An amazing trip!

I'm back from my break and have to tell you all about the wonderful vacation we've been on.  Those who I'm friends with on Facebook have seen some of my photos and I'm sorry for the repeats that will be showing up here!  I took so many photos and trying to pick just a few is very hard.   I'll be sharing for several days, so that you don't have to deal with a never ending post!
A week ago Thursday, Bob and I left for a vacation with my sister Cheri and her husband Mark.  We had been planning this vacation for some time.  We were going to stay in Utah and see several National Parks, flying home 9 days later.
We flew out of Grand Rapids Thursday afternoon at 2pm. It was a beautiful day and we were excited to start the trip.

Before long we were in the air, and enjoying the sights from above. We were supposed to fly into Dallas/Fort Worth airport and then into LasVegas to spend the night before driving to Utah.

After some calm flight time, we flew into a storm.  Shortly before we were supposed to land, the pilot came on and said there were such bad storms over Dallas that we had to circle until we were allowed to land.  After circling for some time, we were told we had to divert to Austin or we would not have enough gas.  However, after starting for Austin, the pilot came back on and said we were going to Longwood, TX.  We landed in Longwood, which was a very tiny airport and weren't allowed to get off the plane.  We got gas and then had to sit on the tarmac for about 45 minutes, at which time we were cleared to go back to Dallas.  When we got back to Dallas, we had to circle again for some time before we could land and once we landed we couldn't taxi to the airport because they were so busy.  Apparently the storm had prevented any activity for 6 hours.  In the meantime, our flight to Las Vegas had also been delayed, which we were thankful for or we would have missed it.  It meant a dash through the airport and immediate boarding onto that plane, as it was leaving 30 minutes after we landed.
Soon we were back in the air and had an uneventful flight to Las Vegas.

Here we are approaching the city.  We landed and had to wait some time for our shuttle to the hotel.  It was 11:30pm there, 2:30 am in our time.  We were tired, hungry (Hadn't eaten anything but airplane pretzels since lunch time!) but glad to arrive!

The next morning, we picked up our rental car and headed for Utah!
We made a detour to Hoover Dam along the way.

 It's enormous and can't be captured in a photo!

 This is the river side of the dam.

Here is the reservoir side. It was an amazing thing to see.


We also stopped at Lake Mead.

 The colors in the rock and the blue lake behind it were so pretty!

 We were amazed by the size of the boulders in the area.

Another lovely place, and this was just the beginning!