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When Austin first matched at Utah for residency, I really didn’t know what we were getting into. I visited Salt Lake City once in February during my own residency for an American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation meeting in February 2013 and I thought it was a miserable place. Little did I know that because I was visiting in February I caught the dreary inversion at its worst. Then Austin and I visited together when he was considering ranking Utah #1 and we had some very gracious hosts from my pharmacy school class. Utah was cool then, but I still didn’t really grasp the whole I-might-actually-move-there thing.

But then, match day came. He opened the match envelope and there it was. His #1 choice. Utah.

Then everyone started asking “oh do you ski?”

Me: “Nooooooo……”

Everyone: “Oh well how about the outdoors?”

Me: “Not really…”

I had always equated the “outdoors” with camping and getting dirty. I much preferred showers and a warm bed. But you have to think about where I am coming from. I lived in North Carolina since the age of 7. Growing up through college, I lived in central NC where there is neither mountains or beach. Then, after school I moved close to the beach. “Outdoors” in eastern NC was the beach. OR sweating your butt off on a walk around the park in the humidity, not ever seeing anything besides a pretty lake or pond because it was flat. And if you went camping, it was just to get dirty and say you did.

Austin’s very first vacation during residency we decided to do a “Utah world tour”. We wanted to check out all of the Utah national parks in 8 days. We were going to do some camping and some hotel stays. For anyone who is into National Parks, you know that just one day at most of these places is not enough…and we figured it wouldn’t be, but we lived here now so if we liked it enough, we would come back.

During that vacation we went to Capitol Reef National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Monument Valley, Arches National Park, and Canyonlands National Park. It was pretty wild. And more importantly, I was hooked. Absolutely sold on the “outdoors”.

Since then, we have spent most of our free weekends exploring. It was even my idea to go camping a few weekends ago to Goblin Valley. Here’s a post about that weekend. I have wanted to share the beauty of Utah and the rest of the west with everyone since I moved here. Hey if I didn’t know about Utah, how many people did? (This is a rhetorical question…plenty of people knew, which is why they asked me over and over again if I liked the outdoors)

So when one of my friends, Collin, texted me about coming out to Utah over his spring break, I was pretty darn excited. Someone from the “outside” to share this place with. And he was a great sport. He arrived when I was out of town for work and explored the city and then when I got back, we immediately drove to southern Utah to get our adventure on.

We went to Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and Horseshoe Bend in northern Arizona. Horseshoe Bend is going to be my next post so stay tuned. Here I am just focused on the two National Parks. Here are some pictures from our trip. Be sure to compare these to just a few weekends ago when my parents were here (Bryce Canyon with my family & Zion National Park with my family)… it is AMAZING what a few weeks can do to the scenery.

The trip was fantastic… going to have a part 2 for the northern AZ portion coming very soon. Once again, be sure to check out the posts from just two weeks ago to see how different the parks looked (Bryce Canyon with my family & Zion National Park with my family).

 

Currently reading: “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne

Currently listening to: “You are a Badass” by Jen Sincero ****If you haven’t read or listened to this book yet, PLEASE do. This is somewhere around the 10th time in the last year I have read/listened to it and it is SUCH a great book. Very influential mindset wise. I always get something new out of it each time.

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