October Adventures

Halloween Nights

For Miciah's birthday "party" we went to Parky's Farm for Halloween Nights.  In the past it's been a cute little family-friendly venue.  A magic show.  A hay maze.  A hay ride.  This year, though, they added a TON of stuff, so it was a little more Carnival-ish.  Still fun.  Still family-friendly.

We didn't get many pictures of the night.  Cause it was, you know, dark outside.  Here are 2:

The girl in blue is Olivia, one of Miciah's best friends.  We were glad that she was with us, cause she entertained Miciah.  They spent the entire time doing playground clap games while we were waiting in lines.  It was great.

Maysville, KY

The next day, Miciah's actual birthday, both of the kids had soccer games.  THIS IS THEIR LAST WEEK OF SOCCER!!!!!  Not that I'm excited about that.

After the soccer games we drove down to Maysville, KY.  We took a new route and that was a disaster and I was mad at Rob for over 24 hours.  Over something so silly.  Go me.  But the party there was great.  We took those family pictures you saw in the last post.  And these were our hosts, B and R:

He's my uncle.  He stayed at our house for just under 2 years, so he's our favorite of favorites.  We like it when we get to see them.

This is my mom with 3 of her siblings and her father.  A nice family resemblance, right?

B and R made some excellent food and a nice cake for Miciah.  Usually she gets about nothing for her birthday, so she was thrilled to be the center of the show.

Fall Hike

The weather has been AMAZING here, so we took my Mom on our annual Fall Hike.  We go to a beautiful local park and go on a half mile hike.  It's perfect for the kids and their abilities / attention spans.  This was the near-continual view of Elijah:

And again:

I have more, trust me.

Every year we whistle with acorn tops.  Miciah wanted to make a video to explain how it works.  Here it is:



She also tried to teach this trick to everyone she saw.  It's a neat thing, and it's super easy to do, actually.

Here's Elijah with his shirt full of acorns and acorn tops.  The boy has a collecting fetish:

We also do Billy Goat's Gruff every year, on one of the many bridges.  This year I decided to get it on video, since it's such a fun family thing.



Cute, right?  (Yes, Tamra.  It's super cute!)

I have a ton more pictures from the day.  This was one of my favorites:

Tank, throwing a fit because we wouldn't pick him up.  I actually accidentally got it on video, cause I didn't realize my camera was on that setting.  I should post it, cause it's so obvious how fake the crying is.  Seriously.

Monkey bars!

Etc.

Numbers from The Great Trip of 2009

Number the Days

37 days - days of the trip (including the start and end days)

45 days - days of the initially proposed trip

8 days - days we cut off the end of the trip

6 days - days spent in Yellowstone

9 days - long days spent in the car (a long day is defined here as 8 hours or more)

3 days - longest stretch of consecutive long days in the car (our first 3 days of the entire trip)

8 days - days spent in Utah

12 days - days spent in California


Number the Hikes

3 - hikes taken

10,243 ft. - elevation of Mt. Washburn in Yellowstone National Park (hike #1)

11,749 ft. - elevation of Mt. Timpanogos (hike #2)

1,488 ft. - elevation CHANGE on the Angel's Landing hike (hike #3), over about 2 1/2 hours

5 - people who have fallen and died hiking Angel's Landing since 1997

47th - Mt. Timpanogos's place on the "Most Prominent Mountain in the Contiguous United States" list

0% - percentage of people who went on the longer Mt. Washburn hike who said they'd do it again

100% - percentage of people who went on the shorter Mt. Washburn hike who said they'd do it again


Number the Miles

13 - states traveled through (or stayed in, or both)

6,220 - total miles traveled

thousands - number of bugs killed by our van

5 - Yellowstone postcards sent home to friends

2 - packages sent home from Elijah to Andrew

1 - package sent home from Elijah to Daddy

100% - percentage of strangers that the kids told all about our summer trip


Yellowstone and its Geysers

$120 - about how much we spent on a campsite in Yellowstone (for 6 days of camping)

2 - National Parks attended

3,468 square miles - size of Yellowstone National Park

75% - percentage of the world's geysers that Yellowstone contains

90 - 184 feet - height of Old Faithful

92 - minutes between Old Faithful eruptions (approximately)

150 - 200 feet - height of Grand Geyser

7 - 8 hours - average interval between Grand Geyser eruptions

over 300 feet - height of Steamboat Geyser

4 - years since last Steamboat Geyser eruption (on May 23, 2005)


Yellowstone and its Animals

2300 to 4500 - number of bison in Yellowstone National Park

15% - percentage of bison that live in Yellowstone, of all the North American herds

less than 1% - percentage of bison that live in Yellowstone, when livestock herds are included

400,000 - number of bison raised as livestock (and then, likely, served to you on a plate)

2 - mornings an elk was inches from our cabin site, and hence stalled our departure (totally worth the delay!)

124 - number of wolves in the park in 2008

47 - decrease in the number of wolves from 2007 to 2008

0 - number of moose, wolves, and mountain goats that we saw in Yellowstone


Ending Numbers

12 days - after the trip was fully over, days before Miciah was asking to go back to Yellowstone

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.

September 23, 2000 – Hike to Upper Silver Lake

September 23, 2000 – Hike to Upper Silver Lake

I wanted to go to Upper Silver Lake, where Ruben died. I had wanted to go before the snow started in the mountains and I was running out of time. I realized that it had to be this weekend or not until spring. So I convinced Rob to go with me. Originally I had another person going with me, Cathy, one of my roommates, but decided I wanted to go with him alone. I felt I could trust him at this point, and besides I couldn’t kiss Rob with Cathy around.

Rob probably should have said he couldn’t go. He had a test on Monday, later on Saturday was the BYU game and I think he had something on Sunday as well. A busy weekend. But he’s a nice guy, like I said, so he took me (I remember now that he hesitated at first cause it was a bad weekend, so I pulled out that my brother had drowned up there to make him feel bad and take me. I had wanted to wait until we got to the top to tell him, but I really wanted him to come and share that moment with me). I was a weekend too late and it had already started snowing. His poor ’89 LaBaron had a hard time getting up there. You don’t have to off-road it to get up there, but close. The car made it and we made the hike. We stopped every now and then to kiss and cuddle and that was fun. We had the trail to ourselves. We got to the top and I don’t think I told him too many details cause I didn’t know him well yet. He gave me space to think and cry and held me when I wanted it.

We hiked back down and I remember Rob started singing “Anything can happen in the woods. May I kiss you? …” I was FREAKED out. We laugh about this now. But here I am, this young, helpless, little girl compared to Rob and I’ve trusted him enough to bring him up here alone where he could do anything to me that he wants to and he starts singing a creepy song?

Rob: So I didn’t really think about this being creepy. It is a song from the musical Into the Woods that I was a part of in High School. I was trying to be funny. Obviously, it didn’t work.

We got back in to Provo and went to the BYU football game together where we’re cuddling and holding hands and all that. B looked a little confused and not approving. I thought he looked a little jealous that his brother had someone to be with other than him.

Rob: Really, B’s look was because my last conversation with him was one of the days I didn’t really like Tamra. I think I had decided to not date her anymore or something. His look was one of shock and confusion. Looking back on it, it was a difficult day because I liked Tamra, yet some of those feelings of insecurity came back once I was with her in public. It might have had something to do with her dressing like a boy once again and the fact that Tamra was a little different. I struggled with wondering what other people were thinking of me, being with her. I know it sounds dumb but it was true. I believe this is one of the reasons I dated Rachel B in High School. It was a preparation for some of the things I needed personally to overcome.

written Spring 2006