4-3-13

{Spring Break - Day 2}

After a great night's sleep, we awoke to a beautiful, warm St. George day. I was excited to try my hand at dutch oven cooking. I had never cooked anything in a dutch oven by myself before so we all hoped it would work out. My first experiment was a french toast recipe that I made up myself. I stuffed a loaf of french bread with apple pie filling and cream cheese, sliced the bread, poured beaten eggs over it all, and cooked it over the hot coals (which Ricky prepared - I'm not quite there yet). The result was quite delicious and after filling the kids' bellies, we were off to hike Angels Landing.

Dave helped me wake up the little boys...

Entry into Zions...

This is the Angels Landing Rock. (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia) It stretches 1500 vertical feet above the Zion's trail...

The National Park Service describes it like this... "The route to Angels Landing involves travel along a steep, narrow ridge with support chains anchored intermittently along the route. Footing can be slippery even when the rock is dry. Unevenly surfaced steps are cut into the rock with major cliff dropoffs adjacent. Keep off when it is wet, icy or thunderstorms are in the area. Plan to be off before dark. Younger children should skip this trail; older children must be closely supervised." The National Park Service website officially recognizes five fatalities where suspicious activity was not involved along Angels Landing, however other deaths have been reported. 

This is our own picture taken from the trail. 

We stayed together for about the first half of the hike. Then the little boys started to drag a little bit so Ricky told me to go on with the others. We both really wanted to make this hike but he wanted me to experience it with Dave and the big kids so he agreed to stay behind. 

Here is Gavin being a trooper...

...and our view of Ricky and the boys after we left them...

The trail right before the famous switchbacks...

...and the switchbacks...

Ricky took some cute pictures of the boys exploring on the way up...

I was surprised that these guys made it all the way to Scout Lookout where they waited for us. Gavin enjoying the view...

The trail past Scout Lookout is the most treacherous and scary. This is part of the saddle we hiked across...

This is definitely the scariest part. Steep terrain with dropoffs on both sides...

Life-saving chains...

Almost to the top...

The spectacular view from the top...

Tired and proud that we made it...

Trent wasted no time before he started snapping pictures of the 360 degree view...

On the way back down...

Gavin and Lance wait for us where the chains begin...

I love hiking with my family:)

On the way down Gavin and Dave ran ahead. They waited for us at the trailhead...

Gavin loves his Uncle Dave so much. The entire trip, he tried everything he could to convince me to let him go live with Dave. I even overheard him tell Dave that if he lived with him, I wouldn't mind because I don't really care about him that much. Nice...

Back at the campground, everyone relaxed, Ricky and Brant threw around the baseball, and I experimented some more by making dutch oven lasagna...

And when the sun went down, we enjoyed the rest of the evening around the campfire. We sang, played the harmonica, made s'mores, and mostly basked in the beauty of being together...