Adventures

Spring Break in Colorado: April 2022


I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep doing these blogs, but it was actually a lot of fun to read the other one, so I’m going to do another :)


You’ve got to know something important about Tami, Courtney, and me: we share a lot of the same goals and interests, one of which is travel. And we do it a lot. I feel like I’ve learned a few things, just on these first few trips that you can implement if you’re wanting to travel with your friends.


First, make sure that everyone has an assignment. You can naturally fall into these, like we did, or you can make assignments. When we travel, I am in charge of the itinerary and doing some basic research beforehand so we have some ideas of what we’re going to do. Courtney is in charge of finding accommodations. Tami is in charge of budgeting and logistics (and you’ll see why when you get to take a look at our itinerary below lol). The beautiful thing about this is that it means there’s no specific stress on any one person, and then we all go over receipts and make it balance out. 


Second, and this should probably be first, is that everyone needs to be committed. When we decide we’re going on vacation and everyone sets their calendar, you cannot suddenly find out that there’s a concert at home that you want to go to instead because everyone else has already committed and you’re ditching them. It’s incredibly rude, and I’m just letting you know, you probably won’t be invited again – unless there was an emergency. But on this trip specifically, we were not planning to go just as The Queens; we had at least 3 other people who were coming, and they bailed. So, we went on our own 🙂


Third: Make sure you budget enough money so that you can enjoy your trip. This is the one that I struggle with the most because.. I am not great with money. So I will say this: as soon as you know you’re going on a trip, start putting some money to the side so that you can enjoy it. 


I would end with the cliche “Make sure you have fun,” but believe me, if you’ve done these three things, fun is guaranteed.


So. After our other three friends bailed on us, Tami, Courtney, and I began planning our revenge: to go on the trip without them. In our chat though (I promise this backstory is important), Courtney and Tami asked for a dress code so that they would know what I was planning to wear on this trip. This came up because in Cedar, they felt underdressed for some of our activities, not because they were, but because I was dressed up. Maybe look back at the pictures if you want an example of what they meant. But who am I to tell my friends what to wear?  Hence, the following itinerary.

Colorado Adventure

The Unfinished Itinerary

April 3 - 8, 2022

Courtney :) 

Fort Collins - Sunday night to Tuesday morning. Head to denver. 


Denver - Tuesday night - Wednesday


Colorado Springs - Wednesday through Friday morning. Friday morning, head back home?

Budget :) 


So…

Sunday

Sunday afternoon, Tami and I started driving to Fort Collins, Colorado. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much of the drive.. Except that Google Maps started trolling us and sent us down a dirt road that, I guess, was supposed to meet up with the main highway again, but never did. Obviously, knowing what I know about dirt roads, we should have not gone that way… alas, I’m not as sure of the cultural expectations of dirt roads in other states, and I didn’t want to judge this road too harshly. But we were not the only ones that got trolled on that road. I’m pretty sure that this little adventure added about an hour to our trip. In general, I would say, unless you’re driving through Ohio or Iowa, don’t trust Google when it navigates you down a dirt road. So.. there’s that.

Monday

Monday, Tami and I went to Horseshoe Reservoir, which is a small lake up in the mountains and, apparently, a fun location for bouldering. Tami has a love for rock climbing, so we did a little bit of that, and then I have a love of being dramatic, so we did pictures of us as shipwreck survivors.

Then, as we were driving back to town, we found this cute little place – it’s called Swetsville Zoo. All around, there are metal sculptures of dinosaurs, robots, knights in shining armor, Snoopy from The Peanuts, a castle…it’s really fun. The artist, Bill Swets, used to make the sculptures for his wife, Sandy. They would invite school groups and young families to come see their “zoo.” It was a free exhibit. Now, the zoo and the house are for sale, as I am writing this. Or they were, when Tami and I were there visiting. It was a nice quiet walk too, just fun to walk around and see not just the art but the stories that Swets was telling as well. Again, because I want you to go see it for yourself, I’ve only included a few pictures, but there’s a lot more there. There are over 150 different sculptures, each with their own scientific classification. 

