August 2020 - Family Vacay

Our family vacation to southern Utah began on Saturday, August 8. Josh worked at the golf course early that morning, and when he got home, we loaded up the coolers and packed the car with our bags and food and headed out about 9am, which is the time we hoped to leave by! The boys watched the Sherlock Holmes DVD's on part of the 10-hour drive to southern Utah. The weather was nice, and the drive was uneventful. We stopped at the rest area by Blackfoot to eat our picnic lunch of tuna/pickle sandwiches, apples, and chips. I drove from there to Ogden, and then Josh drove the rest of the way. We stopped at Fillmore for dinner, and then kept driving. We got to our AirBnB in LaVerkin after 7:00. It was a cute place that's basically a basement apartment that the homeowner leases out. It was decorated really nice and had 3 rooms and enough beds for everyone, which was perfect for us. 

We got up early on Sunday morning to leave around 7am in order to beat the crowds and heat for our morning hikes in Zion. Zion wasn't very busy yet, and we got a great parking spot for the Canyon Overlook hike. The hike was so cool going over/under various rock formations. It was a 1-mile roundtrip hike. The views from the top were okay, but for me, the actual hike was the highlight! 

We've been planning to go to Zion since last year, and we planned to go over Spring Break, but then COVID hit hard, so we postponed it to early August. Josh wanted to go to Zion National Park just to hike up Angel's Landing, but due to COVID, the hike was closed, which he was so disappointed about. Also, the main road that runs through Zion was only accessible by bus, but also due to COVID, they required reservations and had limited capacity, and we found out a week before we were to leave, that the reservations to ride the bus were full for the foreseeable future. It was a hard pill for Josh to swallow and we debated if we should even go, but I did a lot of research before we left, trying to come up with alternate activities for the family to do, and ultimately we decided we needed a vacation even if it wasn't what we'd hoped for initially. So, rather than continuing into Zion's after our hike that morning, we drove over an hour to the Toadstool Hoodoos Trail at the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument near Kanab. That hike was 2 miles roundtrip in total sun, and it was over 90*. The hoodoos were the highlight of the hike! There were such amazing formations. I liked sitting in a vertical slot of a cliff and being in the shade, just looking at the beauty around me and listening to the sheer silence of the desert. After our hike back to the car, we had a picnic lunch of watermelon and ranch tortilla wraps as we drove back towards Zion.

Can you spot Josh in the cove?

Unbeknownst to me--he was also taking a photo of me!

Can you spot the sheep formation? 

This one looked like a quail to me

Someone's got a bad case of plumber's crack!

 Zion was much busier by the time we drove back through it! We liked driving through the tunnels and looking at the scenery with the sun's full glow (there had been some long shadows earlier that morning). We stopped to eat ice cream cones at a store outside the park, which was a welcome respite after hiking in the heat.

When we got back to our AirBnB, we got ready to play in the water in the hot evening sun. We had planned to drive up to the Toquerville Falls, but after driving just one mile on the road leading to it, we decided to turn around because it was super rough and rocky. Instead, we drove to the Sand Hollow State Park south of Hurricane. I rented kayaks for 2 hours for everyone. We rowed a mile out to a red rock island where Jonah jumped off the top of it a couple times. We all had so much fun! We rowed back, which seemed like forever for Josh and I in our tandem kayak! The boys were a lot faster rowing than us in their individual kayaks! 

We were headed for the red rock cliffs in the distance...

Kanyon climbed up, and thought about jumping...
but climbed back down and got in his kayak instead!

I loved this little inlet among the red rocks!

When we left the reservoir, I took everyone out for Chinese dinner at a nearby restaurant in Hurricane, and then we went back to our AirBnB. We went to bed totally wiped! It was a good, fulfilling day! 

On Monday morning, we slept in a little longer than the previous day. We left after 8am headed for Cedar City. Originally, I'd rented a side-by-side to ride at Sand Hollow for that day, but we were notified on Sunday afternoon that the company no longer had our requested UTV size available due to some accidents that happened over the weekend, so we changed our plans--at this point, we weren't surprised that our plans changed AGAIN! We did two hikes at Cedar Breaks National Monument instead. Josh and I hadn't been there since we dated in the fall of 1997. The first hike had great views of the gorgeous rock formations and was 2 miles long. The second hike was a nature trail through some natural vegetation in the park and was one mile long. We liked the first hike better.

After the hikes, we drove down the canyon and stopped at a park to eat our taco-in-a-bag lunch, grapes, and homemade salsa with chips. Then we drove north a half hour to the Parowan Gap Petroglyphs. They were so cool! There was hundreds of engravings and pictures on the cliffs in such a small area and we liked looking at them all! 

We drove back to our AirBnB, changed our clothes, and went to the Quail Creek State Park where I rented 3 paddleboards for the boys for 2 hours. Josh and I floated on innertubes I brought from home for about an hour. The wind was blowing a lot while we were there, and the reservoir was smaller than the one we'd gone to the previous afternoon, so the boys got bored after a while, and Josh was feeling seasick from the waves. When the rentals were done, we headed back to Hurricane.

We stopped at a couple stores to do school shopping for the twins, but we didn't have much luck: with factories being limited due to COVID, the selection wasn't very good and there were no sizes in pants that fit them. We got pizza for dinner and went back to the AirBnB to eat it and watch some TV to relax in the air conditioned space! Although the day turned out much different than originally planned, it was another nice day of vacation! 

Our last day of vacation was on Tuesday. Josh and I slept in for as long as possible before getting up, we got the rental all cleaned up and packed the car. We got on the road about 9:30am, which was better than I'd expected. The drive home was quiet. The boys watched the movie series Smokey and the Bandit as we drove. We stopped at a cute place in Beaver to eat ice cream, and I made egg salad sandwiches for lunch which we ate in the car after Nephi.

We stopped for gas in Ogden, and Amanda drove over to see us, which was so nice to see her! I drove from Ogden to Pocatello, where I got us chicken for dinner. After that, Josh drove again, and we got home about 8:30pm. We got everything unloaded and unpacked. Tiki was so happy to see us again! I missed our bed, and was so happy to be home again! I love going on vacation, but I also love coming back home to my own bed! It was a good vacation, and I'm glad we were able to go, despite all the changes that happened that altered our plans!