Kites

One day the power went out at the cabin. It ended up staying out for about 9 hours, and we got to hear at testimony the next day about how prepared everyone was and the need for preparedness.  (After you survive a hurricane that knocks your power out for 2 weeks, 9 hours is just an annoyance).  Anyway, I digress, we went out a flew kites.  The biggest problem with flying kites was that the wind was not steady, more gusty so it would stop and start.  It was still fun though.

 Michael helped Joe get the kite up.

 

Ellie enjoyed playing with her newest cousin, Lucas.

Hiking

If you are new to this blog, sorry about all of the pictures, but I make this blog into our memory books for the kids so I include a ton of pictures.  So you don't have to read if it bores you, this is just our memories....and the kids love to look through them.

While at the cabin, we hiked a lot. Ok, the "we" part is pretty loosely used, the boys hiked a ton- almost every day several times, but I went out a time or two with them.  Adam liked to see if he could hike from the top of the mountain to the bottom and back up all at once.  The weather was so nice and cool that we didn't have to worry about the kids overheating- more about whether they would be warm enough. 

This is a view from the top of the mountain of part of Panguitch Lake.  They are in a pretty big drought this year so the lake was way down.

Just some fun pictures I subjected my children to.

This next picture is like find Waldo...but there are 4 kids in this picture.

Horseback Riding

 While we were visiting the cabin, Grammie and Grandpa took us all horseback riding.  They took Ellie and Nate riding on a 1 1/2 hour ride near Panguitch Lake.

 Nate was near the front of the group and he spent the whole time chatting with the guide, asking him question after question.

 

 A few days later, Adam, Michael, Grandpa and I went horseback riding down into Bryce Canyon.  Ours was a 3 1/2 hour ride up and down the canyon.

 

 It was a beautiful ride.  We saw a lot of these strange trees- bottlebrush pines.  They are extremely slow growers and we saw one that was over a thousand years old.

 This was our first view into Bryce Canyon.  It has beautiful red cliffs and rock structures called voodoos.

 This rock structure is called the wall of windows.

 Our guide was a showoff and did a few tricks for us.

It was a lot of fun, and we felt like we saw all of the canyon in the ride.  By the end, I was super sore and the next two days were pretty painful...

While we were off riding, Grammie stayed with Ellie and Nate.  They talked to one of the horsekeepers who was in charge of shoeing the horses.  He let them hold the horses hooves to see how heavy they were.

 

The kids are still talking about the horse riding trip, they really enjoyed it, thanks Grammie and Grandpa!

4 wheeling at the cabin

One of the favorite pastimes at the cabin is riding on the 4 wheelers.  Since I had my accident a couple of years ago, I am usually assigned to drive the razer, which has a roll cage and seatbelts.

 

 There are so many trails starting from close to the cabin that everyone can take off and ride.  We usually would go for about an hour, but one day we drove across the mountain range to a little city of Hatch, ate lunch and then returned. It was probably a 4 hour round trip.  Grammie and Grandpa let the kids drive when we are in the mountains, but never alone, this was just a rest stop.

 At the beginning of the trip, the ground was so dry that whenever we would go anywhere, there would be a lot of dust kicked up.  If you happened to be in the back of the caravan, you ended up looking like I do:

 Clell with Lana.  His daughter, Juliana is between Adam and Ellie.

The dust would settle in everywhere.  Look at how it settled in the pores on Adam's nose.

 Grammie was nice enough to let me take a picture of her with her driving goggles on.

 One day, we drove the 4 wheelers to another mountain and then drove up a trail.  At the top of a small mountain (well, we started at 9500 feet, so not so small a mountain), there was a valley filled with volcanic rock.  This was where the old volcano was eons ago.  (This was the same trip with all the dust).

No matter where we would go on our trip and what amazing things we would see, the favorite part of every four wheel ride is always at the end when we drive over to the store to get ice cream.  It was almost a daily occurrence.

So much fun!

Cedar Breaks

Every time we go to the cabin, we drive through Cedar Breaks National Park.  From the road, it is just a pretty drive through a pine forest.  If you stop and walk a few feet from the road, there are beautiful cliffs and "badlands" filled with voodoos.  We went over one day because they were having their wildflower festival and we were going to learn about wildflowers.  When we go there it was 60 degrees and started raining, then it fell to 55 degrees.  For those of us with thin blood from Texas, it was pretty darn cold.

The cliffs are so beautiful with their bright orange colors (obviously not a great picture from my camera).  I have to admit that after seeing these cliffs and the ones in Bryce Canyon, it was a little disappointing to me to see the Grand Canyon because the colors their are not nearly as brilliant.