Zion Day 5: Riverside Walk by The Narrows

On our final day we were waiting for Amber and Mark so we went to the visitor center to let all of the kids get their Junior Ranger badge.  This park ranger thoroughly checked all of their books and answers and quizzed them about everything.  Here he is making them take an oath to take care of the trails.  The kids were so serious and excited to earn their badges!

 Tommy and Sam were delighted to see that they had the same shirt!  They pretended to be twins all day, which is funny because Sam really is a twin :)

 By the time we rode the shuttle to the final stop of Zion Canyon, it was lunch time so we stopped by an area of the river that the kids could play in.  They had fun, but it was hard to get them to stop and eat too!

 This trail was full of big squirrels that would come right up to us, I guess they're probably used to being well fed!  Tucker was cute as he'd stop and wave at each of them and call out "hello!"

 We stopped for a break as the kids needed another distraction and this big rock was like a slide to them.

 More play time!

 The whole trail followed a river, it was nice!

 Here we all are at the end, we played around here for a long time.

 Amber and Will took off their shoes and crossed the river here.  This is where "The Narrows" start.  The pictures of it look amazing so I'd love to do it one day when my kids are college age.  You have to hike in the river with the water as high as your chest in special dry suits!

Zion Day 4: Angel's Landing- 5.5 miles

Call us crazy, but we took our kids up one of the most strenuous hikes at Zions.  We hiked 5 1/2 miles up to Angel's Landing.  I really didn't think we would make it to the end, but we did!  It took us 6 hours to finish.  That is a long time for 3-6 year old kids!

The others had yet another SLOW start to the day so I took the 4 youngest kids and got a head start on the trail.  Here we are chipper and cool at the beginning.

 Taking a break before the trail started getting crazy.

 Here we are on the switch backs.  My mom was quite the trooper to help me carry an extra bag or Tucker.

 Here is how we traveled on the switch backs... I made everyone try to go single file and hand to the wall.  I felt like that was my repeat saying of the day... "hand to the wall!"  I didn't want those kiddos getting anywhere near the cliff drop offs.

 At the end of the first set of switch backs was a nice little shaded sand area that we stopped and let the kids play in for awhile.

 After that, it was really fun for about a full mile, it was relatively flat and had a lot of fun rocks and caves for the kids to crawl into.

 I love this picture!  Probably one of my favorite from the trip.

 We had to boost each other up a mini drop off to get everyone up here, but the kids loved the climbing and we were willing to do whatever made it fun for them and kept them going!

 Tucker and Ivy were like magnets to the sand.  They stopped and had to play in it constantly!

 Our final set of switch backs.  I really didn't think we were going to make it at this point, but my mom kept saying we were almost there....

 ...and then we turned the final corner to find this! millions of tiny switch backs. (Walter's Wiggles)  It felt like I'd stepped back in time and we were all little Inca workers climbing the steep cliffs!!

 I took lots of pictures to encourage and distract the kids from this huge task!

 Mom and Mark... very patient grandparents!

 VICTORY!  I'm proud to have this picture to prove I made it to the top without Victor's help... just me and the kiddos!

 and here is a glimpse downward of just how high these cliffs were.  It was insane and scary for me to look down this edge so my kids didn't get to come look.  I kept them as close to the middle as I could.  They desperately wanted to run around and explore at the top, but I wouldn't let them leave my side.  I enjoyed the top, but it felt really stressful to try to keep the kids all together at all times.  I'm not sure if the stress or the journey wore me out more!

 All of our group, but me.

 And now all of us together at the top in front of Angel's Landing... kids or no kids with me, there is no way I'd tempt fate and climb that thing after several people have fallen off and died!!

 My kids were SO done after we got to the top, but we had to come back down!  ...so we took a few more pictures to distract them.  :) 

 ... and lucky me, I wound up with my favorite picture of the trip just trying to distract the kids!  The rocks are so beautiful that they look fake!

By the time we got to the end all of us were exhausted!  Our group had split in two as Tucker was crazy slow and tired and I was slow when I was carrying him.  My mom hiked ahead with Tommy and left his brand new Camelback at the shuttle station.  I didn't know until we got down to the bottom so instead of being to get home and eat at 7pm (which is late for us!), we had to ride the shuttle all the way back up the canyon and find his backpack and then back down.  We were so tired, cold, and hungry by the time we got back!!!

Zion Trip Day 3: Weeping Rock, start of Observation Point Trail

Day 3 was quite a bust :(  We got tired of waiting for Amber so we decided to get going up the tram.  We stopped at the visitor center and took our sweet time because we still hadn't heard from Mark or Amber. Finally we got tired of waiting there and headed to the trail head where we waited another hour or more.  Finally, after 2 hours we decided to start hiking without them although we felt terrible leaving them behind and... they were coming down off the trail.  They had passed us, I was so annoyed that we had sat around all day for them that we decided to keep hiking anyway.  That didn't last long because a crazy wind and rain storm came rolling in so we decided to turn around.

 Here are the kids huddling under this rock while we waited for the strong winds to die down.  We were all quite miserable at this point!!!

 When we got back to camp I was grumpy and tired so I let the kids go play at the playground without me.  Not long after Tucker came screaming back with his front teeth all chipped up and one knocked way backward (which has now turned gray).  Guess that taught me no matter how tired I am, I can't sit back on the job with these busy kiddos!

 Amber set up an outdoor movie for the kids while we played some games in the trailer and I went out to take this picture of them and there was cold winds and it was FREEZING, but these kids did not care.  They were determined to watch a movie so we had them move in mom's trailer while we played games in Amber's trailer!

Zion Trip Day 2: Emerald Pools Trail

Here we are on day 2! My mom had matching shirts made for everyone which we got A LOT of comments on.  Everyone loved them, especially because our group had so many really little kids hiking on their own!

 Amber took forever getting ready so we had the kids work on their junior ranger badges while we waited.

...and went to the museum for lunch

 ...and we're finally off!

 This hike started out an amazing adventure again, here we are hiking under a waterfall.

 Here is a fun crevice I imagined hiking through a lot more.

 We had a late start so we had a late lunch break.  Everyone was very hungry and tired and I kind of wanted to turn back, but Mom insisted we make it to the waterfall at the end... I was glad she did.

 The hike was pretty intense for our little hikers, but they did really good.

 Here is the awesome canyon we hiked into.  It was well worth it!  The kids played around in the sand and water for an hour!

 Our group that made it to the top!

 Tommy was leading the group on the way up and I was bringing up the rear.  When they stopped for a break I caught up to realize they had let Tommy go off the wrong way without stopping him so I had to chase after him with Tucker on my back.  I was SOO exhausted at this point and their was loads of people in the way on a one way trail so it took forever to get to him. I finally got to Tommy and we tried to race back to get to the rest of the group, but they didn't wait so I had one upset Tommy, and an aching back... I definitely was missing Vic at this point! Here is a cool waterfall, but Tommy wasn't about to smile for a picture. He was determined to catch up to the rest of the group (which we never did!) 

 Tucker was so warn out that he fell asleep in my pack and here is proof that I finally made it back to the road!  It was a rough trail back and we took lots of stops!

 Back at camp, after a good long rest we decorated cookies for Easter. They all turned out really cute!