Petroglyphs, Tabernacle and Fun

Today has been another fantastic day full of adventures. This morning started out calm and quiet with family devotional and a nice cooked breakfast of eggs on toast. Then the boys had a blast playing pillow fight with the tootsie roll pillows that we have in the condo. The boys took some time to complete their education for the day and Michelle put together some lunches and then we were off to see the world.

We decided to first go and see some petroglyphs that were located just a few miles outside of St. George at the Black Mountain Petroglyph site. However, there was no "Google maps" directions to get there and the two different written directions I found were not the same.

 So...I missed the turn off of I-15 and we found ourselves in Arizona. Oops.

Actually, to be honest, the petroglyphs are located in Arizona, just across the state line. But the dirt road to the petroglyphs is not on my map but once I made the correct turn off the highway we were able to find the site fairly easily.

The site was out in the desert and we almost drove past it because it wasn't what I was expecting to see at a petroglyph site. In fact, the "mountain" looked more like a solitary butte and all of the petroglyphs were on big rocks that were no longer attached to it. There was no explanation but it seems that the petroglyphs may have been attached to the butte at one time and have broken off and fallen to their current locations. But however they got there, we thought they looked pretty cool.

It wasn't all just sight seeing. There were some cool looking rocks next to the trail and the boys just couldn't resist. And our boys are starting to get good at identifying some good picture opportunities.

More petroglyphs...

After walking around the Black Mountain Petroglyphs in the cold November breeze we jumped back in the suburban, ate our lunch and headed back to town. While we have been driving we have been listening to the audio book "Inkheart". David and the others have become deeply involved in the story and every time we've been in the suburban David has practically flown over the seat to turn the story back on, even if the drive is only 2 minutes down the street.

So with Inkheart playing over the speakers we headed back into St George for our next adventure stop. We were heading to the Children's Discovery Museum when we notice this historical site that advertised free tours, so we thought we'd stop in and check it out.

The St George tabernacle was just down the street from the museum and we thought it would be a fun and interesting visit.

There was a senior missionary, Elder Fuller? from Idaho, who was there to give us the tour and to tell us about this building and some of it's history. It was such a peaceful feeling and the architecture and decorations were really neat. It was all we could do to keep to boys from running through the place at full speed (but they did run a little...how else are you supposed to cover enough ground to see everything in such a short period of time!).

The all seeing Eye of the Lord. The three crowns underneath represent the three Godhead. The finger pointing up was to remind the saints to always remember Him. There are two hands clasping (kind of hard to see in the picture) that represent faith and union.

Elder Fuller thought it would be fun to have a private concert. He had just explained about John Schmidt, of the piano guys, who was one of many performers who had recently been in the tabernacle to perform. Elder Fuller turn the microphone on and the boys sang "Army of Helaman" from the pulpit!

 After the song Elder Fuller had to turn the microphone off because the boys were getting a little excited about all the sounds you can make in a microphone! We managed to slow the boys down for a few more pictures inside this historic tabernacle.

The balcony

 These chairs were actually quite comfortable

One of the coolest features of this historic building was the two spiral staircases at the front of the building. The boys made a few trips up and down these stairs.

We got to see some of the tools that were used (or tools like them) to make this historic building. We also discovered that Michelle's Great, Great, Great Grandfather David H. Cannon was the person in charge of bringing the glass for the windows for the tabernacle up from California when they arrived there after a boat trip around the tip of South America. The tabernacle still has much of this old glass in place.

After the tabernacle tour we headed down the street to the Children's Discovery Museum. But in the middle of the block there was a splash pad that was still running, much like a fountain with a changing spray display. The boys thought it was great and we paused to watch.

Then we noticed more of this city park's water features and the boys were off and running. After having to stay on the path at the petroglyphs and being "quiet" at the condo we had to let them just run and have fun.

The boys spent a few hours exploring the Children's Museum. It was not crowded, probably because all of the kids were in school. Lucky for us!

At the store

Milking Maggie

Gidean working in the farm kitchen

In the post office

Loading the plane

 Piloting the plane

 Creating bubbles

This was a fun game that was projected on the floor. We don't know what it is called, but there was soccer, football, pop the balloons, one like whack-a-mole only it was rats, and many other games. David is in the background trying out what it is like to be in a wheelchair. 

