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I am in the middle of despair planning a trip to Spain to visit my boyfriend's family and need some reminders that traveling is fun.

I typically love traveling. I enjoy the planning, I love the adventure, I like taking pictures, etc; however on this trip we have to coordinate the schedules and requests of my boyfriend and I, his brother and sister in law, and his mom and dad, and it is getting pretty stressful. Not to mention tickets to fly to Spain are very expensive and it's hard to see all that money go to something that doesn't seem that fun right now :/ I'm sure once I get there it will be fun and exciting, but I need a pick me up...so tell me about your most fun traveling adventures!

The best trip I have ever been on is a 3 week road trip my boyfriend and I took two summers ago. We went from Ellicott City, MD to Boulder, CO with a side trip to Moab, UT in the middle. We took our time traveling out there and back and stopped in tons of places. On the way out we did Pittsburgh, The Hocking Hills (OH), Columbus, Terre Haute, Kansas City, and Colby (middle of literally nowhere in Kansas). On the way back we went to the Black Hills, the Badlands, Sioux Falls, Madison, and Toledo. I just loved it so much and have fallen in love with Boulder, CO. I am from NJ and have never seen anything like the western part of the US. I'd like to live out there one day.

Here are some pictures from our trip:


Ash Cave in the Hocking Hills, OH. This is a huge recess cave and it is absolutely breathtaking. The whole area is made up of little hidden gems like waterfalls, similar recess caves, etc. You can hike the whole ~10 mile trail and see them all or you can drive to each and hike a mile or so into the forest to see them. It's really a neat little place and by chance I ended up going to grad school in Columbus so this is only an hour away from my house!

We didn't see anything that was really exciting again until we got to Kansas (yes Kansas was actually really exciting!). Yes, it is pretty flat, but that in itself is a pretty cool novelty if you've never seen it before. Here's some typical Kansas:


We also went to Castle Rock in Kansas. This was such a cool find! If you have to travel across Kansas and have a few hours to kill I highly recommend it.

View of Castle Rock from a neighboring cliff (yes there are cliffs in Kansas!).

View of the Castle Rock Badlands from the same cliff as the previous picture. I wanted sooo badly to explore this more closely, but I heard that it is home to many rattlesnakes and we were a little tight on time.

Up close view of Castle Rock.


Our first good view of the Rockies! I can't remember if this is near Denver or Boulder.


View of a valley after hiking up the Fourth of July Trailhead. We almost made it to the tree line, but we were chased off by thunderstorms. The views were absolutely breathtaking (as was the altitude haha). I think we made it up to 11000-12000 feet that day. And the wildflowers up there were so gorgeous! Everything about it was amazing. I can't wait to go back and do this again.

My boyfriend's aunt's dog, Winka (pronounced Vinka), looking very epic!


View of Boulder from Table Mesa. Table Mesa is a beautiful mesa that sits overlooking the city. It's such a nice view and it's really peaceful up there.

This is the view of Table Mesa itself. Lots of flowing grass and pine trees...a few random cacti. There was a gentle breeze. It was lovely :)


View from Dead Horse Point, UT. Basically I felt like I was in the Lion King haha.

View of the 100 Mile Trail in Canyonlands National Park, UT.

View of the La Sal Mountains from Arches National Park, UT. We didn't get to see these up close but it is definitely on my list for next time.

One of the windows in Arches National Park at sunset. This was a great time to see some of Arches since it was cooler and the lighting was awesome.

Okay so it's always been my dream since I was a little girl to go out west and see the mustangs. There aren't many herds in CO (and there are none near Boulder), so I knew that my only chance was to try to go on the way back to Boulder from Moab. We went off-roading for about 10 miles through some very treacherous areas (lots of sudden, steep cliffs, no cell reception, very, very isolated, just read that dangerous mudslides are common 0_0). It was a total crapshoot as to whether we would see anything, but we totally lucked out and saw two different bands! They are from the Little Bookcliffs Herd Management area.

View of some mountains before we saw any horses.

PONIES!

The pinto kind of lifted his head up and was like "more stupid humans" and then went back to grazing.

I have some pictures from the way back but nothing could compare CO and UT. We did see the Black Hills and loved it, but it was lower key than anything else before that and I don't have any good pictures. I would definitely recommend it if you are looking for a nice, peaceful vacation place. We went trail riding here and really loved it. We also drove through the Badlands but they just weren't that cool after seeing Moab.

I know this post if very picture heavy so if it's too many please let me know and I'll just make them links!

So what awesome travel stories (and pictures!?) do you guys have?