Ironman 70.3...at Bryce Canyon!

 St. George hosted the Ironman World Championship in May, the St. George Marathon in early October and now the Ironman 70.3 Women's/Men's at the end of October...and each time they close down the streets in our neighborhood for the events which culminate just down the hill from our house at the Town Square.  We don't mind the St. George Marathon so much because it's on Gen. Conf. weekend and we just stay home and watch conference.  But these other two are much more as far as closures up here and around the whole downtown area go. They even closed school on Friday because buses could not run.  So we left town Thursday evening after work and went over to Bryce Canyon NP for a little get away.  It was wonderful!  We ate at home and then left and arrived in time for a bit of evening and bedtime.  We stayed at the old Ruby's Inn.  We had a great room.  

Friday morning we slept in and then had the breakfast buffet that came with the room and it was great.  Then we went to the Park Visitor's Center where we watched the Park film and then spent pretty much the whole day driving the view point road and seeing each one and doing a little hike also.  We brought our lunch and ate at one of the view points, in the car, because it was a little too chilly to eat outside.  There was frost on the car windows in the morning and we needed long sleeves and jackets most of the time.  Snow had fallen a week or so ago and made it very pretty.  That night we had the dinner buffet and it was so good that we ate way too much!  Afterwards we sort of laid around feeling full and ended up watching a really good movie on BYU TV and then taking a little inside walk around the facility.

Saturday morning we slept in some and again enjoyed the buffet and then got an early start on the Queen's Garden/Navajo Loop hike down in among the Hoodoos' in the canyon.  It wasn't crowded at all at the beginning because of our early start.  We had to wear jackets and gloves, but once we got moving we were just fine.  SO VERY BEAUTIFUL!!!  Toward the end it was a bit more crowded, but still great.  After that we headed out and took the scenic route stopping at the Shingle Creek rest stop, one of our favorites, near Orderville, to eat a picnic lunch.  We had to wear jackets, but we sat in the sun and did fine.  Then we headed to Zion NP and did the Narrows hike and met some people from Whales.  We had walked near then on the trail and talked a little and then more on the shuttle.  She had completed the Ironman Women's the day before and there she was out hiking the next day with her husband and kids.  Crazy!  It was a beautiful, but very different, hike in Zion.  It was super crowded there.  We got home after all the hoopla was over and had dinner with Bean.  It was a great, relaxing little trip for Paul and me!!!

Zade and Trigg Kick it in Karate!

 These guys went up to SLC and participated in a big tournament!  Zade earned his black belt.  They both took 2nd place in their divisions and Trigg is also a brown belt now.  I really need to get to some of their things.  They are doing so awesome at this!  Supe proud of these guys!  

Halloween 2022!

 Didn't see anyone in person for Halloween except Jem and his folks, but thankfully we got to see how fun they all dressed up via the family GroupMe site!  

October Birthdays! Jared, Koen & Tasia

 Jay celebrated #46 this month while on an amazing campout at Canyonland NP.  He has such a huge book Wishlist on Amazon that I could not even decide which one to pick...so he got to pick himself and ended up getting a fun game that he could play with Brynn!  Good choice and Happy Birthday Jay!  

Next up is Koen on #14 this year!  He celebrated several times on different days!  Lots of good cakes!  Stance shark socks, Captain Crunch cereal and a new and very sought after candy bar - "Mr. Beast" which is made from milk from grass fed, organic cows filled the bill for him! 

Tasia is up next with the big #18! We went over on the evening of her birthday and had a nice visit.  Got to hear all about her exciting antelope hunt, etc.  

Paragon (Minaret) Canyon with Supe, Beacher and Jem!

 We got one more day of adventure in for Fall Break when Supe, Beacher and Jem let us join them to go to Paragon Canyon.  Supe has been telling us about this and we were so excited for it to work out for us all to get to go finally!  It started with a roller coaster ATV drive out to the very start of the canyon.  They dropped Paul and I off for a short hike to the place in the canyon where the rappels get started.  It was a lot of fun to do the first part and see how the canyon started being carved at the top and then got better and deeper and MORE carved.  We met them at the beginning of the 9 rappels that you do to get down and out the other end of the canyon.  SO COOL!  Or as they say now - "SICK"!  (I don't get that one!)  Supe and Beacher are both great at this sort of stuff and Supe was great at getting it all set up and taken down each time and keeping all of us safe as well.  Jem came down in his kid pack on Supe's back every time.  And wow, what a canyon!!!  It was crazy in both sections to see the wood that had been washed down and had gotten stuck in the top.  Paul and I had to crawl under some in that beginning section and created a cave over the canyon down very low.  It was such a fun time to be with all of them! And in such a beautiful place!  We saw no one else once we left the starting point in the ATV.  (And that ride was better than any roller coaster ride at Lagoon!)  

