Utah 2014 -- Zion's

I wasn't thrilled at the idea of having to drive 12 straight hours home again, so Dustin and I threw around a few ideas of where we could go to split the trip up a little. We settled on Zion's National Park.

I have about a million pictures from Zion's. My kids thought it was so gorgeous they kept stopping and asking me to take a picture of them.

The weather was perfect. It started out a little chilly, so we were never hot when we were hiking.

Our first hike was along the Kayenta trail to all the Emerald Pools. 

I was pretty impressed Luke made it all the way up to the top since it's considered a moderate hike, but I was more surprised that he made it back down in one piece. He was sliding and jumping and I kept yelling, "Luke, slow down! Luke, come back!" In fact one time we passed a couple hiking up and as they approached they said, "You must be Luke! We could hear your mom calling for you as we climbed up the mountain."

 The best part was -- the kids all got along perfectly the whole trip. There's something about vacation that makes everyone a little nicer to be around.

 

We packed a picnic lunch to eat after our first hike and then focused on the Junior Ranger packets. My kids were relatively obsessed with the whole thing. They could barely enjoy the afternoon because they were so set on getting back for the Ranger presentation on types of rocks that would complete their packets.

I did manage to convince them to do one more hike to the Weeping Rock.

After a full day of hiking we treated ourselves to some Swig

 Please note that Luke is wearing his hard earned Junior Ranger badge.