Hey Everyone ~  Meet Ellen.  She is an expat living in Antalya, Turkey.  Ellen has a passion for music, travel, life abroad and food, oh… and she has a passion for writing.  You can follow her blog at:  http://www.elleninturkey.com/  Lucky for us, Ellen has shared a traditional lamb dish, Ali Nazik.

Over the past couple of years we have not been able to travel as often (or as far) as we would have liked; sometimes life’s moments take precedence.

Ireland, is very much on our “must see” list.  I don’t know when we’ll get there, but we will.  One of the things I love about owning a Bed & Breakfast Inn is the connection between Innkeepers world wide.  It is a vast community and I’ve never come across an Innkeeper who wasn’t willing to lend a hand, answer a question or in this case offer a specialty of the house recipe. 

One of the things we noticed almost immediately at Bryce Canyon National Park was the small trees growing on top of some of the hoodoos and we were pretty amazed by that.  How did the trees seemingly grow out of stone?

Bryce Canyon’s Rainbow Point.  At the risk of repeating myself when I said I was pretty sure Zion National Park was not like anything else I’ve ever seen, I think I have to take it a step further by telling you that it may in fact be Bryce Canyon National Park that takes the prize.  Don’t get me wrong, I fell in love with the sheer magnitude of Zion, but Bryce is another world.

We are home again, it was an awesome road trip.  We left Springdale, UT late Wednesday morning because we just couldn’t seem to tear ourselves away.  Our first night on the road was back to Vegas, then Reno, then Ashland. 

The Tunnel.  One of the tidbits I read before coming to Zion National Park was that if you don’t do anything else, you must drive the tunnel.  I thought, “Okay, we’ll drive the tunnel” having no idea what that meant.  This tunnel is like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Does anyone not love flan?  It’s smooth, creamy and delicious, right? I received the following two recipes from two lovely women from different parts of the world.  After receiving the recipes, I started wondering about the origins of the yummy dessert.

Rainy Days in Zion National Park. We awoke this morning to p-o-u-r-i-n-g rain so the only reasonable thing to do was roll over and go back to sleep, which we did.  It goes without saying that we got a late start to the day, but we’re here for seven days so we are in no hurry.

Whenever we travel to/through the state of Nevada I can’t help but relive a few childhood memories.  I grew up in a blink of a town known as Gardnerville, which is about 45 minutes south of Reno.