Vacating the vacation!

Since Buddy turned 18, I thought we should have one last hurrah as a family and do a family vacation to celebrate. Buddy and I planned a glorious trip to Europe with lots of sightseeing and even a train ride on the Orient Express (which is really the Venice-Simplon line).....our bank account and our reality maker (that would be Shane) decided otherwise. Like the amazing improvisors we are, Buddy decided that we should take Shane to visit southern Utah because he kept saying he didn't remember going to the National Parks there, even though he grew up in Utah! Since we were in Utah, we thought we should cuddle some kitties....

Do some puzzles with my dad....

and cuddle the kitties some more!

We started out at Bryce Canyon, which I had actually never been to before. It was a great start, since we wandered upon this awesomeness before even getting to the National Park!

It was evening when we arrived in Bryce, but that didn't stop the boys from taking pictures.....

Since one member of the family isn't really into 12 mile hikes (SHANE). Before we even left to go on our southern Utah vacation, one of my niece's joked that I needed to choose carefully which hike would be  THE HIKE that Shane would join us on, because we knew chances were....it would only be one! With that in mind, on the drive down to Bryce Canyon, I made an executive decision to call some people to do something that would join my love of getting outdoors for long distances, with my love for torturing Shane under the guise of saving him from a long hike!

Meet Shane's mule Sally....Sally likes to eat every plant that she crosses paths with, and she enjoys walking perilously on the edge of cliffs!

Yep, those would be the cliffs! 

We had a fantastic time, and sooooo well worth the money to get to the bottom of Bryce Canyon to explore! It was AWESOME! After the horseback ride, we hopped in the car and drove the 1 1/2 hours to Zions National Park! First on our to do list was the one hike Buddy and I would saving Shane's leg muscles for....Angels Landing (it's named that because one of the first guys visiting said that it was so high only angels could land there). We totally lucked out and won a lotter permit to get to the top the day before...Anyway....here are some pictures of our strenuous hike up...

This is the boys pointing to the top of the Mountain that we are climbing... 

The boys of course, had to stop and take lots of pictures....not sure if it was so they could catch their breath or try to take mine away by getting super close to the edge...

Seriously! Boys! 

So once you get to the top, you really aren't at the top and you have one more perilous climb to do. Here is the vantage point of the last leg of the journey.

It's only .5 miles, but it's .5 straight up on a very small, rocky path that you have to hold onto chains to climb....

I'm not sure if any picture will do justice to the fear in your heart that this hike will give you. My death grip on the chains was real!!!! Although, I will say, I am loving the lottery system because there were way less people than when Buddy and I did this hike 6 years ago and I still have nightmares about us falling to our death because we were literally climbing over people to get down because there were waaaay too many people on the trail. Anyway, here is the view from the top, so now you don't have to do it!!!

My fear of heights...and my desire to continue to breathe didn't allow me the opportunity to take a ton of pictures on the way up the perilous stretch, so I decided to get some action shots of the boys coming down....

Yep, that's Buddy's idea of an action shot for me! I'm just waiting for the call from a modeling agency for him!!!!

The next day, we geared up all of our remaining leg strength and hiked a little bit of the Narrows....

I was a little sad the boys didn't want to adventure more on the trail because I love a good hike with chest high water....but the boys had cameras they wanted to protect.....lame-os!!!! Next time I'm bringing some dry bags so they won't be able to give their lame excuses anymore! 

We left southern Utah to go back to Erda to stay with my dad and sister just in time to miss the flash flooding that happened the next day....and to torture my dad with some more puzzles while the boys played video games with Buddy's brother Kevin! 

So all in all, a super fantastic, vacation that we have now vacated, day (s)!