seeing any other vehicles or buildings. Thankfully it was dark out, which made this part of the drive less painful.

We stopped in Ely, NV for the night.

 Day 3 was started with a drive threw a town that made us think we were in Mexico instead of Nevada and deciding how to get to Yosemite since the Tioga Pass was still buried under snow. The drive was beautiful to Lee Vining, California was beautiful. One part of the road was like a roller coaster. It was so much fun driving the truck over the little hills was one of the highlights of the day.

Once we got to Lee Vining we had to decide how to get through the mountains. After studying the map for ever we decided to take the Sonora Pass Hwy.