Overnight at Zion's
On the way home from my mom's place in June, we stopped and spent a day in Zion National Park. We stayed in a great motel in Springdale that backed up to a little river. Pretty much all we did the first night was walk down there and try to keep everybody from falling in and getting drowned. 
The next day, we boarded the dogs at a place called "Doggy Dude Ranch" and took the shuttle in to the park. We even discovered a deranged wild boy (apparently from the age of the dinosaurs). 
We did a great little hike to the Emerald Pools. This turned out even better than we expected, because we took a wrong turn and ended up at the second pool instead of the first. (I had my suspicions, when the "level, paved road" that we were supposedly taking turned into dusty switchbacks.) 
The effect of this, though, was that we figured we might as well go the extra 20 minutes up the canyon to the third pool, which was breathtaking. 
We visited the first pool on the way back, very happy to have been tricked into doing the harder hikes. It kept threatening to rain, but didn't really get started until we were almost back to the shuttle. Perfect hiking weather! We debated whether to spend the night somewhere on the way home, but since the kids were being pretty good we just sucked it up and drove back that night. Here are Connor and his dad throwing rocks somewhere off of I-15. 
The last pics are the kids covering their brother in play-silks. What a good little baby!
The next day, we boarded the dogs at a place called "Doggy Dude Ranch" and took the shuttle in to the park. We even discovered a deranged wild boy (apparently from the age of the dinosaurs). 
We did a great little hike to the Emerald Pools. This turned out even better than we expected, because we took a wrong turn and ended up at the second pool instead of the first. (I had my suspicions, when the "level, paved road" that we were supposedly taking turned into dusty switchbacks.) 
The effect of this, though, was that we figured we might as well go the extra 20 minutes up the canyon to the third pool, which was breathtaking. 
We visited the first pool on the way back, very happy to have been tricked into doing the harder hikes. It kept threatening to rain, but didn't really get started until we were almost back to the shuttle. Perfect hiking weather! We debated whether to spend the night somewhere on the way home, but since the kids were being pretty good we just sucked it up and drove back that night. Here are Connor and his dad throwing rocks somewhere off of I-15. 
The last pics are the kids covering their brother in play-silks. What a good little baby!
3 comments:
Your little family makes me feel a lot less stomach-achey about the idea of having kids. I guess Kelli's horror stories of families from her job has warped my view of what family's are like.
Loved the "behind the motel" pics. Your babies have such expressive faces, and I hear ya about the focusing on not letting anyone drown part, it seems like the little ones are drawn like magnets to the water. I was really amazed at your hike with the kiddos. Jeff and I took a bike ride with our kids last night that was probably a mile, total. The whole time Cole was like: "My legs hurt!" and "I'm getting soooo tired!" and "when are we turning around?" Needless to say, we are not the outdoorsy/athletic people you are. Hopefully we can work on remedying that.
There are Lions in the MGM that you can go see. They like to lay around a lot :) I can't remember anything else kid oriented. Except one of the casinos has a gigantic arcade that Connor would die in! The hotel had great guides though, so we just decided what to do once we got there. (And that was our cheap sketchy hotel). And I do remember the guide had a family-oriented section specifically.
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