A Memorial Weekend

For our Memorial Day getaway, Brad, his dad and brother Derek decided that we were going to the Capitol Reef area together. Rachel was a little concerned because we were there just a month ago for Spring Break. But not to worry, we were promised that it wasn't going to just a Spring Break redux.

We arrived in Torrey in the evening after fighting the horrendous traffic. I was a little worried that we weren't going to do much when we got there because the skies were overcast and and the forecast was for rain. In the morning, we woke to rain, quite a bit of rain. For those who are familiar with the landscape of Southern Utah, you know that whenever there is rain, there is a danger of flash floods and a lot of options are suddenly closed. Laura and I were imagining spending the afternoon in Torrey doing who knows what.

After spending some time in the Visitor's Center, it was determined that a hike by Pleasant Creek was still something that would be safe to do. I forgot to pack rain gear so thanks to Susan for lending me hers.

It rained intermittently on the hike but overall, the hike by the creek lived up to its name. Some of us liked to cross the stream many times,

others were more reserved about it.
It started to rain a little harder and about half of us turned around and went back to the car. We waited another hour or so for Brad, Rachel, Emma, Hunter and Derek to come back. Apparently, we turned back right before it got really cool. Rats! I wish I would have thought to take a picture of our cars after the drive, they were covered in red mud. Oh, we are so tough.

After dinner at a local burger joint, we drove back into Capitol Reef and caught the sunset,which was the only time the sun was out, at the Gooseneck Overlook (not to be confused with Goosenecks State Park, which we went to last month).

Here's Caleb by a tree that we have a picture of him sitting by when he was 8 months old. I would show you the baby picture of Caleb, but as I said in a previous post, I don't have a scanner.
Max and Ellie loved that idea. They wanted to pose and pretend they were babies in front of the tree as well. Caleb was pretending to be an old man.
At dusk, we hiked to chimney rock.

It was dark when everyone went back to the cars so we drove back to the hotel and prepared ourselves for the next day. Derek and Laura left early in the morning because they needed to be back to church the next day. Wood walked out with them and had breakfast with them before they left. I mention this because he stayed there to have breakfast with our family as well. Derek was there at 7:30 and we had breakfast at 9:30. What a guy!

After the long and leisurely breakfast, we hiked the Fremont River Walk.

After the hike, we bade goodbye to Wood and Susan because they were headed home. We thought we would try our hand at camping and hope that it would be a better experience than last time. Brad had reserved a camp site at Escalante Petrified Forest State Park. Oh, will the adventures never cease?