Utah, the third leg of our EPIC road trip

August 2018

The third week of our EPIC Road Trip found us in Utah - a place that really feels like home to us as that is where we spent our first four years as a family. We could have spent the whole month just on BYU campus! As it was, we stayed with wonderful friends who we nearly exhausted with our style of vacationing. Haha! Apparently we relax at a very fast pace.

We absolutely love these friends who we stayed with and the most ridiculous thing ever - we didn't take a single picture together! EPIC Road Trip fail! So now we have to go back next summer! We need a redo... in which we will be taking giant group selfies everywhere we go. The best picture we have of the most of us in one photo is this first one. There are the three Harpers in the front there who you recognize and then three of our friends in the upper left corner. So half of our group. Haha!

Wading in the freezing water at Bridal Veil Falls in Provo, UT

Our family picture - haha

In all the years James and I lived in Provo, we never visited Bridal Veil Falls. I know. We failed those four years as well. It was actually as we drove away from Utah back in 2010 that we realized we did absolutely no touring of the state we loved and vowed to never let that happen again and thus the first year of NM happened where we visited like 20 National and State parks/monuments. Haha! One extreme or the other. I know.

Bridal Veil Falls and us

One of the best parts of going to Utah is that there are always friends there you can meet for lunch. Always. Here are a group of sister missionaries who served in NJ while we lived there. We all went bowling together and had a blast catching up!

NJ missionaries that we love!

This was a most enjoyable meal with some NM friends at one of our favorite local restaurants! Never a dull moment with these guys. Love these people!

Pitts family!

Our friends have a random pond in their neighborhood. It seems really random anyway until you swim/play there all day and then it makes complete sense. Every neighborhood should have a pond. It was so much fun!

Swimming in a small neighborhood reservoir

Temple #3! Everyone was actually looking! Haha! But... there are some great outtakes at this one. I will have to do an outtake post later... The ones here are classic.

Timpanogos Utah Temple

Temple #4! It's just three of us in this picture as the twins were asleep in their car seats. This trip was really hard on naptimes and schedules and sometimes, those just had to be priority.

Provo Utah Temple

We spent a few hours wandering our old campus. Boy, could we have spent days and days here! We took the kids to the book store and let Abi buy a book there. It was a Piggie and Elephant book which is available everywhere in the world I'm sure, but we couldn't miss the nostalgic opportunity to throw our money into that store. Haha! That's probably the least we've ever spent on books there...

BYU Cougars in training

Temple #5! Just us two this time which was a bummer. But we were actually running out of time and all three kids were asleep so... what do you do? Someday, I'd like to get a better look at this one for its historical significance. What a special building!

Provo City Center Utah Temple

We got to spend a day in Salt Lake City with our friends touring temple square which is one of the most visited religious sites in the world turns out. Don't remember the number but it was high on the list. This is such a special place with so many neat histories and memories. We're so glad we got to take our kids and share with them our faith in Jesus Christ and why it is so important to us to follow Him.

The Christus statue at Temple Square in Salt Lake City

Temple #6! This is... the best picture... we got. Haha! Some of us... were done taking pictures.

Salt Lake City Temple

All the fun wore her out so thoroughly, that this position became sufficiently comfortable enough to allow for sleep...

She is totally asleep

Temples #7 and #8! We quickly hit these temples up on our last night before it got too dark. There are so many temples in the Salt Lake valley! Just a little memory fluff here, Hyrum had thrown up that morning but seemed fine by evening. So, it's really a miracle we're all in these two pictures.

Jordan River Utah Temple

Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple