Mine and Mikes Vacation to Central Utah.. 2014

Mike and I took the such a great vacation to Central Utah. We dropped the boys off at Mikes parents early wed. morning, and then we were off.

 Our first stop was "Herm's" resturant in Logan for breakfast. Mike and I have been here once before and loved it!
After Breakfast we went back home, switched over to our Truck and off we went. We were so excited to have some time for just the two of us. The last time we took a vacation for just us was when we went to London 4 years ago, we needed this vaca.


Our destnation was Yuba Lake, we decided to take the back roads, better scenary. We took our time because we were in no hurry. We borrowed my sister paddle boards, we had big plans to paddle Yuba.

The back way is so beautiful. There is so much to look at. One of the places we passed through was Manti Utah. It has been a very long time since I have been there. Super pretty. The town was getting ready for the Manti Pagent. It was cool to see them in action.

We stopped here for a minute to stretch our legs and get a few pictures. This Temple really is amazing. 

Love this Man.

After our break we got back into the Truck and drove on. Our favorite part of the drive was just being together eating junk food and drinking soda and laughing alot.

Once we made it to Yuba, we found our site and set up camp. It was so hot, and we were ready to jump into the lake. It was a little too windy that day to pull out the paddle boards, so we played in the lake,& walked the beach instead. It was such a pretty day, and the water felt so great. 

We found a small boat dock and parked our towels there.

As we walked the beach that evening we talked about pretty much everything. But mostly we talked about how nice it was to take a vacation together, even if it wasn't tropical, it was perfect.

As the sun went down that night we got our fire started and threw our hobo dinners on and waited. I was super hungry and ready to eat asap. It was hard to wait.  Thank goodness the 30 mins passed quickly. It was too windy to eat outside, so we got our dinners, and all of the goodies we could find and parked it in the tent.

Dinner that night was so tasty.. I always say I married Mike because he is an amazing cook. That really isn't the reason, but it is certainly a bonus.
After dinner we sunggled down and got ready for bed.

DAY TWO:

We woke up earlyish on day two, we were super eager to go paddling. We ate quickly and got our suits on, grabbed the boards, and walked down to the water.  We quickly realized that the wind was way too strong to go out right then, so we sat and waited, thinking that the wind would die down soon. We waited until noon and the wind was still blowing strong.

About this time a ranger drove by doing his daily thing. We flagged him down and asked if he thought the wind would slow down.. He said, with out hesitation "Probably not," Ugh.... We did not come on a vaca to sit and wait. We decided to pack up camp and find something else to do with our vacation time.

The ranger told us about a resivor in Gunnison Utah. Perfect, we thought, so we drove towards that resivor.
We found it , and we paddled it, but not for very long. A storm rolled in soon after we got there. The wind picked up, and the rain fell down, so we got out. We decided that we were not meant to paddle on this trip. We needed to find something else to do.

On the way to the resivor we saw an old abandoned lodge called "Palasade Lodge". I was so intrigued. I told Mike that we had to go and explore it. He was like "Ha ha, Ok honey."

It was super creepy, and super cool. I wanted to find a way inside, but all the doors were locked. Darn, it would have been fun to explore the inside. The outside was creepy and so interesting, any window we could look in we did. I was so interested in the history of this place. We noticed that all the houses except one, were  also abandoned. I totally want to know what happen in this tiny town.

From there we traveled back to Manti and checked into a motel for super cheap. We dropped off our stuff, took a shower and a nap and then we went out to explore the mountains around Manti. We found a road that took you right up the canyon, while driving on the road we saw this snake slither across the road. We jumped out, took a picture for the boys, and jumped back in and kept going, we were hungry to see what was up this road.

We came across this amazing pond. It was incredible. So peaceful and calm. We noticed a trail that led mostly around the pond, so we took it. We met a few people there fishing. We talked to a guy named "Buba" who had just moved there from Salt Lake to get away from the city. He was great.

After we had walked the entire pond path we turned around, but noticed a different path and thought, "Lets see where that takes us."  It led us to a reallly awesome camp site. It looked like it had been orignally for camp groups, we found an old amphitheatre, that had been taken over by the mountain.  We found another smaller pond that was very pretty, but not super easy to get to.

We kept walking and found a road and followed that for a while until we came to the road we drove up on. We walked back to the truck, got in and kept driving up the mountain.

We stopped when ever we saw something we wanted to explore. We saw this meadow, it was incredible. We parked the truck and walked through it, down at the bottom of the meadow was an old mucky pond, but still just as incredible.  We stayed here for a bit and then moved onto the next amazing sight.

We saw so many Deer. Can you find it in this picture?

We came across a waterfall called "Milky Falls"

And then we drove up the mountain as high as the road would let us. We loved it, but we were getting hungry so we headed back toward Manti.

In Manti we stopped at one of the only food joints they have. Super Cheap and Super yum! It tasted so good. We also took time to walk around Manti, it didn't take us very long, manti is kindof small. We focused most of our walk around the Temple. Its such an amazing Temple. 

Manti was fun to visit. We stayed one night there and then moved on in the morning to the next little town..

DAY THREE:

We stopped in Ephraim for an hour or so and walked around. We found a cool gift shop where we stopped and bought a honey pot. I didn't know I wanted one until we found one. It has been super useful.
We also stopped at all the grave yards, cuz grave yards are cool, and creepy. 

The Buildings here have such an interesting History. This building is a school built in 1899. They are fixing it up to use as a school again. pretty cool.

We then moved onto Spring City. which was my favorite place to stop and visit. We met a very nice lady who ran the Museum. She gave us a tour of the place and gave us pointers on where to go in her very very very tiny town. We ate at an amazing cafe called Das Cafe. Honestly the best German food I have ever had. We even met the Mayor. 

On the way out we stopped at the grave yards... again, just because they are so interesting.

This is Das Cafe..

This Food was Brilliant!!

They also have a spring where you can sit and fill up your water bottles. Hence the name of the town "Spring City"

After our awesome visit t Spring City we started to head back home to Layton. On the way we stopped in each of the small towns and checked out a few things here and there.  We stopped at this road sideish gift shop and walked around, and found this saying that melted my heart, I love this cute little saying.. And I love the snot out of my Boys..

We found a really old, but really interesting Museum. We spent about 2 hours here. I will admit it was a bit creepy, and I swear we had ghost following us from room to room, but it was worth it. Old stuff is so cool!

The out side of the Museum had a bunch of old cars.

 And an Indian Head..

On the way back to Salt Lake we drove through a town that was swollowed up by a flood back in 1983. Th name of the town in Thistle. I remember seeing this town when I was a little kid when we would go and watch the Manti Pagent. I wish I could go inside and explore. I wish I knew the stories of this old town. It is so Fascinating to me..

 I guess I will just have to settle for  having a picture of me in front of it.. 

Mike and I had a great time, it was fun to Celebrate our 11Th anniversary this way. We decided that we want to take a small super cheap trip like this every year.. So watch out Utah, Mike and I just Might be heading your way... :)