Afterwards, we went to a shopping area in Fort Collins, looked at some super fun boutiques, spent a lot of money on a pair of shoes that I love so much, and called it a night. 


Tuesday

Before heading down to Denver, Tami and I went to the Fort Collins Temple. It was cold and rainy, but we still got our pictures :)  It’s sort of a tradition now, even when it’s super cold, and then we drove down to Denver to meet up with Courtney. There was a bit of miscommunication though… as we thought we were meeting Courtney at the airport at 9 am, and her flight actually came in at 9 pm. So, we spent 90% of our day in the Denver Museum of Art.

Let me tell you about this museum: Number one, it’s huge. There are two separate buildings and there were about ten different exhibits to visit. One was about furniture, one was the Impressionists, another featured Totem Poles and arctic life styles, European portraiture, and there was a historical section on a woman known as La Malinche. She was very interesting to learn about as she is a very controversial figure in South American history. And the art featured in the exhibit showed a lot of the different opinions artists and historians have about her. We will eventually talk about her in our podcast, and I’m excited for you all to learn more about her :) Number two, and this is something we certainly took advantage of, when you purchase a day pass for the museum, you can go and come back :) yes indeed! 



So in the middle of our visit, we stopped to get lunch at a British pub just up the street. We had the biggest cracker ever with a balsamic and mustard dip that I am in love with and found out that “lemonade” in the UK and in America are two very different things. Pictured here is Tami wondering if we will be making our collages under the influence or if this lemonade is, in fact, virgin. I was about to say this is why I always go with water, but even that can change… 



Another fabulous feature of the Denver Museum of Art is the children’s art room. The best is that you do not have to be a child to have lots of fun in this room, and we probably spent an hour and a half making these collages. We are not taking criticism at this time, though at some point, we might make a tutorial on how to do this. Make sure you have glue and scissors ready. You never know when the collaging muse will descend. 



Then, tired from walking around all day, we decided to see The Lost City with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. It left us with an invincible feeling that resulted in this reckless behavior on the escalators. 

And then we got Courtney!! 

Wednesday 

This is something wonderful that I love about Courtney: She knows art. Like, you would not believe how well she knows art. And more importantly, she knows abstract/modern art, and when we went to see the Clyfford Still Museum, Courtney was in her zone. We were there for hours, and I learned so much about not just the artist, but about abstract art in general and how it too tells a story and even an unfinished canvas is part of the work of art. This museum in particular stores and displays all of Clyfford Still’s artwork, every piece that he has done throughout his lifetime. There are several interactive exhibits where you can try some of his techniques  and another art space where you can create your own art as well. The staff are friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable about the artwork and the artist and we had a lot of fun here. I’m pretty sure we spent over five hours here, just taking in the art.

Our biggest adventure, that we’d planned for the day, was to go to the Denver Selfie Museum (we’re museum ladies, what can I say?). The museum has a lot of different rooms where you can take pictures of yourself and your friends, and I just gotta say… we had a blast. In our shared photo album, I think we have over 500 pictures from just this visit alone. Honestly, I’m not sure which ones to share, so I will just direct you to our instagram accounts because we’ve for sure got our pictures posted there. However, I think these few are probably my favorite.




We ended the night at the Denver Temple, and then went to bed very tired but very happy 🙂

Thursday

Colorado Springs is very windy. Especially in The Garden of the Gods. Which is an epic name. And which is how we ended up with this picture… so…  


If you’re looking for a fun getaway, this park is full of paved walking trails and not so paved walking trails and lots of fun places for families and kids to explore.  There are several different rock formations that are super exciting and interesting, lots of slot canyons, and lots of places where you can climb up to get a full view of the area. This is one of the few places where we took more pictures here than we did at the Selfie Museum, but the view was just so beautiful and the area is just very lovely and it’s really funny that I’m saying all of that and then there’s a picture of Tami about to sacrifice Courtney right next to all of this text. Anyway. It was lots of fun.


