A fabulous weekend

I needed to get away. I hadn't taken a vacation since before I started working at The Daily Universe on BYU campus last August. Since there were a few days between semesters our family decided to go to Bryce Canyon. Our kids have never been there and Riley and I haven't been there since 1981. The stars must have been in alignment for us to take this trip. It was between trips for Riley - California, California and Mongolia; Andrea and Amy returned from Mexico and Belize at 1 a.m. the day we left, Brandy got time off from her new job and Jason had time too. So the six of us loaded up into two vehicles and headed south.

Everything was perfect. First, it was a free entrance weekend at Bryce so we saved $50 on entrance fees. Then we got the second to last camping spot in the park. We set up our three tents and made a fire to cook pigs in a blanket over the fire. The weekend we chose to go was an astronomy festival so we listened to lectures about planets and then we looked through enormous telescopes to see planets, nebulas and stars. It was fantastic!

Friday we ate omelets cooked in baggies. You break your eggs into a ziplock bag, add things like onions, mushrooms, peppers, cheese, etc. and cook in a pot of boiling water. The best part - no clean up. We hiked through Bryce on the various trails for six hours, going slowly to look at cool things, identify plants and birds and sleep and eat lunch in an out-of-the-way place we had to ourselves. We ate easy stuff life crackers, skittles and fruit. That night we made tinfoil dinners and cooked them in the fire. Again, no clean-up.

Saturday we woke to a little bit of rain. We broke camp and visited all the look-out points in Bryce all the way to Yovimpa point. We had thought about going to Zion and went back and forth trying to decide. At 1-ish we decided to head down to Zion. We were so glad we did. The entrance fee was waived again so we paid nothing to ride the shuttle into the park. We tried to hike the Shinowava area but it was raining. The rain stopped so we took pictures of our family in front of the Great White Throne. We hiked the Weeping Rock area and Brandy and Andrea hiked to Hidden Canyon. It was a wonderful, slow-paced, relaxing weekend with the five people I love the most. We didn't get home until 1 a.m. but it was worth it. We enjoyed our time together and we all came home rejuvenated.