Epic Spring Break Adventures: Parowan, Hoover Dam, & Calico Ghost Town

Over spring break we had the chance to go on a little adventure. Our spring break was pretty long this year - our kids were out of school for 12 days. When I saw how long they were going to be out of school, I texted my sister-in-law Amber the dates. She'd said (maybe to her ultimate regret) that we should find a time to go to California again, and California has just announced that they were starting to re-open, so... we booked it. Amber and I were pretty proud of ourselves for planning a vacation eight weeks ahead of time and then waiting patiently for it to arrive (as opposed to last time, when we planned an insta-vacay because we DEMAND THINGS IMMEDIATELY). 

Amber booked a condo for Sunday through Friday, which meant we had two weekends bookending our trip. Why settle for Sunday through Friday? So Scotty booked us some additional hotel stays and stops on the way to and from Newport Beach. 

We ended up leaving early on Saturday morning. Our first stop was in Parowan, Utah. We ate lunch at a place called Calvario's, which was great! The food was delicious (they had everything from breakfast platters to rolled tacos), and the employees were so friendly. From there we went to the Parowan Gap where we looked for dinosaur tracks and saw some petroglyphs. 

My Mystery Condition was very present on this trip, so hiking around was really hard for me, and I was in a lot of pain. I don't want to spend much time on that, but it definitely brought challenges to traveling. 

From Parowan, we headed toward the Vegas area with plans to stop at Hoover Dam. First we went to a little free museum at a historic hotel in Boulder City. 

Hoover Dam was originally called Boulder Dam

Then we went to the dam. We walked across the dam and went up on the suspension bridge. They aren't doing tours right now due to COVID, but I'm not sure I would have wanted to do a dam tour with four kids anyway (torture for all involved!)

Nicky in front of the dam

Standing in front of the suspension bridge

This was the first time I'd been to Hoover Dam. Scotty thought he had been before, but it turned out, he actually hadn't. As Scotty has gotten older, he's started struggling with heights, so he was a bit disoriented and jittery. He couldn't bring himself to look over the wall down to the bottom of the dam. 

After we saw the dam, we ate dinner at the Chicken Shack on Main Street in Boulder City. Boulder City is a charming little place, and I would like to have spent more time there exploring, but we were trying to pack in way too much (and already had to cut our visit to the Clark County Wetlands Park). While we were eating dinner, we saw a coyote crossing the street, so that was pretty funny. 

We spent that night in Las Vegas, then got up bright and early for more adventures. 

There were a few hotels we wanted to stop at on the strip, but our dreams were bigger than our time window, so we decided to just go to the Bellagio. We've been to Vegas a lot, so it wasn't our kids' first time seeing the Bellagio, but it was our first time without a stroller and with our kids behaving! So that was pretty epic! And none of the girls really remember the Bellagio, so it was all exciting and new to them. They loved the conservatory.

Zoe took my phone and snapped photos of all the flowers

From there, we headed to Yermo, California. We got caught up in spring break traffic, and it ended up taking us two hours longer to get there than we planned. It was brutal, but it was better for us than for Amber who passed through a couple hours after us in even worse traffic. 

In Yermo, we went to Calico Ghost Town. We ended up spending several hours there, which surprised me because I didn't think we'd be there very long. It was bigger than I thought. 

We took a little train ride and did a walking mine tour. The kids did a little craft in one of the shops, and we browsed through all the buildings (most of which are replicas). 

Walk-through mine tour

Doing a craft

The highlight of the Ghost Town was the Mystery Shack, which was absolutely crazy to me. It's a little crooked house built for entertainment, and it messed with my mind so bad. The second I stepped foot inside, I couldn't process anything that was happening. I struggled to stand, let alone walk! I can't even describe to you what the heck happened in that shack because I don't even know! I'm just glad I made it out of there.

Scotty in the Mystery Shack

That night, we rolled into Newport Beach and met up with Tim and Amber at the condos. I was feeling pretty miserable at that point, so I unpacked what was necessary and then went to bed. Everyone else stayed up (or at least tried to stay up - not all the kids made it) to enjoy some Jack in the Box tacos from Door Dash. 

TO BE CONTINUED...