Traveling

It's not easy to express in a coherent way the 3.000 miles that we have just traveled as a family. To say that it has been the best vacation of my life, only comparable in intensity and beauty to another trip I took with my best friend a few years ago, doesn't really say much. Or it says it all, but only we can understand it.

It hasn't just been a trip through a land of many colors, full of history, magic and incredible beauty. It has been such an intense and intimate trip in so many levels that I can barely express it, I can't find the words. It has been a trip lived in a present that is no longer. What made sense was to live it and not as much remember it to talk about it. Words would never make it justice.


Every day lived and every place visited always were better than the previous one... even though the previous one always felt unbeatable. Each one of them always different. Each one had its magic, its personal color, its particular surprises, its warmth... They all trapped me in the moment, and all of them I enjoyed greatly. Even those roads that at first sight seemed almost boring, hid surprises of amazing beauty. It was just a matter of opening our eyes to them.


I don't want to talk too much about it, but I will mention the specific places we visited, just in case anyone is planning a trip in the area. The links will take you to more pictures of every place, if you want to explore further.

Arches in Utah was the first National Park that welcomed us. With its amazing rock formations, its burning colors, and those incredible arches...


Canyonlands, very close, gave us the first clue as to what the canyons in this area can look like. And this one was the "small" one... well, I swear I didn't think it was small when I sat there battling vertigo while I pretended to be brave.


From there to Monument Valley in Arizona there is exactly the distance of one of my son's long naps. Who hasn't see these places a thousand times in cowboy flicks? To camp and wake up here was indescribable.


Antelope Canyon is one of the most amazing places I have even visited. The walls of this small canyon in the middle of the Arizona desert are so full of magic and softness that it's truly otherworldly. If I had to choose a favorite place, this would be it.


The Grand Canyon, in Arizona, it's simply stunning. A difference in altitude of 5,000 feet makes the view unreal. It was so exaggerated and overpowering that we took a lot less time there than elsewhere and I shot less pictures than anywhere. It's hard to make it justice in an image, so I won't even try.


Bryce Canyon, back in Utah, is perhaps one of the most surreal places of our trip. The Paiute indians that lived in this area always made sure to stay away from this canyon, fearing that Coyote would transform them in "hoodoos", as it had done with their ancestors. The first pioneer that settled in this place though, described the canyon much more pragmatically, as "a helluva place to lose a cow." I guess he must have lost a cow and had an awful time trying to find it, if he ever did at all.


And to finish off, Zion, also in Utah. When it seemed we had seen it all, it offered us new completely unexpected and surprising landscapes.


And now, I return to my present again, to my warm cabin and my still shy and wintery snow flakes that have already started to fall here in Alaska.