USA Holiday

The end of March and early April has been busy as we left Amman on Friday the 18th of March for a holiday in Colorado and Utah. The travel there took a whole day flying to London, onto Philadelphia, then finally to Denver. We were traveling for more than 25 hours!

The weekend before that Allen ran the Dead Sea to Red Sea in a relay team. He said he will never do it again, just like when he ran his first marathon, but I think he might be telling the truth this time.

 Allen with the kids after running for 14 and 3/4 hours

The D2R Fat and Furious team

Back to the holiday - when we arrived, to snow, we spent the weekend with our friends catching up, eating lots and having one or two beverages...

We then went to Utah and explored Arches for 3 days and visited Canyonlands for the first time - an excellent experience with lots of walking that our two lovely children enjoyed.

Arches Day 1

We stopped at Balanced Rock Arches on our first day in Utah after a 6 hour drive

We made it to Delicate Arch after a 1 hour hike

Canyonlands Day 2

 We found another good arch

 and views of the canyons

plus a great selfie

 then visited a very strange site - could be a meteor strike

Arches Day 3

The start of the long hike in Arches

 enjoying the precipice holding onto the kids for safety (!)

to get to the Double Arch - the walk was more impressive...

 The end of the 7-mile hike

Arches Day 4

 Our final day in Utah

The Windows

A proper double Arch!

The whole family...

The next week was spent in Denver exploring old haunts and catching up with other friends.

The kids had an Easter Egg Hunt on our old Street finding eggs in the snow

It was great to see John and Sherri in their beautiful new home and meet their daughter Claire. We had some lovely meals with Mindy and met up with old neighbours Ken and Kelly. On our last day before heading to Breckenridge we took Jacob and Abi, Shawna, Will and Mallory from our old street to a trampoline centre.

After too much time following Abi around shops we headed up to Breckenridge for 6 days, skiing for 4 of them, walking around the town on our rest day, and tubing one morning.

 First day skiing

and the first beer in Breckenridge

 Recovering from the 2nd day in an outdoor pool and hot-tub!

 Happy Hour with a great view of the Mountains

 3rd day on the slopes

 enjoying beautiful runs with great views

 A day off to go tubing

 and our last day skiing was hampered by blizzards so we spent a lot of time drinking hot chocolate

but Abi went on a Black Run with Allen while the storm was approaching...

The trip back was quicker but no less exhausting. However, it was helped by having reclining seats on the flights...

and luckily we got to use BA's lounges as well.

A great trip - thank you to all our Denver friends for looking after us.