The Dowdles: A Quick Break

The break between Winter Semester and Spring Term at BYU is less than a week. So obviously you have to pack it full of exciting adventures.

Anne, Spencer, and Jordan decided we needed to make the most of the break. I'd been to Zion National Park before, but the rest of the crew hadn't and Jordan had been DYING to go, so Wednesday afternoon, once Anne and I finished our last finals, we packed up the car and headed down. We stopped off in Glendale, Utah (10 points if you know where that is) to meet up with some people from Jordan's mission that live there now, then headed into the park.

Spencer, Anne, Me, Jordan, Naomi, Allie at the park enterance

First we drove through this awesome tunnel and chatted a little at an overlook. Then we got on the shuttle and headed up to the Weeping Rock. It's a short, easy hike that was a ton of fun. Naomi, the little six year old, was adorable the whole time. Plus, she told me I am her best friend. Yep, that's right!

Anne, Spencer, Jordan, Me, and Naomi

Me and Naomi, we're kindred spirits

On the shuttle

At Weeping Rock

After Weeping Rock we got back on the shuttle and went to play in a little river. Jordan and Spencer had a good time exploring the river, but the rest of us were definitely too cold to do much exploring. We're wimps. We went along the trail a little longer and played with Naomi along the way. She was a trooper. She started bawling when we had to go. It was so sad!

We went down to St. George to stay the night in a condo. We watched "Life of Pi" that night. I read that book in high school, but none of us made it through the whole movie awake. The conversation after in which we all tried to piece together what the story was about was rather hysterical.

The next morning we ran to the store to buy stuff for breakfast and lunch and then went to a random park to eat breakfast (and swing on the swings, obviously). When we got back into Zions we decided to head along the trail to the Emerald Pools. The lower and middle pools were cool, but not super exciting. That's when we decided to go off trail a little...okay, a lot. The trail we found to the Upper Pool was closed off, so we created our own; one that included following the stream over lots and lots of big rocks. Turns out the trail we ended up running into was one to the Upper Pool. Who knew. It's lucky we turned up when we did, though, cause the park rangers showed up right after we got there.

Spencer got this look from me a lot...

Our Trail

Upper Pool

Us at the Upper Pool

We hiked a little more there, then decided to head up to an overlook. I wish we had taken pictures up there, but we totally spaced it. It's too bad because it was absolutely amazing!

Then we found another trail to go on...but only stayed on the actual trail for about 5 minutes. We found some cool rocks to climb instead.

Anne and Spencer (If you look really closely you can
see Jordan in blue on the top left.)

I have this weird obsession with the random trees that grow in the middle of the rocks

We headed home before it got too late. We were all super tired by the end, but it was a ton of fun!

Monday morning the four of us woke up very early and headed down to Arches National Park. Anne and I had been there before, but the boys hadn't. It really is in the middle of nowhere. We headed to Delicate Arch first. On the map it says it is an "Interpretive Trail" which we thought was funny. We got it once we started. It was actually a pretty cool trail. Lots of rocks to climb on.

Delicate Arch is SO BEAUTIFUL! The scenery there really was incredible.

We had to run back out of the park to get gas, then we went up to Devil's Garden so we could hike to Landscape, Navajo, Partition, and Double O Arches. This trail is pretty off-roady-feeling, so we didn't feel the need to go off trail too often (except for Jordan, man that kid loves climbing on really big rocks!). We loved the Landscape Arch a lot. The other ones were cool too, but the sheer size of the Landscape Arch can't be beat!

At Landscape Arch

Story: We met this cute couple from Arizona on the trail.
They commented on mine and Spencer's BYU shirts so we talked to them for a little bit.
Apparently they have a lot of Mormon neighbors in Arizona.
They asked if they could take our picture so that they could show their
friends and tell them about the nice group from BYU they met.

Having our "Anne of Green Gables"/"Pride and Prejudice" moment

This is part of the actual trail

Once we got to Double O Arch, the boys decided they needed to climb to not only the top of the lower arch but the top one too. They were SO high. It sort of freaked me out. Our only rule for the trip was no falling/doing anything that might ruin the adventure. I thought they were going to break that rule a couple of times, but it was all fine in the end.