  

On this one you had to create the track (the black tubing) that went from the basket back to the bottom where you then turn a wheel which engaged the mechanism which brought the balls back up to the top like an elevator. 

Gidean is in the tree house and Aleky and Quinten are at the wishing well.

Here we have some boys working in the mines. It would have been perfect if we had all of our Halloween dwarf costumes for this room, HAHAHAH. 

Michelle really likes the paintings on the wall throughout the museum and in the castle room especially. She is getting the itchy painting fingers and thinking about painting some murals on our walls at home. 

Four handsome princes and two strong knights to protect them

"The dragon is coming who will save us?"

"Never fear SIR GIDEAN is here!"

 This young prince is cowering behind the mighty knight.

 

"So Prince David, what should we do now that the dragon has been defeated and all is well in the land?" "We should have a Victory Ball of course Prince Donovan, bring out the ladies!"

We had a fabulous time exploring and instead of having a ball we decided that dinner would suffice (no ladies, except mom of course). So a quick shopping spree at the store and we had our food for the rest of our stay in St George and we headed to the condo.

Michelle whipped up a quick dinner of tacos. Then we had a family movie night with brownies and ice cream for dessert. Finally, the boys were off to bed and it was only 10:00 pm!

We have the BEST FAMILY  E V E R!!!

A Day In Zion National Park

Today we had the privilege of going to visit Zion National Park. This is the first time I can remember going to Zion National Park and it's the first time the boys have been here; Michelle has been here a couple of times with her family before we were married. It happens to be a bonus that currently there is a program to encourage the 4th graders of Utah to go to the National Parks.  This program allows our 4th grader (Michael) to visit most of the national parks for free and the family can come along too. So we didn't have to pay the $30 day fee to get into the park and Michael has a cool parks pass for the next year.

When we arrived at the park today we had planned to hike to Angel's Landing, a short (2.5 miles / 5 miles round trip) but difficult hike. However, we didn't make it to the park until nearly noon. We thought it was a good idea to stop at the visitor's center and get some more ideas about what to see while at the park. We discovered that the planned hike would take most of the daylight we had available and we wouldn't be able to see anything else in the park. After careful consideration, and watching our children run crazy through the visitor's center we decided that we would rather see more of the park on this first visit and give our children a chance to practice trail etiquette (like staying on the path and following directions) before trying the dangerous assent.

Since this was a family visit we had the boys contribute their ideas about where we should go. Donovan was set to make the hike to Angel's Landing and was very disappointed that we would consider changing plans. The other boys were initially disappointed but quickly got excited about seeing other sites and driving through the mile long tunnel.

They got even more excited when they began to see some of the sites on the big map. I think they finally started to realize that there was some cool stuff to see and couldn't wait to get going.

Our first stop was at "The Patriarchs". We could see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (the three pointed cliffs on the right). The hike to the lookout was one switch back about a dozen steps off the road (or a little more but it wasn't very far). 

{My camera freaked out at this stop so I only have the picture I snapped when we first stopped.}

Fortunately Michelle was able to get a great shot of the boys at the lookout.

Our next stop was to see the Emerald Pools. But since we didn't even get to Zion NP until noon we decided it would be best to stop and eat lunch before heading off on any real hiking experiences. Since the river was right there we decided to find a nice spot where we could enjoy the sunshine and eat lunch together. This nice big rock was welcoming so this is where we stopped to eat.

Our boys never miss a chance to throw a rock into a river and today was no exception. We just were worried that Gidean might throw his sandwhich with his rocks on accident.

Before heading up to the pools we wanted to emphasize the importance of following the rules and staying on the designated paths. We weren't super concerned about problems on this particular path but as visions of ascending to Angel's Landing overshadowed our hiking we wanted to take this opportunity to begin preparing our boys for the importance of staying on the trail and sticking together. We made Aleky read the sign out loud for everyone (David helped point out each word on the sign). 

With the rules freshly imprinted in the impressionable minds of our children we headed off to see the pools. 

