Back to the Utah desert

It took us until this year to make it back to our long favorite vacation. We'd been talking about returning to the Utah desert since our last trip in 2023, but life has a way of filling up the calendar before you notice, and somehow more than four years slipped by. But Jeff doesn't let those conversations stay theoretical, and when he started pushing for us to carve out real time together before diving into a family gathering in Hurricane, I knew we'd actually go.

He was right to push. We'd both been buried in the Mapache renovation for months. Jeff wanted a few days that belonged to just us, before we folded ourselves into a house full of Miramontes energy. So that's what we did.

Leaving on a Friday, Chasing Escalante

We left Friday evening, later than planned, the way most good trips start. The drive to Ogden was mostly dark highway after a dinner at solid Chinese spot in Burley. We stayed the night there and picked things back up early the next morning, pointing the car south toward Escalante.

Escalante is small and unhurried, but it sits at the edge of some genuinely wild country. We used it as our base for the next stretch of the trip, which worked out well since Capitol Reef and the petrified wood site we wanted to see were both within reach.

Pedro Manuel at Hickman Bridge in Capitol Reef National Park.

Capitol Reef, Seen for the First Time

Neither of us had been to Capitol Reef National Park before, and it surprised me in a way the more famous Utah parks sometimes don't, mostly because so few people talk about it. The park is built around a hundred-mile wrinkle in the earth's crust called the Waterpocket Fold, and driving through it feels like reading a cross-section of geologic time. We kept the visit brief, more of an introduction than a deep dive. We walked a short trail, stood in front of the Fremont petroglyphs—one of our favorite activities together—for a while, and let the scale of the place sink in before moving on.

The setting sun in Devil’s Garden, Utah.

Riding Through Memory: Jeff's Motorcycle Routes

Some of the roads we drove that day weren't new to Jeff. He'd ridden through parts of this same stretch of southern Utah on a few motorcycle trips with a friend from Boulder, Colorado. He kept pointing things out as we passed, a bend in the road, a particular overlook, the kind of landmarks that only mean something if you've been there on two wheels.

It's part of why he'd wanted to come back here with me specifically. He'd adventured through this country once already and loved it enough to want to share it, not just show me photos or describe it secondhand but actually to put me in the passenger seat of the same landscape. That kind of invitation says more than most declarations do. Plus we got to see more of what Jeff missed in prior trips, like spending the evening at Devil’s Garden just outside of Escalante—of which both Jeff and I didn’t know existed.

Spectacular petrified wood along the Rainbow trail at Petrified Wood State Park in Utah.

Petrified Wood State Park: Small Specimens, Big Payoff

One of the quieter highlights of the trip was our stop at a petrified wood state park near Escalante. It's an easy place to underestimate from the parking lot, but the richness of what's scattered across the trails caught both of us off guard. Chunks of fossilized wood, some small enough to hold, others embedded in the hillside, show off colors you don't expect from rock: deep reds, ochres, even streaks of purple where minerals replaced the original wood fiber millions of years ago.

There's a particular kind of reward in finding these specimens on your own, scanning the ground as you walk rather than reading about them in a visitor center. We spent longer there than we'd planned, which seems to be a theme with this trip.

Jeff and Pedro Manuel at the Moss Cave trail area in Bryce Canyon National Park.

Bryce Canyon: Hoodoos and a First Look

Bryce Canyon National Park was the other first for us. We arrived mid-morning with a few grey clouds about and chill that invited me to put on my cozy gaban. We started at the Moss Cave area. And oh, boy, it was a treat—the small sandstone valley instantly hugged both of us and we were in awe.

Later, we made our way to into the actual park, and it's hard to overstate how different it feels from Capitol Reef. Where Capitol Reef is quiet and layered, Bryce is dramatic and almost otherworldly, the Amphitheater of hoodoos glowing orange and pink—the whole canyon looked like it was lit from within under those same grey clouds.

Standing at the rim, looking down at thousands of these spindly rock formations, it was easy to understand why Bryce draws people back again and again. We meandered our way into the Amphitheater via the Navajo trail. The trail felt so short. We were both distracted with new visual and sensory treats around every bend.

We found some good inspiration for our house’s landscaping at a coffeehouse lot in Escalante.

Landscaping Inspiration We Weren't Looking For

We'd silently made a deal with ourselves before this trip: no renovation talk. Mapache had taken over enough of our lives already, and this was supposed to be a break from decision fatigue incurred by the renovation. But newly formed habits don't disappear just because you tell them to.

Somewhere walking around the town of Escalante, we started noticing the native plants: the hardy sagebrush, the twisted junipers, the way certain grasses seemed to thrive in soil that looked almost too dry to support anything. We couldn't help but think about our property in Hailey, and how much more resilient a native-inspired landscape could be compared to what we'd been planning. By the time we reached Bryce, we'd both quietly accepted that we weren't entirely off the clock. We just let ourselves enjoy the ideas instead of fighting them.

Family Time in Hurricane

From Bryce, we made our way to Hurricane, where the Miramontes family had gathered. This part of the trip had a completely different rhythm than the parks. Instead of quiet overlooks, it was overlapping conversations, kids running between rooms, and the particular chaos of a house that's too full in the best way.

We hopped between siblings over the course of the visit, catching up on the small stuff that doesn't always make it into phone calls: a new boyfriends, a sibling’s health, someone's struggles with kids that makes a house renovation seem easy. There was plenty of food, a few buzzy drinks passed around in the evening, and that specific kind of ease that only comes from sharing space with people who've known you a long time.

