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!

Our Yellowstone Vacation, pt 1

We spent a couple of nights of our 4-day Memorial weekend in Yellowstone. This trip we stayed in the north part of the park with home base being a cabin at Mammoth Hot Springs. It had a cute porch and a "backyard" as Hadley called the common grassy area surrounded by a group of cabins.

Although we were in a pretty "humanized" area, there was no shortage of wildlife. There was a colony, or several, of ground squirrels in the yard, including Buster, who lived beneath our porch. He enjoyed Hadley's lost grape and was hoping we'd give him some more food, judging by his paunchy figure. He kept his distance, but did give us a couple of warning calls, which sounded like birds chirping.

The grass was tasty enough for an elk one night,

a curious bison strolled through the next morning (the kids were outside and ran in shouting "Bison! Bison!" when he suddenly appeared next to our car),

and another (or the same?) elk returned the next morning for a little sunlight snooze next to Buster. Did you know that elk sleep like cats all curled up?

On the way to our cabin, we stopped in to stretch our legs at Norris Geyser Basin. (Yellowstone's hottest geyser area)

The kids did pretty well on the boardwalks and were somewhat interested in the steamy, smelly happenings around them.

Hadley really liked the benches that looked like skateboards!

After we checked into our cabin and had some dinner, we took a little stroll through old Fort Yellowstone and the visitor's center. We discovered that elk are everywhere in this village, and there was a hidden playground!

We also learned the difference between antlers and horns

 and what baby owls look like. (See the two, whitish faces in the middle of this tree?)

The next morning, the kids were up at their usual early rising time.  We ate breakfast quietly and left Dad to the cabin while we hiked up the hill behind the cabins. There were some beautiful views from up there!

Then we picked up Dad from the cabin and walked over to Mammoth Hot Springs, which we had seen before, so we didn't feel like we had to see every part of it again. It seemed pretty dry this year, but they said the volume and courses change frequently.