The Young and the Restless

Road Trip

We sure hit the road running this summer. Literally. The first week of summer was scout camp and girls camp, we came home on a Saturday then unpacked and packed up again to head to Utah the next day. We stopped and stayed in Vegas for a night with Grandpa Young. Jessica, John, Andrea and Trenton were there so it was fun to be able to see them. After a delicious dinner of Grandpa's famous wings, we headed to the Mountain's Edge Exploration park to burn off some energy. The kids sure wore out John playing tag while Jason, Andrea and I hiked up to Exploration Peak. It was a beautiful night and an enjoyable time with family. Jason and I proved that we could still hang with the young crowd and went out for steak and eggs at midnight at the casino. The best part was when Jason made them all take turns presenting their case as to why I should give them my steak since I don't like meat. It was highly entertaining. We were all It was tight sleeping quarters with so many people staying at Grandpa's house so Jason let Kylie sleep in the bed with me while he slept on the floor. In the middle of the night she bolted right up, looked at me, put my face in her hands, told me she loved me, kissed me on my forehead then went right back to sleep. We had a good laugh about it the next morning and I'm going to cross my fingers that it was not a boy she was dreaming about! 

The next morning we headed up with Utah with a full agenda of stops along the way. Our plans got pushed back when we blew a tire just outside of Vegas. I took the kids to Taco Bell to get lunch while Jason was getting a new tire. We learned the joys of playing "slug bug" and had two boys in tears while walking down the side of the road to the tire shop. We caused quite a scene, but I'm sure the streets of Vegas have seen worse. We finally got on our way and made a stop at Snow Canyon. We have driven through St George countless times but have not bothered stopping to explore, unless you count the outlet malls. I loved this spot, it had some great short hikes for kids. Like the Pioneer Names trail. It is just off the road and the kids had fun scrambling up the rocks to a little cove where the pioneers have written their names in axle grease. Pretty cool. What wasn't cool was that it was over 100 degrees outside. The rocks were hot but it wasn't too bad climbing up. The problem was that going down was so steep and took a lot longer but since the rocks were so hot they couldn't touch them for very long before their hands would get burned. We finally had them take their socks off and put them on their hands. That seemed to help but Maddox and Ryder were convinced we were all going to die a slow painful death. Many tears later, we finally made it down.

Another great hike, that didn't involve touching scorching hot rocks, was Jenny's canyon. It is super short, only .3 miles round trip, but sure packs a punch. It was a hot walk, but once you get there it is a shaded slot canyon that was so cool to explore. It doesn't go very deep, but there are so many ledges and coves to explore, the kids loved it! Jayden did fall trying to crawl up to a ledge, I tried catching him but we both ended up on the ground. It was very graceful.

And of course we had to stop for a refreshing treat. The glaciers at Larsen's were so good, it's soft serve ice cream mixed with a slushee an real fruit puree, totally hit the spot!

I had several other places I wanted to stop at, but time and attention spans narrowed it down. We decided our last stop would be the Red Reef Trail at the Red Cliffs Recreation area. The promise of a water hike was going to be the crowning glory after a long hot day. I packed water shoes for the kids, and although they weren't the most comfortable to hike in and kept getting filled with sand I told them it would be all worth it once we got to the water where they could splash around and slide down the natural rock water slide. The only problem is that we did not take into account the drought. We got there and the water had completely dried up, except for a few small pools just teeming with tadpoles and bacteria. Jayden begged and begged us to pay him $50 to drink the water. I'm not sure why he would think we would ever be on board with that idea, but that was pretty much all he talked about the entire hike. Even without the water it was still a gorgeous hike, I can't get over the red rocks. The little boys loved scurrying up rocks and exploring alcoves, while others preferred to vocalize how much they hate hiking. At one point every single one of them had been grounded from their phones/ipads AND the promise of Cafe Rio had been stripped from them. After Jason made them all hug it out we decided to go to Cafe Rio after all. And everyone lived happily ever after.

Just imagine how fun this would be to slide down in the water, we'll definitely have to come back!