St. George!!
Can I tell you how excited I was when Big J suggested we take a St. George trip with just the two of us over the holidays?! Almost exactly 3 years had flown by since J and I had been alone longer than about 7 hours. But I was still anxious: where will we stay, what about the kidlets, will the weather be nice enough to be worth it. Sometimes those things just don't work out (like when I was going to go to Greece with J's mom but ended up due to have a baby the same timing). This trip was PERFECT! His generous Aunt K lives in St. George and let us stay at her place, even with her gone for the holidays. Thank you!! J's parents graciously said they would take good care of the kids and I absolutely believed them. And the weather turned out gorgeous!!
Thanks Mom & Dad for making it possible!!
Zion's!
J pushed me to my limits with this hike. Not with distance, but fear. At first I thought it was both. Until this point in the picture I had heard it's a 5.4 mile hike so my novice hiking mind thought 5.4 miles there and 5.4 back. That's quite a day of hiking! I was quite relieved when I found out that 5.4 was round trip. And then he showed me the next part of the hike--on the right side of the picture. We were to go up the ridge to the tip top with 1000 foot drops on BOTH sides. Augh!
Well, we lived to tell the tale. I kept my eyes ahead of me while moving to avoid getting dizzy with altitude and fear but I surprised myself by how many times I wanted to stop to enjoy the view and didn't freak out. Here's Big J on top of the Beehive. Not really a real beehive, but you can see why it was named that. I thought I'd be cool too and sit on the top too but I drew the line at just leaning my elbows against the top once I started to get up. I was just fine with that.
Tippy Top of Angel's Landing. A gorgeous 60 degree & sunny day for end of December!!!
These short switchbacks are called the "wiggles". (I thought of Little J who's been extra wiggly lately.) Big J said it was tradition to run down but I wasn't sure how my ankles would do with the painful tendinitis I'd been having all fall. I was happy to be able to take tiny running steps down and we both felt so good we ran much of the rest of the way down the trail.
We felt so good we decided to hike Emerald Falls too. We got to the Lower Falls no problem, stopping every now and again to look at cool icicles along the way. However, we got to this point and the trail was closed. The rebellious side of me wanted to keep going anyway and had not 15-20 people been at the same point I just may have. It was hard to believe that it was so icy when it was in the 60s!
After cleaning up again we ate burgers at 5 Guys--Yum! and then went to the St. George Temple.
The next day I got to use my Christmas gift--Big J surprised me with golf clubs & bag for Christmas. And golf balls and tees in my stocking. This is when I figured out his true reason for the St. George idea--to get me to use my gift really soon after Christmas. We went to Sand Hollow Resort for a round of 9. Sadly, we forgot to take pictures!. Guess we'll just have to go again! I'd been to a few golf courses before with Big J and it seemed to me this one was quite nice. We got a great deal though--especially because we walked. I think my best hole was only 2 over, but don't ask about the rest. I had some good shots though so it was about what I expected. I'd been 2-3 times before so I knew more or less what I could do. It was fun to play with my new clubs and they put us with 2 other players who fortunately were patient with me. We hurried back North to meet up with our kiddies and J's family to look at the lights on Temple Square.
2 comments:
We need to do that every winter!
So fun! We took our kiddos to Zions last spring and it was so fun, but there were definitely some hikes we couldn't do with them (like Angels Landing).
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