Just so everyone knows, we broke our small camera. It still takes pictures, but the screen is broken, so all of these pictures were taken by holding out my camera, and hoping I have really good aim…
We had a BEAUTIFUL day in January, so we headed back to Zion for a more proper long hike. Well, not long in distance, just duration. As you can see, Elora was thrilled to come back.
Elora found lots of beautiful Juniper berries that she was very excited to pick up off the ground and carry around. Marion also liked the berries and kept trying to eat them…
Oliver found a great sand hill that he used as a slide!
We hiked down into the canyon and the kids had a great time exploring the area. Oliver decided that he was a coyote and kept yipping and howling for most of the hike. He also set down his water bottle right here….
The hardest part of the hike was that Marion wanted to walk and hike all by herself, over the tricky rocky dry riverbed. She also wanted to climb the rock walls and play with sticks. She had a great time, but got irritated with me for picking her up so often. She is quite the explorer.
Elora is getting to be quite daring, as she is now big enough to scale some of the sandstone quite easily. Poor little Oliver always wants to follow her, and he probably can follow her up most places, but he has a hard time coming back down… Elora climbed up to this spot and started trying to write on the sandstone with a rock that she had found.
Many people had carved their names in the rock and Elora was convinced they were Native American drawings and decided to make her own drawings too.
After quite a bit of hiking around, we came to this nice flat rock to get out some paper and crayons to draw pictures of what we had seen. Elora chose to draw a big orange cliff with a waterfall (although I don’t recall seeing any water…) as well as a nice pine tree with pine cones on it. She also found a dried flower to draw. Oliver scribbled for awhile and then started burying the crayons. So if you go hiking in Zion, keep a lookout, because some of our crayons are probably still buried in the sand. Marion stole the crayons to either eat them or wander around holding them… then she started trying to hike away to explore some more and to find some Juniper berries to stuff in her mouth. Sigh. I love hiking with Marion…
Elora had a GREAT day. She was very sad when it was time to leave. She would stay in Zion all day, but the downside of being the oldest sibling is that it is time to leave when the youngest starts being too difficult…
Oliver and Marion had a great time too, as you can see. I love these kids, they are so fun to take places. About the time we were packing up to leave, Oliver realized he was thirsty and didn’t know where his water was. Luckily I vaguely recalled where he put it down, so we ventured back down the canyon to have another look around…
And then back up to this awesome striped rock for some pictures. Elora was quite proud that she could climb the rock all by herself. Oliver actually did manage to pull himself up, but then got a little nervous about the down part. We will have to come back often while this weird January Spring weather lasts…
