Crazy times, huh?

Our anniversary is April 24th, and we were supposed to have family coming out from Boston to visit us in New Mexico. Most of our family members have never been to the Southwest, so we were SO EXCITED for everyone to be out here.

Unfortunately, Corona happened ? , and everyone had to cancel their plans, which we were super bummed about.

I want to throw in a friendly reminder that it is ok:

• to mourn your plans canceling.
• be upset that you couldn’t go to the concert you’ve been planning to attend for months, your friend’s graduation party, or the birth of your niece or nephew.
• grieve not being able to walk at graduation, having your last basketball game without realizing it was going to be your last of the season, and not being able to celebrate your birthday the way you intended.

Just because you haven’t experienced anything traumatic throughout this quarantine doesn’t mean you can’t be upset that your plans fell through, and things didn’t work out the way you wanted.

Anywho, we had to roll with the punches, adapt to what’s going on, and get creative.

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Five years is a big one, so we wanted to make sure we did something memorable. Health and safety are our priority, which means we had to make sure whatever we decided to do kept us safe from the virus.

As many of you know, if you’ve been following me on Instagram, we live in New Mexico now. We aren’t out here forever, but it’s been a dream of ours to live in a place we’ve never been and adventure around. I’m SO grateful to be living in New Mexico during this pandemic because there is a lot of land to explore, and you likely won’t run into anyone while you’re doing it.

We’ve explored a lot of New Mexico, so we wanted to check out someplace we’ve never been and decided on Utah! We ended up finding an Airbnb in the woods of this small town called Kanab (this town is so cute, add it to your bucket list!) and confirmed that it was sanitized, and no one had been there for a while.

We brought our own sheets and disinfectant to be extra cautious, and honestly guys, it couldn’t have worked out better.

Utah was by far one of our top 5 favorite trips. So let me give you a breakdown of what we did.

First, we drove 7.5 hours from New Mexico to Kanab. We took our pups with us. They almost always come with us when we travel, they love it!

We got to our Airbnb and laid low for the night. One of the reasons we chose this Airbnb was because the backyard was all on public land. We love exploring public land because the trails are usually empty.

The next morning, we woke up early and went for an hour-long hike behind our cabin – didn’t run into a single person and had (what felt like) all the beautiful mountains to ourselves.

We dropped Jax and Rocky back at the cabin and went out on our own fur-baby-free adventure. We love sneaking off just the two of us when we can. ?

We went to some caves, hiked a few local trails, and kept our distance from everyone else. Utah is so beautiful – I felt like I was in a movie the whole time.

When we were thinking of Utah, we REALLY wanted to go to Zion, which of course, we weren’t able to do because of Coronavirus. We were, however, able to drive through it. So the next morning, we put the pups in the car, packed up some lunch, and went for a long drive.

Zion is stunning. I truly felt like I was in the scene of a movie. It’s unreal.

When we were getting to the end of the park, Erik looked at me and said: “want to go to Vegas?”

We are road warriors, and Vegas was only 3 hours away so I said ??‍♀️let’s go!

Something you’ll learn about Erik and me is that there is never a dull moment. ?We were driving on the highway and heard a loud air sound. I’m sure that probably doesn’t make sense, but it sounded like a plastic Target bag was blowing in the wind.

I turned around to make sure nothing was flying out the back window (we leave that open because the dogs like to stick their heads out of it, lol), and our cars computer system went off letting us know that we were getting a flat tire.

I’ll talk more about this in a different post, but when I was a freshman in college, my tire blew on the highway, and I spun around for what felt like an eternity. By the grace of whoever was looking over me, I didn’t hit anyone, and I flew off the highway without flipping. It was terrifying, and I struggled with driving after that. So when I heard the computer system go off, I almost crapped my pants. ?

THANK GOD we were able to pull off onto a full shoulder part of the highway, as opposed to the side, and we were in a more populated place. If you’ve been to the Southwest, you’ll know that there are a lot of rural areas. I don’t even know what we would’ve done if this happened in a rural area. I also thank God because Erik is good with cars and knows how to change a tire.

Now the fun part is that we didn’t have any tools with us (lesson learned!), and we couldn’t get the jack out from underneath the passenger seat. It was 90 degrees out, so we were sweating our buns off trying to get this thing out.

I will say for those of you who are dog lovers, don’t worry because Jax and Rocky were living their best life with the AC cranking in their face while mom and dad were breaking their backs. ?

Anyway, someone stopped and asked us if we needed help. He tried to get the jack out too, but some part was melted, and it just wasn’t happening. So my mother came to the rescue as always and signed me up for AAA like the angel she is, and AAA came to rescue us.

We got our spare on, but we were 90 miles from our Airbnb and needed new tires. We weighed out our options and decided to drive slowly back to Kanab, extend our stay a day, then try to find a tire place in the morning. It was 5 pm on a Sunday when our tire blew, so nothing was open.

We LUCKY made it back to our Airbnb on our spare, got new tires in the morning, and ventured back out to Vegas. ?

A few hours later, we made it to Vegas and it was amazing.

I’ve never been to In-N-Out so that was the first thing on our list. I’m not gonna lie, it was good – but it was no Five Guys. ??‍♀️We had a long debate about this on our way back.

The strip was empty because of Corona obviously, but it was so beautiful to see.

After our fun adventures, we made it back safely to New Mexico.

This was a trip of a lifetime and taught me how to be ok with pivoting our plans, get creative, and be thankful for what we have.