The boys took off down the path, out of sight and we found them around the bend, off the path, sitting on this rock waiting for us to arrive to take their picture. I figure that at least we tried (and they make a great looking bunch of boys).

Michelle said the Emerald Pools were low, we're guessing that's partly due to the season. But since we've never seen them before we thought they still looked pretty cool. 

The younger boys weren't sure they liked running under the falling water to continue on the path but with some simple coaxing they made it through just fine.

We had some great opportunities to take pictures as we hiked 1.5 miles to the upper pool. Michelle watched to back of the line and Michael was consistently at the head of the pack.

Along the route we found several sets of sandstone stairs. We stopped for pictures on a few of them because they just looked so cool. This is one of the better pictures.

The upper pool was quite as impressive as I had imagined during the hike up the trail. Again, we figured that the low water level had to do with us visiting in November instead of earlier in the year. But our boys were still excited and they quickly went to work exploring the area, looking for amazing photo opportunities. We got a few good pictures. The boys brought home a few scrapes and bruises from their explorations.

The hike to the pools started to wear out our boys! That was surprising to us considering the amount of energy they have and our recent hike up Y mountain. But the boy's excitement for seeing more of Zion NP was beginning to wane. This created a perfect opportunity for a picture with just Michelle and me.

We still had two more stops on our whirlwind tour of Zion NP. The next stop was to see Weeping Rock. The boys were very hesitant to get out of the suburban but once they were out they were off and running! On our leisurely 0.5 mile walk to Weeping Rock we saw some cool plant identification signs and this beautiful tree. With the sun starting to set it made the tree look like it was on fire! The picture is cool but doesn't do the tree justice.

It was cool to see the water just dripping from the mountain side! The plants were small in preparation for winter so we may need to come back during the busy season to get a chance to see this site in its full beauty. But it was still very impressive.

(We discovered some secret stairs!)

We drove past Angel's Landing. Having spent so much time talking about it we had to drive up and see what all of the excitement was about. Michelle wanted to point out how high it was and the narrow trail that led to the top of this special outlook.

The boys were certainly impressed with everything associated with this spectacular landmark.

Our penultimate stop was at the end of the road, literally. We went to see the Temple of Sinawava at the bottom of the Narrows. By this time Gidean was tired and didn't want to hike anymore. A couple of the other boys felt they wanted some alternative forms of entertainment that could be found elsewhere. But since we may not be coming back to the park we wanted to take this short, easy hike.

While the boys were getting tired of hiking they never get tired of throwing rocks in the river. I don't know if we made it to the temple or not but we stopped hiking at the end of the trail. The boys played in the river for a bit before we headed back down the trail.

At the end of the trail (where the Narrows begin/end). The boys had to stop and throw rocks in river despite all of their claims of being "too tired" to hike any more. My boys love rocks!

We hiked back to our suburban. The mile long tunnel was a small detour on the way back to the park entrance so we decided to check it out. We made it there after sunset so we didn't get a good picture but the boys were very excited to drive through this long tunnel. When we emerged on the far side the boys were all to excited to go through the tunnel again, only they wanted to be the only ones in the tunnel. I couldn't fully arrange to be the only ones in the tunnel but we waiting until we couldn't see anyone before driving through the tunnel a second time. It was totally black in there and the boys thought it was great.

After the tunnel we drove all the way back to St. George. We didn't get back into town until after 7 pm so we were all starting to get hungry. Our quick trip to the store required 2 stops to get hamburger makings. Then we got lost trying to figure out the how to get past the "Road Closed" on the only road to our condo. Once we found the long way around we quickly moved to cook dinner. Maybe we moved too fast because our hamburgers didn't get cooked all the way through. Needless to say, we were thrilled with our adventures in Zion NP but the night just needed to end!

This picture was an accidental picture. We were having all sorts of fun hiking, walking, and doing the can-can. At this moment we had 4-5 of us in a row walking in sync. I was trying to take a "selfie" angled picture but I seriously lack practice with that art form. So the picture was completely blurred except for Michelle! That made it really cool so it still made the final cut. ;-)