Bryce Canyon

On our first morning at the cabin, we all headed to Bryce Canyon about 45 minutes away. It was a pleasant temperature at the visitor center and more forest-y than I was expecting. I guess that's what you get at 8000 feet of elevation.

After a quick spin around the vc and an early PBJ lunch, we hopped on the shuttle to see more of the park. Our stop was at Sunset Point, and the views were spectacular!

We decided to do a short 1.3 mile hike (Navajo Loop Trail) down into the hoodoos, and we could tell from the overlook that most of the 550-ft descent would be in the first part of the trail.  This picture is looking back up at the numerous switchbacks we just came down, and we all know that what goes down must go back up at the end.  Yikes!

The trail made use of some tunnels to cut through the huge walls of hoodoos, which the kids enjoyed. (We even got to drive thru a couple of rock tunnels on the road to Bryce.)

The last switchbacks led to Wall Street, Bryce Canyon's only slot canyon. It was an impressively narrow stretch between rock walls that provided some much appreciated shade.

Can you tell that I had a serious grip on Hadley's arm the whole way down? Ha! No Yellowstone repeats were going to happen here, if I could help it!

How does a tree this large take root in an inch of dust and solid rock?  Pretty amazing!

Once we were at the bottom of the canyon, it was much hotter.  But there was still an impressive amount of wildlife and trees thriving in this dusty, dry place. Such a pretty contrast between the evergreen trees and bright orange rocks!

The way back up was many more switchbacks with a gradual incline thrown in between for some different views. Climbing up 550 feet at the high elevation was a challenge! Kudos to John who did it with 30-lb+ kid on his shoulders!  And Owen was a champ all the way by himself, though he did say he was done with hiking for the day.  :)

 The hoodoo on the very left below is called Thor's hammer (not hard to see why).

We met up with Oma at the lodge, and John and I did a quick walk to Sunrise Point for a different vantage point. I was hyper-aware of the ledge while trying to take our selfie!

Then we decided to head back to the cars for more food and to drive to the end of the park road. Our first stop was at Natural Bridge, which was well worth a peak. It's hard to tell here, but it spans over 85-feet!

This is what it looks like when you are sub-3-feet tall. Let's just say that someone has a lot of faith in guard rails!

The end of the road was Rainbow Point, which curves back around to look at the whole formation from the south. A truly amazing landscape that is difficult to capture on film!

We were all dusty, tired, and ready to head back to the cabin by that point, so that's what we did! All in all, Bryce is worth a stop if you are in the area, and really not very crowded for a national park.

A Utah Cabin in the Woods

When I picture southern Utah, I see lots of dirt, rocks, and hot sunlight.  While that is somewhat true, we booked a cabin on top of a cool, forested mountain for 5 nights, which was a nice surprise. Even the drive in was impressive. (I think this was related to Cedar Breaks National Monument.)

Bonus: Oma and Papa met us there! Our cabin was just outside Duck Creek Village, and was really a beautiful location. There were three floors, a partially covered deck, and a full kitchen to make our stay comfortable for a few days. Here's Owen trying to launch some rockets in the driveway.

Unfortunately, it looked like there was about to be a housing boom there with all of the lots for sale and construction underway, which will totally change the privacy level there. But Owen had fun exploring the cleared trees next door.

Just down the street there was even a "resort" with a restaurant and playground.

We may have had barfing children on 3 of the 5 days, but we still managed to see some of the awesome local sights. (Thanks for kid-sitting, Oma!) Just a couple of miles down the road was this tranquil green Aspen-Mirror Lake.

And just a few miles beyond that was another hidden gem, Navajo Lake. We started off on a trail because of a sign that said something was 1.5 miles away, but we ended up hiking probably about 10 miles all the way around the lake. 

The lake loop trail was in need of some maintenance; we lost count of how many trees we had to climb over or under. This was supposed to be a mountain biking trail! Yikes!

But it did have some picturesque scenery, deer, and varying terrain from lava rocks and pine forest to aspen groves and marshy grasses. We even came across a patch of snow!

Our trips to national parks will be in subsequent posts.  Stay tuned!

