Desert, alpine & family fun!

It was another enjoyable weekend.  We decided to just load up and go camping on Friday night.  We went out to the old stone quarry between St. George and Leeds on that very rough road between the two.  It was a perfect night, so we just slept under the stars.  We ate dinner before we left and just came home for breakfast in the morning, so it was quick packing up and setting up.  We had a little time to hike around before dark and were able to harvest a few yucca poles to make some walking sticks.  They are hard to find, especially ones that aren't bug eaten, so we counted that a bonus.  We took the laptop and watched Rabbit Hole which is a sad/good drama (some laughs too) movie that we both enjoyed and then piled into our comfy sleeping bag for a good starlit and fresh air to breath night's sleep.  In the morning we weren't really interested in heading home for breakfast until we had gone down and hiked for a while in Cottonwood Canyon (we had looked down on it the evening before and knew we couldn't leave without some time there).  The stream was full and sounded so nice from up above and in the canyon.  We did lots of back and forth across it during our stroll and loved it all!  

After coming home for a quick breakfast, we loaded up lunch and our coats and took off for the high country on Cedar Mountain with a stop by at Lou and Bryan's to drop of some stuff and say "Hi" to them.  We wanted to go and check out the site for G'ma's b-day bash.  The road got bad after a bit and we left the car and hiked (we had planned on this) off to find the place.  There is still snow and water everywhere and lots of mudslides/trees down from the big snow of the winter. We saw lots of crazy snow sculptures. In a few places lower down we saw just touches of aspen leaves coming out.  We sort of walked past the place we should have turned off to head to the campsite (no sign on the main road about it) and had a nice hike and then back tracked and found it, explored it and sloshed back to the car.  Then we drove home through Zion - thanks for the pass everybody!   

Oh, one evening earlier in the week we took another evening walk in Snow Canyon (found out the pass was actually good for another month) and did the unthinkable and went off trail in the canyon behind the sand dunes.  It's really cool!  We were lucky that the ranger we ran in to on the way back to our car didn't see us out there!

Genghis didn't get to go, be he got some relaxation in before we left. 

To finish off the week end, we had our "feast of the fast over family dinner" at Moss and Christie's house.  I am so glad we decided to do this and thanks to everyone for taking turns hosting.  It is a blast hanging out and visiting and the food is always so good.  The kids are great - forgot to take a picture of the older ones because they just played together so well we didn't even know they were there! One other thing that was great was that we got to chat with Supe (in Africa) and hear more about his adventures there.  It was fun to get more details about everything he's doing and what its like over there.   It was another one of those hard to beat it weeks. :O)