Saturday in Zion

Eric and I went to St. George and Zion National Park for our honeymoon (almost eight years ago). We went back to Zion just for a quick day trip a few years ago. We went down there for the third time this weekend.

Eric had work training in St. George all day on Friday, so I drove down with the boys on Friday afternoon to meet him. (I think Ike interpreted my frequent statement of, "We're going to St. George," as "We're going to see George." When we got to the place where we were supposed to pick up Eric he just kept looking around and asking about George.)

On Friday night we walked around the St. George temple a little bit, and then we took Ike to a park where he played for a while. After that we headed to our motel in Hurricane. On Saturday morning we were off to Zion!

It was beautiful weather, and I'm ridiculously happy we got to go. (We really weren't sure if we were going to follow through with our trip because Ike, Felix and I still have pretty nasty colds. Ultimately I decided that I didn't care about my cold, and I desperately needed some warm weather.)

Eric Sherpa took us on a hike to the Emerald Pools. We went all the way to the top pool (of three). Eric was a champ to lug forty pounds of his progeny up the entire route. (It's not a particularly difficult hike, but it was a few miles.)

When we got to the top we decided to put on sunscreen, which we should have done prior to starting out. Ike thought it would be fun to splash in the water. It was fun, until he fell in and became drenched from the belly button downward. The water was really cold, and he was really unhappy with how wet he got. He kept saying, "I wet. A mess."

We took his pants, shoes and socks off and set them on some rocks to get a little dry while we hung out for a little while. Another family told us their boy (now about 15) did the exact same thing about 13 years ago. We were in good company.

Of course, it wasn't warm enough for Ike's clothes and shoes to dry off completely, so I created a clothesline on the hiking backpack from a strand of yarn that had been tied there previously to prevent binkies from being dropped and lost forever. Ike didn't seem to mind riding down without any shoes or pants. I was rather proud of my impromptu clothesline. Next hiking trip we'll be sure to bring safety pins so we can add the socks to the line too.


We went out via the Grotto trail, and it was really sunny and lovely. After that we rode the bus again (the highlight of the entire trip, if you ask Ike) to the Riverwalk Trail. We had a bit of a meltdown when somebody insisted that he couldn't walk and needed to be carried, but that meltdown was mysteriously overcome when said tantrum thrower discovered he could run the whole way. (I did end up carrying him toward the end when we were going back to the bus.)

I'm looking forward to the next time we can make it down there. It's truly a stunning place.