Courtney and Tami are also huge StarGate fans, so we were going to go see the site, but it is on the Airforce Base. Clearly it’s still operational and the men and women who serve there are protecting us from anything trying to break through from the other side. We thank you for your service!

I forgot to tell you all about one of my favorite parts – so we went to get Greek food for lunch, and the food was delicious, but as we were going back to the car, we saw a restaurant with stickers that was pirate themed and all about Anne Bonny and Mary Read! So, we ran in there and asked how much for the stickers. They wanted proof that we were real fans, but the jokes on them because I told them story after story until they gave us the sticker for free. We haven’t eaten at that restaurant, but it’s one of the things I remember and I have that sticker tucked somewhere safe. That was fun. 


Friday

I can’t believe it’s Friday already. Even several months later as I’m writing this, I’m just remembering all the fun we had and I don’t want it to end.


Our last adventure in Colorado Springs was to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. The people who once lived here built their houses into the cliffs using stone and mortar, likely from the same cliffs that they were cut from, to create doorways, windows, separate rooms, graineries, kitchens, etc. Again, this museum has two parts: there are the actual dwellings where you can walk around and explore with little tablets of information to explain what each part of the structure is, and then the second part is a museum with artifacts from the site; pottery, weaponry, clothing, jewelry and similar pieces are preserved here. So you can see more of the lifestyle of the Manitou People as well as the places they lived. Though it is a break from tradition, I will show you a picture of the outside of the dwellings, but you’ll have to go inside if you want to see anything else. I don’t want to spoil your experience.

After that, we drove back to Denver. Courtney flew home later that night, and Tami and I drove back to Utah. Let us know if you’ve got an adventure out there that you think we should come check out!! 

Cedar City: Where The Queens were Born


A little backstory, yeah? 


Back in 2019, Courtney, Tami, and I lived in the Fort Lauderdale area in Florida. We went to the same institute classes and sort of met by luck… or divine intervention. Tami and I were in the same church group, and on Thursday* nights, we would go to institute (a more in depth scripture study class) and there, we met Courtney. 


Now the joke is this: I only met Courtney once, but we hit it off so well that we traded contact info and I saved her in my phone as “Courtney WHO KNOWS MEGAN FOLLOWS AND IS GREAT” and then like… we never saw each other at institute again. However, Tami went to institute more often and so we kept in touch that way. I think the only other time I hung out with Courtney in Florida was when Tami was doing the Mary Kay charcoal mask and we all wanted to try it. It was lots of fun :) and those were literally the two interactions we all had together in Florida, and then Courtney moved to Tennessee, a month later Tami moved to Utah, and a month after that, I moved to Utah (a different part of Utah) as well.


Then, about a year later, Tami and I found out that Courtney had moved to Utah too (yet another part lol)! So, we made plans to go to Cedar City to visit Courtney over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. However, none of us are/were super familiar with the area, and I started getting stressed about what we were going to do, so I wrote out an itinerary with the plans that we knew we had, and then found other stuff to do that sounded like fun. The only times I’ve been to Cedar were to run cross country or to see the Shakespeare Festival, so I was really sad to see that the Festival doesn’t start until June and only goes to December, I think. They always do a splendid job and it is always super fun :) Since that wasn’t an option in January, I looked at ideas that sounded fun and wrote them down in a google doc where they might fit in our itinerary. I feel like people don’t always know much about the cities that they’re headed to unless they’re going for a specific reason, so finding a bunch of ideas and places that look like fun helps everyone else narrow down what they think sounds cool and then you can all go together. The best part is when you end up with everyone’s commentary on the list – as you will see in a second. After that, we bolded the ideas that we all wanted to do, and our final plans looked like this:


Cedar City, Adventure #1

January 14 - January 17, 2022


Proposed Itinerary


Friday (1/14)

Anne and Tami will arrive in the evening. Time, as yet, unknown. I vote we bring pizza and watch Grace of Monaco, the story of Grace Kelly becoming Queen of Monaco shortly after WW2. It’s fabulous and stars Nicole Kidman. Courtney approves and Tami! Huzzah! Yay! (also, thank you for putting your names in your colors as it helped me a lot :) )


Saturday (1/15)

~Breakfast at home

~Prepare for day and other stuff – not in a rush?

