Summertime part 2: Lava Hot Springs

After a few weeks of bumming around we were so excited to go to Utah for a while! We decided to celebrate our anniversary/babymoon on the way down by stopping at Lava Hot Springs, where we spent part of our honeymoon. (Pause: Can I just say that it's CRAZY that I've been married a year?! I could and probably should do a whole post about that, but for now suffice it to say that this has been by far the best year ever. I know everyone told me marriage would be wonderful and hard but wow I could not have imagined it being so good. I am crazy about Tom and I feel like that just grows more and more as we experience challenges and changes. I am oh so blessed to be his wife!)

Lava was so much fun! Tom and I are very simple people, we realized again. And we love it that way! We didn't do much (I'm a little bit slower and not as adventurous these days and can't exactly tube the river or get in the hot springs like I normally would!), but it was so nice to just get away. Lava is such a quaint little town! We love it so much. While we were there we walked all around the town, visited the museum, watched America Ninja Warrior (does anyone else love that show like we do?!), ate at the Thai food place that we're crazy about, got square ice cream (famous in Lava), and more. It was the perfect getaway!

If anyone goes to Lava, you have to check out the Sunken Gardens! It's a hidden treasure that we discovered on our honeymoon as we were walking home from dinner at the Thai Food place. It's beautiful!

My cute husband enjoying his ice cream cone :)

Those are the only pictures I didn't put on Instagram that I find worth emailing to myself and downloading. We stayed at the Lava Home Hotel, which was a first for us. Not that we're experts or anything but we've now stayed at three different places in our two trips there. Our favorite was the Riverside Inn, where we stayed for a night on our honeymoon, just in case you're looking for recommendations.

One of my favorite things about Tom is how simple things are with him. I know I mentioned it before, but I seriously love it. We can have just as much fun being poor as we would with a lot of money, which is pretty great cause I get the feeling we'll be on the former end of that for a while (thank you upcoming grad school!). Our honeymoon was nothing lavish but it was the best trip of my life, and this trip to Lava was a great reminder of that. For breakfast we had yogurt and granola that we brought from home and mixed it with peaches we bought at the local market and sat by the river to enjoy it. I think that the mentality that a lot of people have that everything has to be a big huge expensive deal is...well it's not for us, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And I'm really grateful for that.