All I Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten

This 6-year old has finished up kindergarten and is excited to move up with the big kids next year! This last week was parties every day, but he really did learn a lot over the year. Chief among them, he can read!! He loves to read, especially books about Star Wars, Fly Guy, and Wimpy Kid. I have to laugh when he can breeze over "Rebel Alliance", but struggles with "fight". He aced their 88 sight words, enjoys simple addition and subtraction, and has pretty nice handwriting. His favorite class was PE, but he also looked forward to art and science. For the last two weeks, he's even biked himself to school and chained his bike to the bike rack! But, make no mistake, we are ready for summer!!

I love this picture they took at his class party! Our little future scientist! He said he wants to be an engineer, but not sit at a computer all day. ;)

Our Yellowstone Vacation, pt 2

After the Hot Springs, we packed up lunch and headed east in search of waterfalls. Specifically, we were looking for "family-friendly" Wraith Falls, which our guidebook said was just east of this Lava Creek picnic spot.

We started on the trail, which seemed easy enough at first, though there were a lot of downed trees to clamber over and under...

But the trail just got more and more ridiculous for the kids to maneuver on safely. Here's an over/under part of the trail,

And eventually it just ended in a rock field.  

We figured our guidebook was out of date, and told the kids these were the falls! Then we turned around back to the car.

Just a short drive down the road was the turn-off to Wraith Falls! D'oh! It was much more family-friendly and just as the guidebook described! Note to self...

Then we pressed on to see the Roosevelt Lodge, only to discover a sign that said it was still closed for the season. Disappointed, we drove on to revisit Tower Falls.  Wow - what a crowd! We couldn't even find a parking spot, so we turned around to Calcite Springs overlooking the river, which was still spectacular. Doesn't it look like a fake painting in the background?  So beautiful!

Feeling a little defeated after the crowds and mis-hikes, we opted to return to the cabin for a quiet afternoon respite. It was pretty perfect just to sit on the porch, reading a book, drinking a beer, eating snacks, and watching the kids and ground squirrels play. For dinner, we headed north to Gardiner to see the famous Roosevelt Arch and get some non-park (i.e. reasonably priced) grub to fill our tummies.

The next morning we leisurely ate breakfast in our cabin and packed up to head home. Our last hike in the park was slated to be at Sheepeater Cliffs, which are pretty interesting hexagonal columns of basalt that seem to be stacked like blocks. The kids enjoyed watching the marmots and chipmunks crawling over the rocks.

Then we started a simple, flat hike next to the creek, but we hadn't gotten more than 100 feet or so down the trail when thunk! Hadley had slipped on a rock and landed on another right on her forehead! Talk about blood! It was quite a gash! Dad took off one of his shirts to staunch the bleeding, while I took off for the car to get first-aid supplies. In the commotion, a fellow hiker came forward with some medical/trauma experience and helped us to clean and assess her. We band-aided her up and headed back to the clinic at Mammoth, 20 minutes away, since we were pretty sure she needed stitches.

Of course, it was Memorial Day, and when we arrived at the clinic a large sign informed us that it was closed and to come back tomorrow! I ran to the visitor center and asked a ranger if there was anywhere else we could go. She got on the phone and handed it to me to finish giving details of the incident to a lady (without much other info to me!). At the end of the phone conversation, I realized that they were sending an ambulance! I guess that was the only option on holiday. We waited a few minutes and two guys in an ambulance arrived. They reminded us of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee though! Looking like they were about 23 years old, shoes untied, belt radio cord caught on the seat when exiting the vehicle, referring to the manual A LOT, not knowing where pediatric medical supplies were, struggling with attaining her vitals, etc. All while blocking some of the visitor center parking. Oh boy...  They did not make me feel warm and cozy that they'd be able to place successful stitches on my daughter's face! (Prayers to anyone that was more seriously injured that day!) Sure enough they wanted to ambulance us to a Livingston, Montana hospital, which was about an hour north. We pressed them that we'd prefer to head south towards home and had to sign a release to that effect, but 40 minutes later, we were on our way!

Once we were back in cell coverage, we searched for open/insured clinics and ended up in Rexburg, 30 minutes from home. What an agonizing car trip that was! But she was happily watching the iPad (to keep her awake), and we kept reminding her to keep her head up. The doctor in Rexburg seemed competent and said the stitches (7 of them!) seemed to come together well. We are crossing our fingers that she won't have an eye-catching scar there for the rest of her life. What a memory!