~11:30 - 12:30: Cedar City Temple

~Lunch  -  current options (near the Temple):

~Ideas for the afternoon under Monday’s adventures; was going to say a movie, but the only one playing is Scream at the Megaplex, so that’s a no. Also, there was only one movie??? If The 355 is still playing, it looks really good https://youtu.be/SV0s2S9reT0 :) I’m also down for spa night


Sunday (1/16)

~Breakfast at home

~Church!! I think we will need a few dresses for this venture how many dresses are we wearing to church?? ;) hahaha I mean, we could wear the same dress to the temple and to church… :) and what time is church?? 12:00 🤩 perfect :)

~Change, pack lunch to take for picnic

~Drive to Mountain Meadows Massacre Memorial (1.5 hr drive)

(The following activities don’t cost anything or require the work of others and are all in the same area :) ) MMMM takes about 45 minutes to an hour to go to all of the sites. Very humbling, though. It also has a few short walks you can go on. :) I'm down for old Town and lions Mouth cave!! Both look amazing! I definitely want to Cave 😎

~About the time we get back, Tami will probably want to eat again nope. Suddenly I am fasting 😳🤣 Seventeen days is a long time to fast, so I apologize for the inaccuracy… Tami will probably be starving and emaciated at this point.

~Book group in PJS – Discuss The Supernaturalist. I’ll bring cookies :) my book arrives this week! Whoot!I just finished reading mine and am excited to discuss!!

~And then to bed :) Anne will want to be in bed by 7 7 sounds lovely :) 


Monday, the last day of our adventure (1/17)

~Breakfast

~And then, just some random/fun ideas I found to do in the area. Some places may not be open in observance of MLKJr. Day. Tami and Anne probably need to leave by 4:00 (pm) if we have time, I vote the Utah Goddess Temple, the canyons Mouth trail, and the veterans museum. I could go with a good hike, Witchery, and historical memories haha. The Frontier Homestead is one that I think might be closed for MLK day, but that’s the only one I really want to go to.

~Places for Lunch/Dinner I'm down for the last two!


Breakfast for the Queens (us)

My thoughts are these: Simple breakfast at home that costs like… $20 (for the weekend). 

Yes to all of these..lol ..side note: not sure where a Costco is…

All look amazing except Frosted flakes...I hate those lol.

I was thinking that Friday I could pick up groceries in Orem and then we’d bring them down. I wouldn’t want to bring the chicken though – Courtney, could you pick up chicken, lunch meats, and cheese? That’s a long time in the car. Also, Courtney, I have sort of been assuming that we are staying at your place – a.) is this true/possible and b.) what kind of bedding would we need to bring?


Sunday Picnic Lunch

My thoughts are these: Quick, portable, will stay good for an hour plus while we do our adventuring

Also completely approve..haha

Apparently I am picky haha. Either of the first two, but not the last one :)

Lol no steak. We won’t have anywhere to cook it… um… I am leaning more toward Ham and Cheese sandwiches on croissants with the salad just to mix the two :) 


Sunday Dinner

My thoughts are these: we don’t have to cook when we get back, so.. crockpot?

Yes, we can grocery shop together or I can pick stuff up to save time. I'm a fan of the tacos… 

I agree! number 1 sounds amazing!!want me to bring anything?? 


I will bring Citrus and Spice Wassail for our book group. And cookies. Yes!!! **Please bring your “Do not disturb” mug (Courtney, I will bring yours :) ) 


Also, I love that these are our reasoning for eating: 

When = Queen Tami, will be hungry

What = Queen Anne, of the high tasting standards

Where = Queen Courtney, atmosphere is almost everything

😆😆 

It's so accurate!! 🤣

DYING. This is going to be the best Adventure ever!!


