My wife and I have never been very good about taking vacations.  I’ve always been somewhat jealous of my mother and her husband who block out a week each fall to get away to the mountains and spend their time doing absolutely nothing at all.  To some extent, I think that I would be bored just relaxing for a week, but at times, I think maybe I just haven’t discovered it yet.

The closest that Jen and I have come to taking a vacation since our honeymoon has been going out of town for a destination race, either a marathon or long distance triathlon.  She eventually told me that she was going on vacation this year, and if I didn’t participate, she would go without me.  So, off to Vegas we went.

It was an excellent choice of places to go and there is a ton of stuff to do that is within a day of Vegas.  We went skydiving in Jean and walked around the Red Rock Canyon National Park.  We headed over to Arizona and spent a day hiking down from the south rim of the Grand Canyon to the Colorado River and  back.

David skydiving in Jean, Nevada, November 2011

In the future, I think all of our vacations will be centered on going somewhere that neither of us have seen before.  We’re really fond of National Parks and really were amazed at the scenery in Grand Canyon National Park.  We were fortunate in that the temperatures had dipped down into single digits and there were 2-3″ of snow on the ground at the Canyon.  While the first and last hours of the hike were a little more challenging, it made for a beautiful backdrop while we were there; overall it was totally worth it.

David in the Grand Canyon, November 2011