Road Trip Photo Diary Part 2: Salt Lake City, UT, Boulder, CO, & Lincoln, NE

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope everyone is staying warm. If there’s one thing this road trip has taught me (aside from how beautiful the US is), it’s that I am very, very blessed to be a California native! While I love snow, I wouldn’t trade it for the sun in SoCal. I’m getting sick of wearing the same outfit every day because I literally only have 1-2 true “winter outfits” suitable for the midwest and East Coast. I miss wearing tank tops and ripped denim shorts. Picking up from my last photo diary and travel update…

After our unexpected stop in Reno, we drove to Utah and spent 2 nights in Salt Lake City with Potter’s brother and his family.

These boots by EMU Australia are literally my savior on this winter road trip! They might look like any other fur-lined boots, but these are actually waterproof (beyond just silly advertising) and kept my feet super warm, cozy, and most importantly, dry, as I trekked through miles of thick piles of snow! The best part of it all is that despite walking so much in them, they still look good as new today. I’ll be sharing a full look wearing these amazing boots soon, so stay tuned 🙂

We went to Antelope Island during the day, and the view there was just phenomenal! We even got to see buffaloes and they turned out to be a lot smaller than I had imagined. Luckily, it wasn’t too windy while we were there, so the cold was bearable with layers. It was a ton of fun checking out new places with Joseph the explorer (Potter’s nephew who is really into documenting his adventures on his camera… so cute!). I loved that the snow in Utah was so fluffy — something I rarely ever see (if ever) in California.

Wednesday morning (12/16/15) came and we drove our way to Boulder, CO to see a friend. The drive took a lot longer than expected (we left at 7 am and expected to be here around 3:30 pm, but ended up getting here at 7 pm instead), due to unexpected road closures. We were amused by the city called Dinosaur when first entering Colorado, and had to make a stop to take a classic tourist selfie in honor of our reptilian son, Babadook, whom we weren’t able to take with us. I miss our little dinosaur dragon so much!

So far, Boulder has been the coldest place we’ve been to so far; at 6:30 am it’s only around 2 degrees Fahrenheit out! Yikes! I do really hope that it starts warming up from here on out. Since we didn’t even stay a full day here, we didn’t really get to do much other than pig out on a local Mexican restaurant and walk around city hall at night. Oh, and take cute holiday photos of Morgan’s cute little kitty, Everest!

We made a quick stop in Lincoln, Nebraska on our way to Chicago for a night. As we left Colorado, we noticed the snow levels had started to die down. Not going to lie, I do miss the beautiful white snow! The most memorable thing about our stop in Nebraska was the surprisingly delicious Chinese food at Mr. Hui’s Restaurant. I am usually a bit hard to please when it comes to Asian cuisine, but this take-out style place had such delicious food I devoured my entire dish (which usually doesn’t happen either, because I am so used to only eating a little bit at a time). Quality Chinese food in the Midwest… definitely something I did not expect.

These final photos were taken overlooking the Mississippi River along the border between Iowa & Illinois around sunset time. That’s a wrap for my photo diary part 2; stay tuned for more exciting adventures in Chicago, New York, and more! xx

P.S. These are photos taken on a cell phone; there will be a lot more coming up in the next month or so from Potter’s DSLR!