St. George Getaway
(I can't help pointing out that this is the second time I am composing this post, since Blogger deleted my earlier draft this afternoon when I was 9/10s done. Curse you, Blogger!)
We also showed Mom a fun park we discovered on a previous trip, and had the place to ourselves.
After Leah's baptism in May, we decided it was time for a trip to St. George because a) the kids got out of school early, b) I can work from anywhere now, and c) Mom and Dad were already contaminated with whatever virus we might have. 😬 So we packed up the car on Monday, May 18, and headed down for the week. It was fun to relax, to have a change of scenery, and to go on some adventures. Michelle and I even got to go on two morning runs together!
The evening we arrived, we went on a walk/scooter ride on a nearby path. It was a little stressful, as I recall, because the older kids zoomed way far away and we had to go find them, but still a pleasant time.
The next morning we walked down to the nearby park to play hide and seek and catch frogs and dragonflies in the creek.
That afternoon Grandma, Grandpa, and Elaina went with us to Glitter Mountain down on the Arizona Strip. It's a gypsum quarry that Michelle visited with the kids a while back and wanted us all to see. It was very glittery - and windy too, but a fun outing.
The next morning we went on our first big hike: Grapevine Spring in the Kolob Terrace section of Zion. I'd heard about this hike, which is downstream from the famous Subway. You scramble down the side of a cliff, through a lava flow, to the Left Fork of North Creek, then work your way upstream to this cool waterfall. Totally doable and family friendly, right?
On the way down, we kind of got spread out, me up front with the older kids and Michelle in back, holding Emmie's hand and sometimes carrying her. As my group neared the bottom, I got the impression that I needed to go back and check on Michelle, so I told the guys to stay put and started running back up the trail. I rounded a bend and caught sight of Michelle carrying Emmie - just as she lost her footing on a steep, sandy section and fell. Into a cactus. Emmie headfirst.
It could have been much worse, but let's be serious, it was pretty bad. Michelle had some bigger spines and lots of little spines in her head and all down her arm, side, and leg. Emmie got mostly little spines, all in her face. It was so sad. She screamed and cried and refused to be comforted. What a disaster.
We somehow made it down to the creek and decided to stay put. We stripped Emmie down to her diaper, then eventually took that off too. Michelle took her shirt off and I donated mine to her, subjecting everyone to my painfully white torso for the rest of the afternoon. We also decided Emmie needed her blanket and sucker, which were back up at the top of the cliff in the car, so I ran up there and got them and came back. Meanwhile, everyone had mostly calmed down and we managed to have a pretty good time. But wow.
The DQ on the way home helped (though I was terribly self-conscious about the aforementioned white torso), and we also stopped at grocery store in LaVerkin to get tweezers. Michelle was digging out spines for days (weeks?) to come, and we had to wait for Emmie to fall asleep that night to pull out the last of her spines.
At least they were flowering
Caught a lizard by the tail
This was the very cactus patch. I kept an extra tight grip on Emmie on the way up.
Was our fire of adventure snuffed out? Not by a long shot. The next day we went with Mom, Elaina, Abbey, and her kids to Sullivan Park, which ended up being a pretty perfect place to play in the river. It had shade from a bridge, some deep spots and shallow spots, a rope swing, and dozens of cliff swallow nests under the bridge, complete with baby birds poking their heads out and eggshells all over the place. It was so fun we went back that afternoon when Emmie was napping.
The next morning we went with Grandpa on our other big hike. I was worried about this one, because it was warm and windy, three miles round trip, and some of the kids were whiny and grumpy, but it was a grand success! The hike was to Babylon Arch in a section of Red Cliffs I'd never been to before.
Sticky candy hands + gravelly dirt = mixed media body art
Bryn and Leah were pretty sure they were going to die and get eaten by buzzards before they made up a giant sand hill on the way back
But we made it!
Lots o' sand
Covid or no Covid, we had to make our traditional trip to Judd's and the splash pad at the town square.
Leah lost one of her front teeth while there! It had been dangling by a thread for about a week. Its neighbor finally came out a few days later.
Finally, we went to see some graves. First, we visited my Grandma Dudley, who died when I was in high school.
Then me, Grandpa, and Leah took a trip over to Santa Clara to see some of our ancestors who settled the area after being called there by Brigham Young.
Leah with a statue of her great-great-great-great-great grandmother, Sarah Sturtevant Leavitt
When we weren't off adventuring, we were climbing trees in the backyard, playing with bubbles in the front, getting faces painted, bothering the local felines, playing with cousins, eating dessert, and generally having a wonderful time. Can't wait to go back!
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