Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Zion trip: Day 2

For a good portion of the night, it rained cats and dogs.  I mean...German Shepherds man...this was big rain!  I lay awake and listened to the wonderful thunder and lightning but still wished I could get some sleep as I was tired from the night before and knew we had a couple long days ahead of us.  We woke up to lots of clouds but it had stopped raining. We packed up camp and headed up the long dirt road to the trailhead for the Narrows hike.  The sky became more and more foreboding and Joe and I were both a little grim.


 Here is the deal.  This hike we were about to do was through canyons....big canyons with no way out, so flash flooding is a true and real possibility.  We also wondered how enjoyable a hike would be with two drenched children in backpacks.  But, we decided to do it anyway and the Lord was so gracious to us!  There were thunderclouds all around, but above us would be blue sky!  



The trail started out wide and through some meadows next to the Virgin river, but then became more narrow until you basically had to walk back and forth through the river and lots of times just in it because of the canyon walls.  The rock walls were amazing with their colors and height!


















I felt so blessed to be able to do this with my little family.  The kiddos greatly enjoyed the lunch break and a few other breaks we took to let them out of their packs, go pee and such.  They were awesome carry-ons though and we never had any full out crying.  Oh, until about mile 8 and that was me... not the kiddos.  Just kiddin.. sorta.  My legs and hips and back and shoulders were incredibly sore from carrying probably about half my weight that I just wanted to get to our campsite for the night.  The last few miles after that seemed to take FOR EVER but we finally made it to campsite #9 just before we lost all sunlight.  We quickly boiled some water for our dehydrated meals, set up camp, and hit the sack.
  

Joe soaked his body in the cold river but I could not get myself back up out of the tent after lying down with the kids to put them to sleep.  Sorry there is no real picture of our campsite this night, but we were too tired to care.


1 comment:

  1. The pictures are AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL and I so can't wait to do this one day!!!! I know you were exhausted.... but seriously what great memories you guys now have!!!

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