On Friday morning we packed up the car and headed down to Zion's National Park. I had never been there before so I was really excited! We left home around 8:30 am and got to Zion's about 1:30. The kids did great on the drive down and we only needed to stop once for lunch. Once we got there we met Todd's family in the park and took a mini hike up to Weeping Rock.
Here is Everett hiking the trail (excited to be out of the car!)
Kayson lookin studly in his Utes shirt. He loves being outdoors so this hike was perfect for him! Not too long and a really cool ending point.
Man these boys are handsome!! They found a really cool looking spider, orange body with black legs.
After we got back down from that hike we went and let the grandkids play by the river for a bit. The sand there was just like the beach so some of the smaller boys thought they would build sandcastles.
The next morning Todd and I set off to hike The Narrows. We got permits to be able to hike from the top down (which is a much longer hike) so we had to leave at 4:00 am. We drove up the mountain for 2 hours to get to the top. (A HUGE thanks to Kent and Deniece for driving us!) We got to the top to start our hike around 6:30, and boy was is COLD and dark!! We got all bundled up in our jackets, hats, head lamps, and awesome dry pants and socks. The first part of the hike was on dry land weaving down to the river bed. The rest of the 16 mile hike was in the river or on the rocks right out of the river bed. It took us 11.5 hours to hike The Narrows, which is pretty good time. Here are some of our awesome pictures from this amazing adventure!!
Jacob, Keli, Jeff, David, Brit
Todd was our picture taker, I'm so glad he took as many pictures as he did so we could remember just how beautiful and amazing it was.
Todd found a cool cut out in the rock and climbed up for a photo op.
Most of the hike we were surrounded by huge towering cliffs.
Don't you just love our awesome pants/shoes? They really did keep our legs dry and the wet suit socks and shoes kept our toes from freezing in the just above freezing water.
I'm so glad we went this time of year. The fall leaves made it even more beautiful.
Being awesome with our walking sticks.
It was so cool to see all the different cut outs and the ways the rocks were shaped by the wind/water.
The crew (minus Todd, he's taking the picture) Jeff, Brittany, David, Robby, Wendy, Jacob, Keli.
Todd and his Dad.
At one point in our hike our path was blocked by fallen trees on top of a waterfall. We had to find another way around it and found this awesome path between the rocks.
Todd and his Dad in front of the waterfall road block.
My handsome man conquering the Narrows.
A lot of the hike was crossing back and forth across the river. Some parts were only up to our ankles and some parts were belly deep through rushing water. The deep parts were hard because the water was moving so fast we had to shuffle across without getting knocked into the freezing cold water.
We were so excited to make it to this waterfall!! It ment only 5 more miles to go....though those five miles still take a few more hours.
Here is a picture of one of the deeper parts of our hike.
Following the line across the river.
Here is a picture of Jacob and Kaden and David and Ben on our way back down from Weeping Rock.
This trip was truely amazing. It was so gorgeous, fun, hard, exhausting, painful, rewarding, beautiful. We had so much fun doing this with Todd's family, and so grateful to Todd's mom and sister and also Jacob's parents for watching our kids so we could do this. We were so sore and tired by the end, Todd's feet were bruised and purple and I my legs were so sore I could barely lift them up. On top of all the hard and pain it was so worth it to accomplish this.
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