Lava tubes

 

Snow Canyon area has the biggest volcanic activity of all of Utah.  There are lava tubes everywhere.  As a teenager, I remember my grandma driving me and my cousins out to them to explore. I think the last time I did them was with Landon or Jake with grandma's big stash of flashlights.  I knew that the kids would love to see them so I had them pack flashlights.  Then all of us forgot to bring them from our hotel to the caves.  Whoops.  Jer had two in the van and that worked well enough. It was about 3 miles round trip to get out to them.  We decided just to go the first one, but ended up at the third one on accident, then we looped back to the first one because Evelyn was very upset that we weren't planning on spending a lot of time in one.  Jer was super sweet and carefully helped all the kids down into one so that Evelyn could get pictures for the book she wants to make about dragons and giants in Snow Canyon.

Evelyn took most of these pictures.  She's excited to try to start her project.

I love this picture.... Seth was having a harder time getting down from the rock, so Evelyn turned around and helped him down.

Newspaper Rock

I woke up on our second day after not really sleeping through the night and had a headache and lots of congestion. So we found the trailhead for newspaper rock and the petroglyph hike and got everyone set for a good hike.... and I laid out in the van and napped for an hour.  They were gone for about 2 1/2 hours, so I did get out and stretch, and listened to a book while they were gone.  The pictures they brought back were pretty neat.

The circle of life

 

Fall break trip to Snow Canyon

 

For Fall break, we took off to Snow Canyon.  We've never taken our kids down to the St. George area before so it was their turn.  My growing up years, summer was spent at Bear Lake and fall and spring were in Hurricane with my grandparents.  The area has grown a lot in the last 20 years since I've been there, but there are some memories that I was able to share with the kids.  

We took time to visit the dinosaur museum that is focused on the dinosaur tracks found at a farm in the last few years.  I was sick with a cold that I caught not long before, but we went and had fun anyways. Seth was thrilled.  He loves dinosaurs and I want to take advantage of that while he still does.

The kids also found the tardis and the Back to the Future Delorian.

We went to visit the Ivan's art city.  We loved looking at the pottery, metal work, jewelry, photography, etc... and while we were looking, we met a guy renting ebikes.  We didn't have anything scheduled, so we decided to do it.  We rode them from Ivans and up Snow Canyon til the petrified sand dunes.  It was so fun!  I did feel like it was cheating a little to have the electric bikes, but it was so nice to go up the hill without struggling. We were gone for about 2-2 1/2 hours and got to hike the petrified sand dunes, and zoom down the hill after.  I was a little worried about losing the kids or going too fast for them to handle, so we averaged about 15 mph on the way up the hills, but the way back we got up to 28 going down some of those hills.  Everyone loved it.  Jer had the hardest time.  He had Evelyn and Seth on a little less beefy bike, but he said it was still fun.  The hardest/funniest part was that every time Jeremy had to stop, Seth's helmet would hit Jeremy and then go back and hit Evelyn's helmet....

I was the navigator.  I held the map and tried to make sure we stayed on course.

Old pottery wheel

Sam "died"

These were really neat bells made from old train parts and gears.  I would have gotten one for our yard but they were $1,200 or so.... Yeah, we skipped that one.