Tag: hiking

Summer Vacation 2026

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We started off by driving to Rifle Gap to the lake, which was low but still pretty. Curtis caught a pike, the little kids swam, and Peter read. We camped the next couple of nights at Rifle Falls State Park, which has an amazing waterfall and caves.

Our next day of vacation was spent at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. There’s a gondola up to the park, and it has a couple of small cave tours, which were pretty cool, and a variety of rides. Our favorite rides were the alpine coaster and the swings that swing over the mountain. It’s not the best theme park, but it’s very unique with the location. We left for lunch at a park, but otherwise spent nearly the whole day there. We stopped by South Canyon Hot Spring on the way back to the campground.

On day 3, we went up the street to the Rifle Fish Hatchery, which is open to visitors, and you can feed the fish. Next, we went and hiked Hanging Lake. It was a beautiful hike, but kind of a disaster in execution. Evie refused to hike. We ended up splitting up, but when we split up, we didn’t make sure everyone had water. It all worked out; everyone but Evie did make it to the lake. We drove over to Golden Gate Canyon State Park for another night of camping.

Day 4 started with a quick stop for fishing and the nature walk at the Visitor’s Center. We had some extra time to kill in Denver. We ended up at Pacho Sanchez Park, which has a really unique playground, and Chatfield State Park to spend some time cooling off in the water.

Our main objective in Denver was to see the Rockies game with fireworks after. It was a very fun way to celebrate the 4th of July. Our tickets allowed us to go down to the field for the fireworks show. It was crowded, and we didn’t get back to our hotel until midnight, but it was awesome.

The next day, we stopped by my sister’s in Laramie for lunch and went home. It was a great low-key vacation.

Camping

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I think it’s easy to wonder why you would leave your comfortable home and drive over 16 hours simply to sleep in a sleeping bag in a tent in freezing weather.

When we originally planned this trip, I knew the weather would vary in April. And I decided if the weather was bad, we would cancel. And then the weather was bad, but I didn’t want to miss out on the adventure, so we went anyway. We did decide to only camp one night instead of two.

I was very nervous, but thanks to a few new sleeping bags and a buddy heater, most of us stayed warm. It was hard, but it wasn’t that hard. And besides that, sometimes I think our modern life provides us with so much ease and comfort that we need to shake it up and go and do uncomfortable things. Things that test us and are different and hard.

For our trip, we stayed a night in Kanab and visited The Belly of the Beast and Sand Caves. My brother-in-law grew up there and thought it was a little odd that these man-made areas were now tourist attractions, but they were fun. We met up with my sister and her family for most of the trip.

We went down and camped at the south rim of the Grand Canyon. The first day, we enjoyed quite a few overlooks, visitors centers, and set up camp. FYI: Bring extra stuff. So when a sleeping bag has a broken zipper, you have an extra, or when your rain fly got left out because it was wet last time you camped and you forget to bring it, you can use a spare tarp.

The next day, my sister and I went and saw the sunrise, and then we all hiked down the Bright Angel trail and wandered around the village.

Then, we spent another night in Kanab and drove home. We also stopped by Navajo Bridge and Lee’s Ferry for a break. It was General Conference, and we were able to listen to most of it on satellite radio, which I recommend. Not a bad trip.

Finding Things

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I miss the more snowy winters of my childhood, although I sometimes don’t find consistent weather in the 40s during December. But there is still snow in the mountains to enjoy. We found snow on a recent hike. So much snow that we changed plans and went on a shorter hike. Evie took off her gloves to better play with the snow and discovered snow was very cold. She wouldn’t put them back on, so we went back to the car to warm up. It was a good time to do a very short hike.

We found Santa at our church’s Christmas party.

Henry had a birthday, and we went out to Sushi. While we were there enjoying our food, I heard crying from Evie. She had tried a big glob of wasabi and discovered it was very spicy!

Zack finished up Junior Jazz. I coached him. He was honestly not a great player, but he loved it and looked forward to it each week. That’s the important part at his age!

We’ve also enjoyed Christmas Lights, basketball games, movies, and children’s museums.