Wolves at Dawn, Stars at Midnight: Our Summer Road Trip

Just got back from a road trip across Utah, Wyoming, and Montana.

We covered thousands of miles, but it’s the moments in between that are sticking with me.

One morning before sunrise, I heard wolves howling.Not in the distance — close.It was just the three of us, standing in the cold, with no other soul in sight. The kind of silence where every sound feels louder. And that sound — wild, raw, ancient — stayed with me.

Most nights, we stayed up late for the stars. Around 1 AM, we’d be outside, looking up. We captured the Milky Way with our camera. And even a faint glimpse of Andromeda — something about that made the night feel endless and humbling.

We did real hikes. Three miles. Six miles. With a five-year-old.She walked with tired feet, told us stories the whole way, picked wildflowers, and somehow had energy to kayak on a completely still lake like she’d done it a hundred times before.

We dug fossils with our bare hands. Not just any fossil — a 60-million-year-old one, still embedded in the rock. There’s something surreal about holding a piece of Earth that old, knowing it was here before any of us.

Arches National Park didn’t feel like rock — it felt alive. The wind, the shapes, the silence… it almost felt like the land was watching us instead of the other way around.

None of this was curated.It was dusty. Cold. Sweaty. Exhausting.We had sunburns. We forgot what day it was. We fell asleep the second our heads hit the pillow.

These were the kind of days that made everything slow down.The kind that quietly remind you—this is it. This is what matters.

Not the perfect itinerary. Not the filtered snapshots. But the tiny, soul-anchoring moments in between. Watching the sky change color. Holding your child’s hand a little tighter. Breathing a little deeper.

If you’ve been longing for something slower, something real—I hope these photos and words meet you there. No grand lessons, just a gentle nudge to live more fully in the now.

Thanks for being here. For witnessing a piece of my heart.

— Nani

Frisco, TX