Fun Weekend Getaway

We had a great little weekend getaway over the Memorial Day Holiday. It was cold, rainy and at times snowed on us, but it was still fun to explore an area of Utah where I have never been. Chuck has been wanting to take a camping trip to Topaz Mountain for quite awhile and he talked his brother and their family into joining us for this adventure. Luckily I overheard a conversation Chuck was having with his brother when he was explaining that at the place where we were going to camp there was no water or bathrooms. Now I like camping, but I had to be the party crasher on that idea because I’m not sure what part of primitive camping with our young kids sounded fun!

And thank goodness we didn’t camp because it would have been MISERABLE with the chilly weather. Instead we ended up at this hotel with a very small room, but it was clean and in my book that’s really all that matters. The kids did really well at night despite the fact that we were all tightly packed in the room. Jenna got us all up and moving with her typical 5:30 a.m. rise and shine shout. I’m not really sure why no matter what time the kids happen to fall asleep at night they still get up before the crack of dawn. The second night I woke up and just had to smile with sheer joy as I saw Samuel, Bella and Isaac all sleeping shoulder to shoulder.

At our first stop we saw petroglyphs. Samuel just finished reading a Magic Tree House book about mummies and wanted to know the difference between petroglyphs and hieroglyphs. It’s nice to have daddy along to provide us with answers to some of these questions.

 

This was our first rock exploring site and when we pulled up Isaac exclaimed, “It’s a face!” and sure enough it looks like a face.

We hiked around, Chuck chipped away at the rock, Jenna loved trying to climb the rock and you know the best crystals we found were right where we parked the car. I was joking with Chuck that other rock hunters must have thrown the ones we picked up away, but they were good enough for amateur rock hounds like ourselves.

 

We stopped at an old fort. Samuel was still feeling a little under the weather.

We waved to trains. Isaac loves trains so he was especially excited to be so close and the engineer was honking and waving at the kids as he passed.

We stopped at another spot to try and chisel more crystals. Chuck finally convinced the kids and I to get out of the van. There were GIANT mosquitoes swarming right outside the van. We don’t have mosquitoes here so it’s been years since I’ve been bitten and I think I scared the kids with my stories of swelling and itching spots. The wind was really howling so as soon as we cleared the van the mosquitoes were gone.

 

The next morning we headed out to Topaz Mountain. As we got close it started to snow, but that wasn’t going to stop Chuck. There were small crystals lying all around, but they were a little difficult to see since the sun wasn’t shining. The kids finally had their fill since it was cold and wet. Good thing for the DVD player so the kids could watch a video while daddy still looked around.

After a rest at McDonalds to warm and fuel up Chuck convinced us to go dig for Trilobites. The road into the dig site was muddy, slick and steep. Somehow the minivan made it. The boys were having a great time splitting rocks and excitedly examining them for fossils. The kids got muddy, wet and cold and were in the vehicles before the dads were ready to leave. Poor Samuel was trying to hang in there despite the fact he was shivering. It was fun to see the little fossils they were uncovering despite the unfavorable weather. This is not going to be a vacation we forget!

The next day we went to Great Basin National Park. It was a beautiful drive and so fun to see a new area.

We toured Lehman Cave. Chuck was having a difficult time trying to keep Jenna from touching the formations. If you’ve ever toured a cave you know they stress that if you touch the formations you will ruin them. You hate to be the people with the baby that is going to ruin the cave! And she was squawking up a storm about not getting her way. The kids loved the cave. We have a book about caves and so Samuel was especially excited for the tour. I was proud of myself for taking this shot without the flash. I kept my old Rebel camera for just such outings as this. It’s pretty hard to get a steady picture without the flash in a dark cave, but it worked. I took a few pictures with the flash and the pictures just looked like a boring plain cave. But without the flash you can see the amazing formations.

We had a picnic and a snowball fight.

We took the minivan on another 4-wheeling adventure to see a little ghost town we spotted off the side of the road. Who needs the jeep with the lift!

We hiked to these crazy structures and Chuck made a guess as to what they were once used for and you know what when we got home we looked it up and he was right! I married me a Smart one!

We had fun exploring the rest of the ghost town.

All in all it was quite the adventure!