The Great Trip of 2009, Phase 2

My favorite picture from Angel's Landing, in Zion National Park. There was just this random tree, and I fell in love with it. More pictures and details about Angel's Landing to follow.

Our trip had 4 phases. Phase 1 was Yellowstone, and I'm done posting about that. Phase 2 was Utah. Phase 3 was California. And Phase 4 was driving home, which gets its own phase because we spent a whole week doing it. More on Phases 3 and 4 later. Now on to Phase 2.

Phase 2 - Utah

July 12 - 20. Since Utah isn't quite as exciting as Yellowstone (no elk walking by Grandma Thacker's front door), we no longer need to do a daily play-by-play. So I'll hit the highlights.

We went to a Downs family reunion in Midway, UT for one day. Our intention was to get there Saturday, but because we got out of Yellowstone later than expected, we didn't make it there. So we went up Sunday for a few hours. It was good to see everyone. I played my first bocci ball (some lawn game involving balls that you roll through the grass), and won handily. It helped that I was playing Garrett, and I'm pretty sure I could beat Garrett at anything and everything (ha! Take that, Garrett!!).

Timp

On Tuesday we hiked Mt. Timpanogas. I've always wanted to hike it, but I never had the chance to when I lived in Utah. We'd prepared for this hike for months, and I was happy that 1- Rob won the fitness challenge we were doing and hence got to buy new hiking boots, and 2- we finally got to hike it! Plus, we hiked it with a lot of Rob's family, including his Dad who hadn't hiked Timp since he was 10 years old.

The hike had one catch: snow. There was a lot of snow on the trail. Justin claims it wasn't that much snow, but I say differently. The trail was dangerous and I wouldn't EVER hike it again, snow or no snow. While it's fun to climb up rocks, I was NOT happy that the rocks were crumbly and unstable. In fact, I hiked over them saying repeatedly, "This does not make me happy."

Cool things about the hike:

- We saw a moose and a whole herd of mountain goats (2 animals we didn't see in Yellowstone). We even got to see the mountain goats sliding down the snow, in a part where humans were treading carefully. It was awesome.

- Sliding down the "glacier", aka unmelted snow. I'm a chicken and I didn't like the first 20 feet or so. Too steep!! But it was "fun," and if I ever did the hike again (which I already said I wouldn't), I'd slide down the glacier again. Though I'd probably still be a baby about it. Seriously, had they left me til last, I probably would have just hiked back the way I came.

- The waterfalls on the Aspen Grove side!!!! We walked behind a waterfall, we saw flowers growing right in the middle of a waterfall, we walked through waterfalls. Wow. There was one part where, looking up the mountain, it looked paradisaical. I would suggest, instead of hiking up to the top, hiking up to the waterfalls and back down. (There's not much view from the top anyways.)

My brothers and I rated the hike 3 stars out of 5. And they said it only got 3 stars because of the moose and mountain goats. I gave it 3.5, so long as it was clear that I'd still never hike it again.

On Wednesday and Thursday we got to visit some old friends from our BYU era. Thank you for your hospitality Challises and Grovers. We had a great time!

On Friday we were supposed to go to another family reunion, but we scrapped it after my mother scrapped it. We went to Temple Square instead, which was nice. The kids really liked it. My favorite part of Temple Square was watching a video about families and the plan of salvation. It's a tear jerker, though, and Teancom was laying on my lap while I cried. Some tears landed on his face, and he looked up at me and said, "That was you? That's IH-SCUSTing!" I couldn't help but laugh, and I've been saying to myself ever since, "That's IH-SCUSTing!"

We also got to see Garrett's play on Friday. Garrett was the lead in a community play, and I'm glad he did a good job, cause I'm a bad liar. It was fun to go on a date with Rob, and it was a good play. I approve.

(We DIDN'T get to attend Chelsea's wedding or reception on Friday, unfortunately. Too much to do when we visit Utah!! Next time we're coming in January, like we did last time. No one was doing anything in January.)

Angel's Landing

On Saturday I went to Zion National Park with my brothers, Justin and Collin. We hiked Angel's Landing, and I took lots of pictures (no camera on Timp, sorry. It was extra weight, and as it turned out, I barely made it to the top of Timp without the camera. My brother ended up carrying my pack for the last several miles up, else I probably wouldn't have made it. The elevation killed me).

Collin told me that if Angel's Landing wasn't the coolest thing I'd ever done, he'd cut off his own hand at the top. I told Collin that it might not have been the coolest thing EVER, but it was awesome enough that he could keep his hand attached to his arm. He was grateful.

Some pictures from the hike:

There was a little slit in the rocks that we climbed up into. It's off the trail, and it's just a little thing, but it was cool! Here's Justin making it look awesome in this action shot taken by Collin:

Here's me looking awesome in that same section:

And here's Justin in his hero pose. He had just hiked up another slit in the rocks off to the side of the trail:

See if you can make out this picture:

It's looking straight up the rock face. Yes, those plants are growing horizontally out of the rock.

We kept trying to get a good picture of the ridge we hiked up to get to the top. It was hard to do (as we proved with 20 useless photographs). This is the best we did:

It's the model. Justin is pointing to the top of Angel's Landing, and the hike followed a good part of that ridge. (Can you tell how swollen his hands are, by the way? Our hands got painfully swollen because of the heat. And probably we needed to drink more water, but we thought we were pouring it down us!)

There were chains to help you climb. Some of the passages were merely feet across, and some of them were nearly straight up. Seriously cool. The chains were a comfort mostly, but sometimes they were very useful. I thought it was neat how this chain had rubbed the rock:

Also very cool was this star-shaped hole in the rock wall. We have no idea what it was from, but it was obviously man-made:This was the top of Angel's Landing, viewed from the bottom while waiting for the bus to come (You can't drive through the park yourself, you have to take shuttles. Something about limited parking):And this is me and Justin at the highest point on top of Angel's Landing. We came, we saw...

Some fun memories of the hike:

-Majestic Black Eagles (aka ravens). "Listen! A Majestic Black Eagle calling to her young!" -Justin

-Collin told us there wouldn't be much hiking across sand. As each section ended he would tell us that was the last section. And then there'd be another section. Funny, hiking across the sand on the way back DOWN wasn't that bad.

-Collin also said it was "shade the whole way." Ha ha.

Collin and Justin, hanging out in the last patch of shade on the way back down. They're taking up ALL of that patch of shade:

-At the top a chipmunk tried to get into my pack. I yelled at it and nearly kicked it. Yes, I love animals.

-Justin walked to the edge of Angel's Landing, which sloped away gradually and unimpressively. He says he Hanged 10 off the edge. In the meantime Collin and I debated how long we should wait before we declared him dead and left. We were counting down from 30 when he showed up again.

-Spotting the tracks of a wild Samba. We tracked it for a while, but we never actually saw it.

-Wild Lives is dangerous. Seriously. Watch out for those Wild Lives.

In conclusion, Angel's Landing was TOTALLY worth doing. I would hike it 100 times before I did Timp once.

On Monday we left Utah for California. My brother Justin helped me make the 15-hour-drive. The DVD player didn't work, so we did the trip without any movies. Before you feel sorry for us, let me tell you that it was a very pleasant trip and the kids were extremely well behaved.

Though it was funny. I tried to convince Elijah that without movies we had more time to look at the BEAUTIFUL scenery. (We drove to CA across I-80. If you haven't ever done that, let me tell you that it's horribly ugly. Mostly Nevada desert. Ugh.) He looked around and said, "This isn't beautiful! There's no flowers!"

We arrived in California on July 20th around 8:30 p.m.