Shinneyboo Creek Resort

We love Shinneybook Creek Resort. I found this resort while looking for Bed and Breakfast's in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We first went here in April 2007 and Andrew ended up proposing to me during that trip! This resort is made up of 8 individual one room cabins. Each cabin contains a bed, a small kitchenette, a patio with BBQ on it, bathroom, and loft area. The resort is dog friendly and sits on the Yuba River. There's a lot of great hiking to do and just completely relaxing. The resport is about 30 minutes from Truckee and sits just outside of Soda Springs. Whenever we get a free weekend, we love to come to the resort! http://www.shinneyboocreek.com/

Yellowstone and Montana

We were invited to a cousin's wedding in Montana in July 2008 and gladly accepted the invite! Andrew and I decided to take advantage of the wedding location and take a trip to Yellowstone. We flew into Salt Lake City and rented a car. From there, we drove through Jackson Hole, Wyoming and into the Grand Tetons. We were amazed by how gorgeous the park was.

We stopped for a few photos and at Jenny Lake, but were only able to spend a few hours there. We made our way onto Yellowstone National Park where we stopped for a few more pictures on our way into the park.

We checked into our hotel at the Grant Village. The room was very basic, with a bed, bathroom, and balcony. There wasn't anything fancy about the room, but it did the job. We headed to dinner near our hotel and then turned in for the night.

The next morning, we got up with the crazy idea that we would see as much of the park as possible and we did! We went from Grant Village all the way around the park, ended up at Old Faithful. We had dinner in the Old Faithful Inn before heading back to the hotel. We saw so many beautiful things in the park. I'm going to include our favorite pictures, because there were just too many sites to go into detail.

The next day we decided we wanted to go hiking. We planned out where we wanted to go and set out on our hike. The weather was just perfect and we were enjoying our walk. As we got closer to the lake, we noticed some mosquitos. So we stopped and applied bug spray, then kept walking. The closer we got to the lake, the more bugs we noticed, until all of a sudded we were covered in bugs and being eaten alive!!

We were determined to see the lake, so we made a run for it, took some pictures, then ran back out away from the bugs!!

Later in the day we left Yellowstone to head toward Bozeman, Montana. On our way, we passed through Big Sky, Montana, quite possibly one of the prettiest places on earth. While driving through Big Sky, we saw signs for white water rafting. We've both always wanted to try it so we stopped in and made a reservation for the next day.

We continued on to Bozeman and checked into our hotel and caught up with our family that was already there. The next day, we got up bright and early and headed back to Big Sky to white water raft. We don't have any pictures from that trip, but we had so much fun and vowed to go white water rafting as soon as possible!

After rafting, we headed back to the hotel and get ready for the wedding. The wedding took place at a ski resort and the views were breathtaking. We had a great time at the wedding and headed back to Salt Lake City the next day.

Overall, this was one of the best trips we've taken. We loved Yellowstone and can't wait to go back! We hope to make it to Yellowstone in the winter to be able to view the wildlife unobstructed. The downside of this trip were the massive crowds in the park. Other than that, everything was just perfect!

Trip grade: A+

The Bahamas

We chose the Bahamas for our honeymoon. We decided we wanted to eat, drink, and lay on the beach for a week straight, so we naturally decided on an All Inclusive. The Sandals commercials sucked us in and that's where we ended up.

We arrived at the Sandals Royal Bahamian Hotel on April 28th, 2008. Our room wasn't ready, so we checked our luggage, changed into our swimsuits and explored the resort. SRB owns an offshore island that had an outdoor restaurant, a pool, and lot's off areas to lounge around. We spent the morning on the beach taking in the beautiful scenery.

Once our room was ready, we settled in and were in awe of the beautiful view we were met with from our balcony.

We spent our time at the resort laying by either the pool or the beach and relaxing. We can't rave about the food, it was pretty standard. Andrew compared the resort to a cruise ship on land. I've never been on a cruise, so I can't make that comparison. We quickly found that the drinks were made with cheap liquor, so I stuck with mimosas or wine and Andrew drank beer, althoug he hated the Bahamian beer they had.

Our room came stocked with it's own bar and snacks and we always ordered breakfast in our room so we could sit on our patio and take in the view.

We went into Nassau twice while we were there. The first trip took us to the Atlantis resort. We checked out the aquarium, which we found was small and expensive, but loved looking at the fish. The resort itself was beautiful but so expensive. They wanted close to $20 for a slice of pizza and a drink! We ended up having lunch outside of the resort and checked out the shops in the area.

The second time we went into town we went shopping for trinkets and I ended up taking advantage of the tax free shopping and picked up a kate spade handbag and wallet!

The best part of going into town was taking the local bus. It was fun to see the mix of people we encountered along the way.

Overall, we really enjoyed SRB and the Bahamas. The resort was beautiful and we had a good time. The downside was that it was pretty expensive considering we could have gone to the Dominican Republic or Jamaica for half the cost, but we would definitely go back again.

Trip Grade: B

Finally starting a blog!

Welcome to my travel blog! My husband Andrew and I love to travel every chance we get, whether it's a big trip or a weekend getaway. I decided to start this blog to document our many trips and share with everyone our travels! I'm going to start the blog with our first trip as a married couple, the Bahamas, and cover many of the places we've been and continue to add as we visit more places.
Happy reading!
Alicia