Bryce Canyon

We just got back from a few impromptu trip to Bryce Canyon. It is not really like me to fly by the seat of my pants, but I did and it was FABULOUS! We had so much fun. Travis' parents wanted to take us down there and show us some of the wonderful things that they discovered when they went down a month or so ago.
So, we "planned" the trip at 10:00 pm Sunday and were on the road by 8:00 am Monday. Travis parents took care of all the food and stuff so all we had to do was pack our clothes. On the way down we stopped at Cove Fort. It is an LDS church historical site between Fillmore and Beaver. It was an actual fort built by Ira Hinckley at the request of Brigham Young. We have been wanting to go there for a while now so it was a fun surprise. The boys had a lot of fun learning about the Fort. Unfortunately my camera is broken so we have no pictures of the trip. We will have to settle for some generic ones from the internet. We ate lunch there and then hit the road again.
We had a few other little stops on the way, then we found a camp ground, dropped the trailer off and headed out for our first hike. We went to the Queens garden. It was so beautiful! Here are a few pictures.This was actually the end that we went up at the end. It was very steep, but so much fun!

The total hike was about 3 miles. We were worried that the boys, Simon especially would get tired, but they were troopers and did a wonderful job! Luke had to be carried a little at the end when it was so steep, but other then that not one problem. They were so excited to be exploring. Jonah kept saying things like "I wish I could live here". It was so much fun.
After the hike we went back to camp and had dinner. Travis helped Jonah start his very first fire. He loved that. Grandpa Garner read to us around the camp fire for a while. Then we went to bed. We slept pretty good except for the time that I woke up because it sounded like the boys were walking around in the tent trailer. I reached out and felt for Simon who was sleeping in the bed next to me with Jonah, and he was not there. I called his name and didn't get an answer so I got up to find that he was laying on the floor with all of Jonah's blankets on top of him. Jonah was freezing. He was up and talking to me, but I don't really think he was awake. I tried to get him to lay down and he kept laying down in all different directions. I couldn't get Simon back on the bed with him laying funny, so I had to get him all situated. I picked Simon up and for some reason his shirt was off. I finally got them both back in bed and covered up and we went back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning Simon was on the floor again, and Jonah had no blankets again. I guess I should have just left them alone.
We had breakfast that morning, packed up camp and then headed out for two more hikes. The first was a very short hike to Fairyland loop. The next was to Mossy Cave. That was awesome!
It was a really fun trail to hike with so many beautiful parts of nature surrounding us.


After this hike it was time to get back on the road. We did have one more surprise stop to make on the way home though. Grandpa Garner stopped at the Cache Valley cheese factory on the way home. We ate lunch at the picnic tables they have there and then grandpa bought us ice cream cones and squeaky cheese for the drive home. It was a wonderful time! We hope to go back down and explore some more again soon!