Coming Home With More Than Photos

By the time we left Hurricane and pointed the car back north, I understood why Jeff had pushed so hard for this trip. The couple time at the start gave us room to actually be present with each other before the family gathering asked something different of us. And somewhere in between hoodoos and petrified wood, we found both a reconnection and a few new ideas for the Hailey property we hadn't gone looking for.

We're already talking about the next trip back. This time, I don't think it'll take two years.

Summer of renovation

The upper level stripped in early june 2026.

This summer, Jeff and I dove headfirst into renovating our home—a project we're calling Mapache. Neither of us had done anything like this before. What followed was four months of measuring rooms by hand, agonizing over floors, trying to communicate with contractors without accidentally being a nuisance, and spending an average of four hours making a single decision. It’s been a lot. It’s been worth it.

I came into the project knowing almost nothing about home renovation. I can talk to you about kerning and color theory all day, but electrical load plans? Kitchen cabinetry specs? The difference between a soffit and a fascia? I was starting from scratch—and the house wasn't about to hold my hand.

That said, I didn't wait for summer to begin. I started measuring the house back in February, long before a single wall came down, working up renovation spec plans that would eventually reach Version 5. By the time the dust literally started flying, I had months of planning behind me. What I didn't have was a cleared house. Jeff's mother's belongings weren't fully moved out until early May, which meant I spent a few days off hauling items to a rented dumpster—solo—while the demolition crew had already started on the other end. There's something both absurd and clarifying about that image: me dragging boxes out the front while a crew worked through the back. Project Mapache, from the very beginning, did not wait for convenient timing.

Getting to know the house, inch by inch

The first thing I discovered was that Mapache had no floor plans. None. So before I could sketch a single layout or start placing furniture in my head, I had to measure the house myself—every corner, every window cutout, every span of wall between door frames.

It took days. I crawled around with a tape measure, noting dimensions in a notebook that quickly became a chaotic but oddly precious document. Wall-to-wall in the main bedroom. Distance from window edge to corner. The depth of the kitchen alcove. Every segment told me something about how the house was put together. And as tedious as it was, something unexpected happened: I started to really see the place. The layout that felt modest at first glance was actually quite considered. Rooms flowed sensibly. Natural light landed in the right spots. The house had thought put into it—and getting intimate with it that way gave me a genuine appreciation for what we were working with, limitations and all.

The part where our budget assumptions got humbled

I'll be honest about money, because I think people don't talk about it plainly enough: the costs were a regular source of low-to-high grade anxiety. Every decision has had a dollar sign attached to it, and the numbers added up faster than we expected.

One of the early surprises came when we went looking for vinyl wood plank flooring—our original plan, chosen practicality and price. Turns out, local installers simply didn't carry it. The options that emerged through our search led us, somewhat unexpectedly, to engineered hardwood walnut. Which is gorgeous. And also not what we had budgeted for. We made the call, and we don't regret it, but that pivot reminded me early on that renovation has a way of quietly but quickly rewriting your spreadsheets.

We also made a deliberate choice to support local contractors, even when their quotes ran higher than outside options. That felt important to us. Supporting the community that's supported us isn't just a feel-good idea—it's something we genuinely believe in. Still, writing some of those checks required a deep breath and a moment of quiet acceptance.

Kitchen cabinetry progress in early september 2026.

Learning an entirely new language

I didn't know how to read a lighting plan before this summer. I do now. Electrical circuits, junction boxes, the logic of three-way switches—I absorbed it all out of necessity, Googling furiously between contractor conversations and asking probably too many clarifying questions.

Color scheming the whole house was its own extended exercise. I'd tape sample strips to the wall and live with them for days, watching how they shifted from morning light to evening lamplight. Kitchen cabinetry involved more decisions than I thought a row of boxes and doors could possibly require: door profile, finish, hardware placement, interior organization. Each choice connected to the next one.

And then there was the landscaping. Jeff has more gardening experience than me, but the garden spaces at Mapache genuinely excite me. My goal is to get at least 50% of the plantings to Idaho Zone 4 native or naturalized species—plants that belong here, that can survive a Wood River Valley winter without being coddled, and that give back to local pollinators. It's early days on that front, but I've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of dreaming—really excited to keep bees.

On decisions: Four hours per item on average

I tracked this at some point, and the math was rather humbling: roughly four hours of research, comparison, and deliberation per major-ish decision. That's not four hours of panic—it's four hours of try to be diligent. I didn't want to choose something we'd resent in five years. I wanted economical choices that would actually last, materials and finishes that would age honestly rather than look dated or wear out early.

Learning to communicate with contractors was its own skill set. These are professionals who've been doing their work far longer than I've been asking questions about it, and I was very aware of that. I tried to come to every conversation prepared—knowing what I wanted, being clear about constraints—without hovering or second-guessing their judgment. It was a balance I'm still refining. Some days I got it right. Some days I probably asked one too many follow-up questions.

Kentucky coffee tree ready for planting in late september 2026.

What's still ahead

We're not done. There are finishing touches to sort, a garden plan to execute, and—something I'm genuinely counting down to—a hot tub installation. That last one feels like a reward for every hour spent measuring doorframes and comparing grout colors.

Here's to Mapache

Jeff, my bubba, thank you for trusting this process with me. For sitting across the kitchen table while I agonized over whether or not the kitchen range hood would work or not. For letting me take six hours to choose a light fixture. For being game for walnut floors when vinyl didn't pan out.

Mapache is turning into something we’re proud of—not because it's perfect, but because every decision in it was made with care, and with you.