Proposed Shopping List

1 doz eggs

1 bag spinach

1 ready mix salad

Lettuce

Onion

2 Tomatoes

Bananas

Berries

Oranges

1 can salsa

tortillas

Sourdough Bread

Muffins

Croissants

Wassail 


Feta Cheese

Cheese

Lunch Meat

1 chicken breast


These were our plans. Here’s how our trip went for reals (awesomely, obviously, but with some changes):


We spent the three nights at a cute pet friendly Air BNB in Cedar City. The house had two rooms, a kitchenette, a game area, this little dining table, and a nice little TV area where we did our book group and movie night. Pictured are our chocolate lava cakes from Domino’s Pizza. I am not good at pictures, so please forgive my face. That night, we just chilled… we did in fact watch Grace of Monaco that night and we loved it. 



Then, as planned, the next day, we went to the Cedar City Temple, a temple owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We are all members of the Church, and it is a goal we have to visit every temple we can when we go on our trips :) My favorite part (aside from the spiritual uplift I receive), is that each temple is a little bit of a time and cultural capsule from when and where it was built. For example, the Mesa Arizona Temple was built in the 1920s, and when you go in – you can go into the waiting room without a recommend, if you would like – most of the chairs still have the tassels and fringe and the vibe of the 1920s, because the saints who built it were offering the Lord their best. And you can feel and see it! It is quite lovely :) 

Before we went to the temple, we found out that there was a Farmer’s Market that weekend – or some kind of shop with booths that seemed a lot like a Farmer’s Market. Unfortunately, we missed it, but we had hoped to go after the temple. Alas. I’m sure it would have been fantastic.


But near the Farmer’s Market, there was this cute little cafe, still decked out a little bit for Christmas.


Afterwards, we went down the street to the Southern Utah University campus and, as the university is known for their theater program, we found this stage. These are not official Dasani commercials, but I think we’ve got a future in modeling… 



Of course, SUU is located next to SUMA (Southern Utah Museum of Art), with a lovely sculpture garden and a single man… 

For dinner, Courtney ate Indian cuisine for the first time in her life. I thought the food was fantastic, though, to be honest, I have no idea how Courtney enjoyed it. I also have no idea when or why we decided not to wear make up this day… I think we did a Mary Kay meeting after lunch because we also changed at some point, and that must have been it. I’m genuinely a little confused. 

Sunday we did some exploring  – Oh. The good news is this: the visitor center in Cedar City is absolutely phenomenal. Like you saw above, we had some ideas for what we were planning to do, but we went to the visitor center and found a lot more :) So, on Sunday, we went exploring and looking for petroglyphs and dinosaur footprints before church.


Not gonna lie, I don’t remember all the exact directions to get here, so I’m going to go from memory. The road is going to cut through this little hill that has been set up in a formation like that ← 



And if you drive down the road and through the formation, that looks like that and happen to see this on the other side, you are in the right place to see the petroglyphs. →



And the petroglyphs are IN BETWEEN these two places, on a convenient trail with modern interpretations of what they mean as well as HD renderings of what each petroglyph looks like, but if I show you all that, then you don’t get to have the same fun as if you saw it for yourself for the first time, so I think it is much more important to tell you the story of this little man that we met on our trail and has absolutely nothing to do with the petroglyphs at all. 


Voila. The little man in the mountain. 


If all you see is rocks, I recommend reading fantasy novels or watching kids shows to help you redevelop your imagination. Or go outside and stare at the clouds and find your own friends in nature.  

Now, little does the rest of the world probably know, but Utah is famous for more than just being the home of many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It is also one of the top places to look for dragons. 


I meant to type dinosaurs, but dragons are more exciting, so I didn't feel the need to edit that. Also, on that note, I’m very proud of our little state because we also hold the record for most Fantasy authors, I’m pretty sure the second highest buyers of board games (like, not the United States… I mean in the world, Utah stands out for its board game consumption… Salt Lake City is the #1 city for board gamers in the world), and we were the only location in the 2000s to host the Olympics and make money off of it. I don’t usually claim Utah as my home state, just because I don’t really feel like it fits me, but it can be pretty fun (if you are a complete nerd).


