So I’m FINALLY getting around to writing about our awesome summer trip out west. We traveled for 21 days and over 6,000 miles, visiting 5 states and 9 National Parks. We explored new places and met up with old friends. Overall, it was an amazing journey and everyone learned so much. I highly recommend the Foder’s guide to National Parks of the West, we used it when planning our trip and it was a great resource. You can see all my posts about the trip by clicking here.
Day 1 – Traveling to Vegas & Valley of Fire State Park
We headed out bright and early on a non-stop flight from Jax to Vegas. We were originally scheduled to leave on Sunday, but when we saw that there was a non-stop flight on Saturday we changed our plans. I’m always a fan of non-stop flights when it comes to traveling with kids.
We landed in Vegas, picked up our rental car, and headed out of town. First stop was Target for a cooler, and some drinks and snacks, and then we headed to Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada. This park is about an hour outside of Vegas and it was the perfect stop for the kids to get out and run around after our flight. Since this is a State Park, it wasn’t covered with our National Park Pass.
Valley of Fire had a great little visitor center that the kids loved. We were able to fill up our water bottles and hit the bathroom before heading out on a short hike. When we were done exploring we headed out to St. George, Utah, where we would be spending the night before departing for Zion. St. George had lots of amenities, like an Olive Garden and Target as well as grocery stores and plenty of gas stations. After dinner that night I hit the grocery store and bought some more snacks and items for picnic lunches for the week.
