What A Privilege

 YES we did see BEARS! A mama and her two cubs.  I didnt get any shots of the cubs where you could tell thats what you were looking at but we did see them and they were precious playing together.

This is their mama.  You may have to click on the picture to see it better.

 When we were looking for bears, after someone told us they had seen one.  Todd and I separated.  I know that probably wasn't smart.  But I wanted to look one place and he was looking another.  We weren't too far apart.  I mean I could still see him.  But we just weren't right there together.  Any way, at some point I kept hearing this rustling sound.  I turned to look reminding myself I needed to be aware of my surroundings.  I saw nothing, but then heard it again.  Until finally I turned and saw - way too close for comfort, mind you-- the mama bear.  I held my breath and backed away.  I didn't even take any pictures at that point.  I know right???!!!  But what a sight it was.  A blessing indeed!

 And then we watched and gazed and enjoyed and watched them some more.  There was this very nice couple we met there who stood and watched with us for a bit. They were from England and the woman kept saying over and over, "What a privilege."  And wasn't she right.  What a complete privilege that was.  What a blessing and a privilege for sure.

Can you tell I was excited?  Yes, yes I was.

This entire place was just so totally beautiful beyond description and way beyond what these pictures can show.

So yes we stayed here...

yes, way longer than we should have but boy was it GREAT and such a PRIVILEGE!

Amazingly Beautiful Sequoia National Park

 As we were making our way to Sequoia National Park we began to see sights like this.

We began to climb.  Then the sights became like this.

We drove the winding road up and around, up and around, up and around. Then we began to see the beautiful Sequoias.  Once we started to see them, I decided to get a few pictures (of course).  So I rolled the window down.  Two things happened immediately.  First a blast of very cool air breezed into the vehicle.  Which was surprising as at the bottom of the winding road it was pretty warm.  And then the second most amazing thing happened.  With the sweep of cool air came the unmistakable fragrance of the Sequoias.  I had no idea that I would experience that.  I will never forget it.  As soon as I took it in, my eyes got HUGE and I looked over at Todd and almost yelled, "DO YOU SMELL THAT?!"  It was so cool.  I absolutely loved the smell of that forrest.

We continued up and as we did the trees got larger and larger.  As a matter of fact you cannot imagine how big they were.  (See that tiny person?)

 And these were not even the biggest.

 We just couldnt get over it.  And once again we just couldnt quit looking.

 It was just beautiful up there.

 Oh.My.Goodness.

This is our rent car with Todd inside.

We really enjoyed Gods beauty here.  We enjoyed the sounds which were so peaceful.  We enjoyed the smells. We enjoyed each other together out in what I called "Gods country".

In this last picture Todd was looking for bears.  We had seen a sign indicating that there may be some present and we really wanted to see one.  ----Little did we know...

Moved To Tears

 We got to enjoy very much, some more of Gods beauty as we continued our drive.

 Ok confession time.  I hereby confess that as we drove and I continually saw such beautiful sights as these,  I was moved to tears.  Like real, wipe them away tears.  As a matter of fact Todd looked over at me once and noticed my tears and thought someone had texted me some bad news or something.  He wondered and asked me what was wrong.  I just said "It's so beautiful" sniff sniff...   I know, I'm so weird...

These were everywhere out there, and huge.


We drove through the Mohave Desert for a while.  Miles and miles of this.

and nothing else...

It was so neat just heading off exploring.  Even if it did stress me out when I wasn't so sure where we were going to end up.  But Todd did great and got us to each destination as planned.

Hoover Dam

 The closer we got to Hoover Dam, the more beautiful the drive.  Honestly I had thought before we got there that this stop would be more for Todd.  He was really looking forward to it so I really wanted him to get to see it.  But that was about the extent of my interest.

As we drove over that bridge he was getting more excited.  The curvy road right after that- up and up and up was interesting and enjoyable.  Then when we got where we could see a bit from the car, I thought I would have to make him stop and let me drive.  :)

Once we got inside it was far more interesting than I thought it would be.

Todays fun fact:  This floor.  As a matter of fact, the entire floor inside is made of Granite mixed with concrete.  It is the original floor and has been there since the beginning in 1931.  Someone donated it at the time and now would be worth millions.

Once we got outside it was far more beautiful than I knew it would be.

We enjoyed it so much, once again-  we stayed there longer than we thought we would.

We finally did get on our way, leaving very thankful that we got to experience it.

Sights Unseen

 As we left the gorgeous Grand Canyon we saw sights like this.  It was so cool.  Certainly not sights I've seen before.

Just on the side of the road!

Another interesting fact... As we drove (and drove) we moved from one land formation to another.  The mountains were so pretty everywhere I looked.  And I could not stop looking.  And telling Todd to look.  Then, remembering that he WAS driving and he should not look at every single thing I thought was beautiful or interesting...  Anyway the most interesting thing was that there would be mountains like these, all rocky.

Then you drive a while and you would start to see trees mixed in.

 Then drive a while and maybe just more dirt and no green.

 Then drive a while.  Did I mention we did a lot of DRIVING? and you would see rock with trees sticking out of the rock.

As you notice, I did lots of picture taking straight from the window of the vehicle.  I finally had to tell myself to stop taking pictures from the moving car.  = blurry pictures!  But I just couldnt help myself.  If we would have had time I would have stopped every 15 minutes for a photo shoot!  #ilovepictures

 The drive from the Grand Canyon to Nevada was the most beautiful ever.  I am so glad we got to do this and I will never forget Gods beauty we saw.

We went in to Las Vegas and got to see Blue Man Group.  We couldnt take any pictures there but really enjoyed the show.  It is so crazy how they can do an entire show and never once speak a word. It was fun and enjoyable.  So glad we did that.  As a matter of fact if not for that show I dont think we would say we really enjoyed Las Vegas at all.  The driving was crazy!  There were sooooo many people.  I wondered if that was what New York was like.  We didnt stay in a place where we were in walking distance of things.  (Mistake)  Parking=Impossible  So all of that sorta dampered the rest, but Blue Man Group was great.