Spring Break

We wanted to get away for a quick trip. When we were planning our trip, Andre and I realized that we have been everywhere (that you can go to in a shortish drive and has good weather in the spring). We decided that we have to start going to the same places. We decided to go to Goblin Valley because we knew our kids would like it and the younger ones were really small the last time we went there. So we started looking for other things that we could do near Goblin Valley. It turns out that there are a lot of things we didn't know existed.

So here are some of the things that we found:

Little Grand Canyon

  This is in the San Raphael Swell, which I didn't know anything about before this last week.

It is beautiful. But super windy that day.

Then we headed for our hotel- but we took a wrong road and it lead us to one of the places in the background behind Chase's head in the picture above. This was great because we got to see great scenery and stop off to see things like the petroglyphs in the picture below.

Driving through awesome scenery.

We got to Green River (the town) where our hotel was, but first we went to THE Green River. We found a place called Swasey's beach.

This was great sand, shallow water (freezing cold water), and warm air. BUT it was sooo windy.

This was a great place to explore.

We would have stayed longer if there was not so much wind.

The next day we went to Little Wild Horse Canyon. This was sooo cool. I was really looking forward to this. We walked into the beginning of the canyon. and there was a pool of water. That is not a big deal right? Well, we put a stick into it and it was about 5 feet deep! We had to find a way around it. So we had to climb a side of a mountain and then back dow. But once we did that, the trail was flat and fun.

Look at how beautiful this canyon was.

It got narrower and narrower.

It was a long hike. We hiked in for about 2 1/2 hours and then back out for about 2 1/2 hours. The trail goes on longer if you want to but that was enough for me.

We got to a point that there was a foot and a half of freezing water to walk through (on pointy rocks)- I was done at that point and Alex had a cold the whole week, I didn't want him getting too chilled. So the rest went and explored ahead and Alex and I explored side canyons.  

I means seriously. That is cool.

And it keeps going and going.

That was seriously one of the best hikes I have ever gone on.

That hike is about a 10 minute drive from Goblin Valley. So we went over there. It is so amazing in Goblin Valley. It does not even look like Earth.

My four boys are in this picture. See if you can see them.  

Andre is in this one.

this is the boys favorite thing- Climbing on rocks. and they did a lot of it.

Do you see the white mountain above the red rocks? Andre, Tanner, Alex and Chase are standing on top of that mountain! I could not believe it when I saw them.

But, here they are! I told you that they love to climb!

Jaxon and I were checking out the shade and talking about the mysteries of the world.

There is no other place in the world like Goblin Valley.

Look at these cute boys.

We had been hiking or walking or climbing from 10 in the morning until 5 at night. Then we limped into a restaurant and ate dinner- We were all exhausted and basically just laid around in our hotel until we fell asleep that night.

The next day we didn't really have plans. we knew we were driving home that day- so we decided at the last minute that we would see 4 temples between Green River and home.

As we were driving through Payson we saw this building! We had to stop and see it and make it 5 temples. This is the Krishna temple. It was pretty cool. We could tour it and see the room that they worship in. They had a buffet in it and I was sorely tempted.

It was cool.

And there were elephants!

So we saw the Payson Temple,

The Provo Town Center Temple,

The Provo Temple,

And the Timpanogos Temple

Happy Easter!