It doesn't get much better
than a five-day weekend in St. George! We shamelessly exploited the free babysitting and crammed in about as many activities as the calendar allowed. (Mom never once complained about tending him, but we tried to include Add as much as possible, poor little abandoned baby.)
Special thanks to Abbey, whose triumphant exit from Pine View High School made it all possible. Congrats, Abbs!
Nice pants.
We went to the Johnson Farm dinosaur tracks musuem, which we're informed has the best dino tracks west of the Mississippi. It's practically in the folks' backyard, but none of us has ever been there. The tracks were discovered while clearing the land for development, then all the Jurassic Park-type folks swarmed in and now they've built a museum right over the dirt and rocks.
That, friends, is the impression of dinosaur skin preserved in the rock. Staggering.
And we went rappelling! Michelle's never been before, and since I've had such rousing success with rappelling in the past, she trusted me implicitly. We also dragged Dad along since we needed someone to belay. Mich wasn't super-enthusiastic about the 175-foot Cougar Cliffs, so went out to Red Cliffs instead, which is a much saner 70 feet. I tried to explain to her that the last 100 feet wouldn't make much of a difference if we fell, but she wouldn't listen.
I must say, I was proud of the girl. She got over the edge about 10 times as fast as I did my first time, and came back up and did it again!
And the best part: the old man, Indiana Jones himself, gave it a go.
Monday morning we got up early and headed to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (again, Dad was nice enough to chauffeur). It's a 2 1/2 hour drive from St. George, with about a 6000-foot elevation gain. The 35 degree weather was a bit of a shock. Luckily, Dad saved our bacon with some ragged old asphalt-covered jackets.
Despite my whining about the extreme weather conditions, we set off down the North Kaibab Trail, which eventually winds to the bottom of Grand Canyon and connects to another trail up to the South Rim. We only made it a fraction of the way down, but we did cover six miles of pretty steep trail (ascending nearly as fast as we descended, thanks to our being so rugged), and made it down to a cool bridge. Lest we feel too proud though, we encountered a wizened old man who was booking it from rim to rim and back in one day. When we saw him, he had covered about 26 miles in 7 hours and had another 24 or so to go. Crazy. He'll be lucky if they don't find his whitewashed bones one day, picked clean by the vultures and coyotes.
Our little hike helped put the sheer size of the canyon in perspective. We hiked for over three hours, and didn't even put a dent in a side canyon of a side canyon. We really liked seeing the color and formation changes from layer to layer. We didn't like following in the footsteps (etc.) of all those burros. Yuck.
View from the lodge. Yeah, it was freezing.
From Coconino Overlook.
The North Kaibab Trail.
The bridge at the "bottom." This far and no further for us.
Other highlights of the trip were seeing Prince Caspian (pretty good, but I'm holding out for #3), going to the Farmers' Market (this early in the season, it was essentially a junk sale), a picnic in the park, and swimming and hydrotubing at the city pool.
We'll make sure to post lots of pics of the boy soon.
Special thanks to Abbey, whose triumphant exit from Pine View High School made it all possible. Congrats, Abbs!
Nice pants.We went to the Johnson Farm dinosaur tracks musuem, which we're informed has the best dino tracks west of the Mississippi. It's practically in the folks' backyard, but none of us has ever been there. The tracks were discovered while clearing the land for development, then all the Jurassic Park-type folks swarmed in and now they've built a museum right over the dirt and rocks.
That, friends, is the impression of dinosaur skin preserved in the rock. Staggering.And we went rappelling! Michelle's never been before, and since I've had such rousing success with rappelling in the past, she trusted me implicitly. We also dragged Dad along since we needed someone to belay. Mich wasn't super-enthusiastic about the 175-foot Cougar Cliffs, so went out to Red Cliffs instead, which is a much saner 70 feet. I tried to explain to her that the last 100 feet wouldn't make much of a difference if we fell, but she wouldn't listen.
I must say, I was proud of the girl. She got over the edge about 10 times as fast as I did my first time, and came back up and did it again!
And the best part: the old man, Indiana Jones himself, gave it a go.
Monday morning we got up early and headed to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (again, Dad was nice enough to chauffeur). It's a 2 1/2 hour drive from St. George, with about a 6000-foot elevation gain. The 35 degree weather was a bit of a shock. Luckily, Dad saved our bacon with some ragged old asphalt-covered jackets.Despite my whining about the extreme weather conditions, we set off down the North Kaibab Trail, which eventually winds to the bottom of Grand Canyon and connects to another trail up to the South Rim. We only made it a fraction of the way down, but we did cover six miles of pretty steep trail (ascending nearly as fast as we descended, thanks to our being so rugged), and made it down to a cool bridge. Lest we feel too proud though, we encountered a wizened old man who was booking it from rim to rim and back in one day. When we saw him, he had covered about 26 miles in 7 hours and had another 24 or so to go. Crazy. He'll be lucky if they don't find his whitewashed bones one day, picked clean by the vultures and coyotes.
Our little hike helped put the sheer size of the canyon in perspective. We hiked for over three hours, and didn't even put a dent in a side canyon of a side canyon. We really liked seeing the color and formation changes from layer to layer. We didn't like following in the footsteps (etc.) of all those burros. Yuck.
View from the lodge. Yeah, it was freezing.
From Coconino Overlook.
The North Kaibab Trail.
The bridge at the "bottom." This far and no further for us.Other highlights of the trip were seeing Prince Caspian (pretty good, but I'm holding out for #3), going to the Farmers' Market (this early in the season, it was essentially a junk sale), a picnic in the park, and swimming and hydrotubing at the city pool.
We'll make sure to post lots of pics of the boy soon.
Speaking of the Grand Canyon, they were looking for a Utah couple in the canyon that day we were hiking. They found them yesterday (the 29th) okay - they had taken a wrong turn in the canyon. Sound familiar?
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