National Park Road Trip - Final Day

It’s our last morning waking up on the road together. Kenton and I have had so much fun. Last night he said he didn’t want the trip to end. To be honest, I don’t either, but I do miss the girls and am excited to see them tonight.

For the time being though, we are going to enjoy one more day of vacation. We made it to Prineville last night, after a grand total of 11 hours and 40 minutes of driving yesterday. 

We left the Bonneville Salt Flats in Wendover, Utah after sunrise and drove to a cool public sunstone collection area in remote southern Oregon, a beautiful part of the state that I haven’t experienced in my 20+ years living here. It was the first time on this trip that we truly lost cell phone reception for a long period of time and had to navigate with a paper map picked up at a gas station. 

Remember the days of the big road atlas and AAA printed trip guides? It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to carry an actual map with me on trips like this, but Google maps and GPS sure has changed how I travel. 

We did great navigating and had a blast collecting sunstones, the Oregon state gemstone. We rolled into Prineville just in time for a beautiful sunset and a quick stop at the Ochoco viewpoint for some photos.

Today we will check out Smith Rock and Timberline Lodge and maybe stop at a store in Portland to learn about roof top tents. Although I love staying in hotels, there were some times on this trip when it would have been amazing to camp out under the stars (and it could make adventures like these more affordable if we could camp amd boondock some of the time.)

While this epic road trip might be ending, we still have another month of summer vacation and I’m already thinking of where we could explore next! 

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1QQx7Z_HsFX4X1ubRaAZrCt8FEasplzOb


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