St. George trip

 

Over Martin Luther King Day weekend we went to St. George with Andrew’s parents and his sister and brother-in-law.  While we were there we went on a hike to see some petroglyphs by the Santa Clara River.  We started out and kept walking past these signs saying “upper graveyard” and “lower graveyard”.  I was really excited to see some old graveyards, but then Andrew informed me that those were just the names of the trails we were on…thank you professor …

Here we are ready for the hike!  Little did we know what we were really getting into….

Here are some pictures of the Santa Clara River.  It was really pretty and the view was breathtaking even though everything looks dead haha.

We were looking for petroglyphs on the rocks on the other side of the river and we found some! 

Here is an actual petroglyph!  We hadn’t really found any good ones so we were all playing around on these huge rocks on the cliff, then some lady and her husband walk by and they were like “Oh here’s one!”… it was about ten feet from where we were! 

 

We wanted to get down the cliff to the river to see if we could find some more petroglyphs, so Andrew decided to try rock climbing.  He climbed down a ways and then found this cave. 

Here we are trying to act like Indians (well at least I was trying!) by a petroglyph. 

Here we are trying to get down to the river.  We couldn’t find a trail that led down so we decided to just go down the mountain!

I think I spent a lot of the time like this or crawling on my bum.  It was really steep!  I know it doesn’t look like it in the pictures, but it was steep.

We all made it!

The mountain we climbed down!

Andrew wanted to climb on these huge rocks!  On top he found a bunch of petroglyphs!!  He had to climb up this by pushing his back against one rock and his hands against the other and climbing up it that way!  It was really funny to watch, it was even funnier to watch him try to come down haha.

There was a pond by the condo we stayed in.  Andrew wanted to go see what types of ducks were there…

I got bored after awhile so started taking random pictures.  I thought this one was actually pretty cool.

Classic Andrew look…I get this look all the time…

But I sure do love this guy!!

On the way home we stopped by a ghost town called Silver Reef.  It was neat to see all the old cowboy stuff they had from the town they found.  Plus some of the buildings were still standing..or parts of them. 

It was really windy there too!

It was a really fun trip! 

Hay Ride!!

 

A little bit before Christmas Andrew’s family had a hay ride and soup party at his Grandpa and Grandma Matthews house.  It was really cold so we all bundled up and brought blankets to keep warm.

The hay kept my bum nice and toasty haha.  We went around some neighborhoods singing Christmas Carols.  Andrew’s little cousins sang the whole time and they have really nice voices! 

…and it was SNOWING which made it even more exciting!  It was really fun riding behind these huge horses!!

CarolAnn and I with the horses!!  I think their hooves were as big as my head!

Here is the rest of the family that went out after we did.  They all look so warm!  Everyone brought different kinds of soup, so after we were done riding we all went into the garage and had our pick between like 7 different soups with ROLLS (my favorite!)  It was a really fun night and I hope we do this every year!

Swimmin’ with the dolphins!!

 

We finally got our dolphin pictures in the mail!!!  I was so excited to get them!!  Okay, so on our honeymoon we went swimming with dolphins in Puerto Vallarta.  It was SO MUCH FUN!!  They were a lot bigger than I thought they would be, but I was in heaven the whole time…Andrew even enjoyed it haha. 

When we first got there they had a sea lion there that gave us a kiss.  It smelled really bad, not going to lie…like rotten fish, but it was still adorable!!

I don’t think he wanted to give Andrew a kiss….or maybe Andrew didn’t want one haha.

This was right before we got in the with dolphins..the photographer wanted us to show how excited we were.  I think Andrew and I were the most excited…

The trainer would give a fish to the dolphin and it would swim over to us then we would take the fish our of it’s mouth and drop it into their mouth.  It was really cool to feel their teeth and see their tongues. 

Andrew takin’ a ride with the dolphins.  They were actually really fast and you had a hold on tight otherwise they’d just leave you.

Riding with the dolphins.  They were so smooth to touch!

I would do this everyday if I could!!  They had trainers there from all over the world.  Our trainer was from Canada and she had only been working with the dolphins for a few months, but she did a great job!  This is definitely my dream job…

Next they had the dolphins swim on their backs and we rode on their bellies around the pool.  This was really fun to do! I think they swam faster that way then they did when they were on their bellies.

Once we got off the ship in Puerto Vallarta they had us meet in our expedition groups.  We were the youngest people in our group.  All the young couples were doing the zipline and stuff, so we were wondering what we got ourselves into.  Thinking it would be really slow, but judging by this picture I’d say we had a blast! 

We had a great time and it was an awesome experience!! 

A night at the Yurt

 

At the beginning of the week me, Andrew, his cousin Sami, and our dog Gus spent a night at a Yurt in the Uintas.  We rented some cross country skis and skied into the Yurt.  It was my first time cross country skiing and I LOVED IT!!  It’s a great work out and really fun!

Here we are getting our gear ready for the trip.  We had to carry everything in that we needed, so we brought our backpacking backpacks. 

It was pretty cold when we started out, but after about ten minutes of skiing we were hot so we had to take off our coats.  The scenery was beautiful on our way to the Yurt!  We saw a golden eagle on the way, we were all pretty excited to see that!

This was at the start of our trip.  There wasn’t a lot of snow at the beginning and we had to dodge some rocks, but once we got higher there was plenty of snow and the trail was groomed really nice!

It took me a little bit to figure out how to cross country ski.  Sami on the other hand was a pro!  She did great and her backpack was heavy!

Andrew and Gus.  Andrew was always ahead of us.  I finally got him to slow down so I could take a picture of him!  On the trail there was a really steep hill and Andrew went down it fast, but some hikers were blocking the bridge so he completely wiped out so he wouldn’t run them over hahaha it was so funny!!! 

This just shows you how fast Andrew is at skiing!  I thought we were keeping a good pace, but he’s a maniac haha.  It was SO pretty and peaceful up there!! The sky was so clear we didn’t want to come back to Utah County the next day.  

Takin’ a little breather on this cool log…Gus jumped right up on it!

We all fell our fair share of times and it hurt! haha But Gus was right there to make sure we were all right.  He’s such a good dog. 

Here’s the sign that let us know we were close to the Yurt!  

Here we are at the East Fork Yurt!!  It was really nice inside and there was a lot of room.  They had a wood pile outside.  Andrew chopped us some wood that would fit in the wood stove.

Inside the Yurt…it was really roomy and had a cute little table and bunk beds for us. 

Here’s the bunk beds.  They were actually pretty comfortable and the pads they had were nice, but we still put our thermarest ones under the ones they supplied. 

We survived the night!!  We piled the stove with wood right before we went to sleep to keep us warm at night, but it didn’t last the whole night so the morning was a little cold.  Once the sun came up it was really warm though.  We had to melt snow and boil it for water which was really fun. 

We’re ready to head out…we will definitely be going to a Yurt again!  It was a lot of fun and they keep the Yurts nice and clean.  The only downfall was that the outhouse was like thirty yards from the Yurt, so it got pretty cold haha.

On our way out we fell a lot!  I think the snow was more icy than the day before.  We were almost to the truck, but Sami completely face planted it.  Her poles went flying in the air and her skis almost went over her head.  We couldn’t stop laughing!  Good thing she wasn’t hurt, but it was hilarious!