So, we went driving down this dirt road in search of the dinosaur foot prints. Being from Utah, it actually looked very promising as far as dirt roads go – there is a whole system behind choosing which dirt roads to drive down. Firstly, a road that is covered in gravel or small pebbles does not exactly count as a dirt road. Secondly, if there are no ruts in the road, this road is probably safe to take your little tiny cars down it, but you’re probably not going to see anything particularly exciting. Third, if there are deep ruts, know that this trail was blazed by a man in a truck and he was going places. The truck and driver is pretty much the new horse and cowboy, though the knock off brand that you get at Walmart. If you see an actual man on a horse with his hat on his head, that man gets the right of way. He has wrestled rattlesnakes at some point in his life and lived to cuss the rascals out. Fourth, if you cannot go outside for some reason, you can take a look at these lovely clouds in the picture below and let me know what you think they are. I see a dove, but it might be a Phoenix because of the longer, thinner strands near the bottom. 

Sadly though, there were no dinosaur prints down this Phoenix blessed road, so we went back to the paved road. After hours in the cold, what we needed was a sign to continue. Anything would do.. Perhaps something like… like… 

To be fair, these signs were really hard to find. Especially since we were looking in all the wrong places. 





As before, I will not show you the dinosaur prints because it takes away the joy of seeing them for yourself, but here are some lovely preserved human prints from at least a month before we arrived. And I show them to you now because it is more than likely that you will never see these footprints there again. 



 After this adventure, we quickly drove to go to our church service and were, sadly, late. 



Then, as planned, we drove to the Mountain Meadows Massacre Memorial site. There are four different sites, all in the same area. This memorial is a bit of a hike, and I can’t recommend going in the winter because, at one point, I was nominated to push the car out of the snow when we got stuck. But these signs explain what happened better than I will be able to.

You may wonder, why do places like this exist? Why would you go to them? I think we do ourselves a disservice by trying to forget, or worse, by trying to never learn. We say “forgive and forget,” but that only allows these things to happen again. In our podcast, we look for examples of good women, but even those women made mistakes – mistakes that we can learn from. If we erase these pieces of history, we lose an opportunity to evaluate and judge the events and the people for ourselves. As much as we love our listeners, we hope you are looking for your own women to study, your own role models to follow. Find your own memorials, your own battle grounds. And do not forget. 

I would also like to point out that it is the Church who paid for the memorial and maintains this site – the Church restored it, even though it is a national historic monument, and even though it was members of our church who carried out this massacre. 


On a much lighter note:


You might have noticed The Utah Goddess Temple on our itinerary. First, I want to point out that I put it on our list as a joke, kind of like I had the DMV and then removed it. This one was more subtle. Second, we went anyway and despite my protests.

And here it is. Unfortunately, it was closed :( so if you go, please send us comments about your experience. This was the best we could do. 


Then, last of all, we went to the historic Cedar City and had way too much fun.

And now we get to the restaurant that has had me dreaming of Italy and Italian food since the day I tasted it. 


Chef Alfredo’s Ristorante Italiano.


First, keep in mind that we walked in as we are dressed above. I think they were debating whether or not they were actually going to seat us for a few, but they did and I am in love (with food).


The ambiance was spectacular.


(This is not the best picture of the ambiance, I am just realizing, but it was the only one I had when writing this blog. We sat in a booth with luscious full length curtains and the seats were very comfortable).



The food? Divine. 

We ate like queens, with the most delicious olive oil and parmesan cheese you can imagine. The limoncello cake in the center? It cut like a cloud and tasted as soft as and bright as the sun. When I tell you I still dream about this food, it is because I cannot dream of anything else. You cannot eat something so delicious and then treat yourself willingly to McDonalds. No. This is the cuisine of queens. I highly recommend, when you are out on your adventures, to go to at least one three or four dollar sign restaurant – just to prove to yourself that you deserve this kind of food. Since this trip, I have rarely eaten fast food (like, literally I can count on one hand the number of times I have eaten fast food) because food deserves to be enjoyed, and you deserve to take the time to enjoy it.


So this was Cedar City, January 2022 :) This was the beginning of The Queens.