St. George Vacation

Doug and I had the opportunity to go on a short getaway courtesy of Doug's parents this past weekend. Doug's mom came out and stayed with the girls (THANKS SO MUCH!!!) and we headed down to Zions and St. George for a 3 day vacation. Since neither of us had ever been to Zions, we were both really excited, even if it was really hot. We went on 4 hikes,--Hidden Canyon, the Emerald Pools, Weeping Rock and Observation Point. They were all very nice and super pretty. It made me feel awesome to know I could do the more difficult hikes (like Hidden Canyon which was 2 1/2 hours long) and still feel great. The scenery was amazing and we had so much fun exploring and just being goofy. Doug and I still look (and actually are) young enough to be newly weds, which made it all the more fun to act like them from time to time. Here are some pictures, but for a more comprehensive pictorial account of the trip please see my facebook.

Some of the rock formations and amazing coloring seen in Zions Canyon. The red is sandstone tinted with iron to give it that color.

Starting off the Hidden Canyon hike. Doug was just as excited about the plants as he was about the views, if not more so. We have lots of pictures of flowers that you will not see, but his landscaping side definitely came out and he observed the local flora.

This flower was the coolest, which is why I put it up here.

Me posing at one of the view spots. Simply amazing!

Going up the stairs. Who knew there were "natural" stairs all over the park? ;)

We walked around the side of a cliff hanging onto the chains for balance. That was really awesome.

This is inside the actual Hidden Canyon. Cool rocks huh? Doug climbed up there to make them more interesting to look at.

This is the view from the bottom of the canyon we hiked in.

Looking into the canyon. It went back forever and ever with rocks to climb on and up and over Doug was in heaven.

It's a little hard to tell, but Doug is standing in a natural arch that was in the canyon.

These are some of the rocks we climbed up and over in the canyon. Doug was much better at it than I was, though I did ok. My problem wasn't going up so much as getting down! I'm a little bit of a wimp that way.

This is Weeping Rock. The water seeps out of the sandstone when it gets to the shale level, so they estimate that this water is 1200+ years old. Cool huh?

We stood in the grotto behind the water coming down. It was very pretty.

We drove through Carmel tunnel and at the other side took the Observation Point hike back over the side of the canyon to take in the view. This is one of the arches forming in the side of the canyon wall.



This is the view at the end of the hike. Amazing huh?

This is one of two pictures that we have of us together on the trip.

We did the Emerald Pools hike right before we went home. This is the waterfall for the lower pools. Pretty small huh? Yeah, they were all pretty low, probably because it was stinking 95 degrees and had not rained at all in May down there.

I SO wish we could have gone swimming, but it was against the rules...

Scenery shot on the way down from the pools.

Doug biffed it on a huge rock he tried to climb on the last hike. Amazingly that was the only injury sustained on this trip. Considering how many rocks we climbed and how many times we slipped on the sandy rocks, I consider this acceptable damages.

While in St. George we also went shopping at the Outlet Mall and got some much needed clothes for me. Doug was a trooper and lasted for 5 hours of shopping. Yes, he is amazing. We also visited the St. George temple, which was very pretty, and went through the visitors center. While there we looked up a missionary (Sister Cannon) that was from Doug's home ward. She was very glad to see a familiar face. We had a nice dinner one night, and just relaxed and slept in and did what we wanted when we wanted... bliss. It was a wonderful vacation. I wish it was longer, but it was also nice to come home. It was funny because when we got home I was expecting the girls to be all over me, but I totally got bypassed for dad by both girls! Oh well, I had two little leg magnets all day today to make up for it.