Red Rock Country...

These past couple days we have been in Southern Utah on a little family outing. Gary had a work mtg. he had to be to in Kanab so we decided to take a road trip. It was nice to get away, but nice to get home as well. Gary's mtg. was Wednesday night in Kanab so we played and went exploring on Thursday and a little bit on Friday, the day we come home. On Thursday we went on a hike to go see some rock formations they call Toad Stools. That was a nice hike with LOTS of sand to play with so Madi really enjoyed it. This was a great hike to see the rock formations, but there were also a lot of little side canyons and crevices that Gary had fun exploring with Madi. While we were up that canyon we could see rain was coming so we decided to head back to the car. Our next stop was about ten miles out of Page, AZ. We were still in Utah and it was a visitor center that had dinosaur stuff on display. Apparently scientists have had luck finding dinosaur bones down in that area. Madi is into dinosaurs lately (thanks Land Before Time). She enjoyed her time there looking at the bones and some books they had on display. Madi was such a great traveler during this trip. She did great and I think she had a fun time. She did miss our dog, Casey though. After our sight seeing that day we drove over to a tiny town called Mount Carmel. On our way there we decided to go up a canyon called Angel Canyon where the nations largest animal sanctuary is. Madi got to see lots of horses, sheep, goats, fish, and dogs. There were many different kinds of animals we didn't get to see because the tours were finished for the day. Madi saw a lot of animals that day so we decided not to go back for the tour. After that we went and checked into our hotel in Mt. Carmel where we stayed Thursday night. We were going to drive into Zions Ntl. Park and do some hiking, but we decided to drive over to Escalante. Right when you turn off of HWY 89 onto HWY 12 you go through some red rock canyons. It had snowed there recently so we got to see the beautiful red rock accented with the fresh snow. That was fun to see. We went to Escalante to see Gary's mission President and his wife, Brother and Sister Roundy. It was nice to finally put a face to a name. Gary really loves them and was excited to see them after about ten years. They have a great log cabin style house up one of the canyons in Escalante. Gary and I had never been there so it was fun to see some new parts of the state. From there we went through the Boulder Mountains on our way home. WOW!! What a beautiful way to come home. We came across a couple from Germany who was in the States doing some sight seeing. It made Gary and I feel a little bad that we have lived in Utah our whole lives and hadn't seen some of that stuff, but people will travel from other countries to see it. Well, now we can say we have seen it. It was a long drive home, but like I said, it is nice to be home. When we drove through ALLLLLL the small towns of Southern Utah Gary and I both commented, "why would you want to live in this town??" Well, when we pulled into Utah County we hit a traffic jam and it was stop and go all the way to Lehi. We didn't hit any traffic in the small towns, maybe they aren't so bad after all. Here are some pictures we took on our trip. There were a lot of fun ones, so you have a lot to look at.. Enjoy!! Have a great evening.

Our hike to see the Toad Stools












Madi playing with some sand on our way down the canyon. The sand was so fine that it got all over her. It took us a LONG time to get down that canyon. Madison wanted to stop every time she was out of sand to get more in her hands. We decided to go down the river beds when we hiked out. If you look just above Madi's head you can see where we had to jump down to continue on our way down. There were a couple of those spots where we had to jump, but we had fun getting through those parts.



If you look in the distance you can see the storm moving in. That was a pretty good storm that even brought some snow. I was glad we got out of there before the storm got to us.



Dinosaur Visitor Center



Red Rock Mountains just off of HWY 89 on HWY 12



Boulder Mountains