When we came out at the bottom of the canyon Supe, Beacher and Jem did a short hike up the hill to where the ATV was parked.  Then Paul and I hiked down canyon to meet them at the end where they drove to in the ATV and then hiked down to meet us.  Our river walk/lunch was a beautiful and very interesting one.  When they met us Supe took us on a short hike to see some amazing petroglyphs down there.  Then we all hiked back up to the top and had another crazy/fun ATV ride back to the truck.  We left at 8 am that morning and made it back at about 6 pm.  We didn't really hike that far, probably 5+ miles only, but with the drive out and all of the getting people set up to rappel and all the rest, it made for a full, great day of it.  Jem did so great.  He got a little sad at nap time and after seeing a dead bluebird in the canyon, but he napped (unbelievably) on their ATV ride to the end to the pick up spot and was all sunshine again after that!  And...he got a lot of outdoor potty-training practice during the whole day too!  

(Oh, and just a note:  Beacher is several months pregnant with baby sister - due in December - and was still a pro-rappeler and hiker and ATV rider!)

Fall Break - Camping in the Kaibab

We left Thursday afternoon and got there in plenty of time to find a great camp spot just off of FR 255.  Someone must have camped there just before us because sadly, for them, they left a neat little Dutch Oven outfit with a bag to go in, a small DO, silicone muffin cups and a metal pan w/lids set and a lid holder.  I feel bad that they left it, but they never came back to look for it, so now we have some new camping gear via the booty find.  It was a wonderfully level spot with a rock fire ring and surrounded by wonderful Ponderosa trees.  The dirt road wasn't bad at all.  And we were only about 20 miles from Jacob Lake.  That was nice, because for our first night's dinner we just ate there.  Always delicious.  We took cookies back to camp and had hot chocolate by the fire when it got dark.  It was so nice to have a fire.  It's been a long time.  

The next morning our plan was to visit as many of the Grand Canyon View Points as we could before we needed to be back to cook dinner in camp that night.  We made it to Sowats (first time ever), Crazy Jug, Monument, Parrisawampitts, Fence, Locust, North Timp and Timp. We put on over a hundred miles doing it.  And we saw lots of beautiful overlook views.  Sowats is off by itself and offers a different view completely, but the others are different focal points of the same area.  The leaves were gloriously beautiful as well as the canyon views.  We ate lunch along the way.

We had a great Paul cooked dinner in camp on Friday.  We had a fire again that night and read a book around the fire until bedtime.  It got cold in the evenings and early mornings, but the days were just right other than a bit of gnattiness at a few of the points.  We saw Kaibab Squirrels 4 times, turkeys and heard coyotes the first night.  A very noisy crow woke us up on Saturday morning!  We cleaned up camp and then headed over to Jacob Lake for one of their great breakfasts and then headed home.  It was a really relaxing trip!  (Note - Monument Point is unmarked and is basically just the trailhead to hike down to Thunder River.)

Happy #95 Aunt Georgia!

I feel bad that we didn't get out to Aunt Georgia's 95th birthday party/reunion.  It was held on conference weekend this year.  We have had SO MANY huge truck repairs and other auto maintenance and auto expenses of late that our credit card had huge bills to pay.  We just couldn't see that we could spend the $500 plus expense that it would have been to go to CA and pay for food and motel, etc. that it would have taken.  So we didn't go.  She's my mom's last living sibling.  It sounds like everyone that went made it nice for her.  Sometimes life gets in the way of things.  

More Fall-lelujah!

We took Grandma to see some lower down Fall-lelujah yesterday.  We drove the Kolob Terrace road and down the mountain to the Cedar section...and it did not disappoint.  The colors were beautiful!  We enjoyed the Zion skyline and rock formations on the first part of the drive through a portion of east Zion with some rain showers, and then a picnic lunch at Lava Point, on to Kolob Reservoir and then over and down the mountain.  She said she enjoyed it so much.  It is good for her to be able to just get out of her house for a day.

During the week Paul and I took some beautiful walks at Pine Valley and at Brookside.  Loving Fall this year...well, every year!

Tavin goes far and fast!!!

Paul and I went for an early walk this morning and saw the beginnings of the of this October 1st St. George Marathon.  There were people coming in from the half while we walked.  Tavin did the full with a bunch of friends down from BYU.  And he did a great job!  Came in in about 3 hours and 20 minutes.  Proud of him for working hard to do this thing and for so many other good things he's doing in his life right now.  

Glorious Fall on Cedar Mountain!

 I love that I get Fridays off!  After years of having to go in for just a little while on Fridays to help with OEK Lunch, I'm glad not to have that interruption now.  It's like I have 2 Saturdays now! I can have one to clean the house and one to get outside!  Yesterday Paul and Bean took Friday off (they had reached a finishing point on the job they are working on) and we drove a loop over Cedar Mountain and saw such beautiful Fall colors, sunny and cloudy and rainy and thunder skies, and the coolness of impending Fall!  These are some places and walks we take every year...and love them every time!