Zion's Backpacking Trip

The last weekend in June we gave Mom Manwaring the opportunity to watch Jackman and James while we went backpacking in Zion's National Park (or she gave us the opportunity to be together just the two of us, there are two ways to look at that :) )

Starting on our hike down to our camp

We left on Friday night to get down to Zion's, and spent to night at a hotel in Cedar City. It was a good night's sleep and we got to shower. The first day we hiked in 6 miles, found our camp, but had to wait for others to leave for that night. So we tied up our bags by the creek in a tree, and hiked to Kolob Arch. It was neat to see. I was so tired, and we figured it was from sun and I had forgotten to take my thyroid medicine that day. We ate Mountain House freeze dried food, and had a jet boil to quickly boil the water to cook it since no fires were allowed. That little thing was gold. Fantastic, and we recommend it. We also recommend the freeze dried food, it was so yummy, and we were camping! While camping we had beef stroganoff, lasagna, sweet and sour pork, teriyaki chicken, scrambled eggs and bacon, and granola with blueberries. Honestly, it was so easy and really yummy, I'd like to do that every time we camp.

Pictures from the first day, clockwise starting at the top left hand side: our camp and view of red rocks, a stream, taking a break in a cave after hiking, Kendra pointing to Kolob Arch, one of the many hundreds of lizards we saw, and Nathan by Kolob Arch

The second day we slept until the tent was too hot. It was nice, this trip we definitely caught up on sleep, which being parents of two little boys was needed. We took a hike to a waterfall, and I think it was a 13 mile round trip hike. At the waterfall we got in, but the water was so cold. Nathan wanted to go under the falls, I stepped in, but my leg got sucked into the mud, so I got right back out. Though not far, the water was so cold, Nathan decided to get out too, because it was cold enough to get into trouble. It was a beautiful canyon, really words can't describe.

Part of the canyon around a bend. We followed the little creek, which was good because we would refill our camelback with the water after using our filter. It was really hot!

I was also feeling much, much better because we did some trail running too this day. Through the sand wasn't as fun, but it was because we were together. Nathan would sing "Arabian nights" through this one part of the trail, it reminded us of Aladdin. We also hardly saw anyone this day while hiking. After getting back from our hike and run, we dipped into our creek for awhile to cool off, then made some food. We thought we should hike out while it's cooler, so we packed up, and started to hike with our packs back to the car. Good thing too, it seemed to take us a lot longer to hike out, but then we realized, the whole way back was uphill, slight or steep. We made it to our car in about 4 hours, and got there just before it was really dark. We spent the night again in Cedar City, then made our way home the next day.

Nathan and Kendra
Somewhere in Zion's

We would totally do it again. Thank you mom for watching our kids! Every once in a while everyone needs a little R&R :)