4th of July Weekend

We had a really long 4th of July weekend. We left Tuesday night and stopped in Manti for the night. Wed morning we got up and drove down to Calf Creek Falls Campground in the Escalante National Monument area. We hiked that day to Calf Creek Falls, it was a long (about 3 miles each way) hike and it got very hot so we had to make a lot of stops a long the way. But the kids had fun playing on the rocks. When we got to the falls, they were beautiful! The kids were itching and ready to go swimming! The water was really cold but that didn't seem to bother them. I didn't get a picture of it but at one point Bret went running and diving into falls yelling, "Wahooo!!!" When he got out he looked around and said, "Oh, I guess we aren't the only ones here." It was pretty funny. Here are some pictures of the hike. The first one is looking down into the canyon that we hiked through.








On Thursday we took a "side road" from our camp into Capitol Reef National Park. There was some beautiful scenery on the drive but it got pretty bumpy at times. At one point there were some cows on the road and they were running from our truck but they would not move out of the road so we could pass them. Maddie thought it was pretty entertaining.


We met up with my Mom, my sister Heather and her girls at Capitol Reef. We went for a hike through The Grand Wash. The kids had fun climbing on the walls and exploring the holes in the sand stone.




We then went and had lunch in the park. There were deer everywhere and they weren't afraid of the people at all. Maddie loves animals and we couldn't get her to sit and eat, she wanted to go follow the deer around. There was also a really cool old tree with branches that hung down and twisted around everywhere.



We then went to another water fall, to cool off from the heat. Both mine and Heather's kids love swimming so the kids had a fun time. There were people diving off the rocks near the waterfall. The first picture you can see Bret as he is starting to jump off. On the left side you can see my neice Gracie. After Bret jumped Gracie jumped. I couldn't believe she did it! Bret said she was less afraid then he was. After they jumped Max found a smaller rock to jump from .




We then headed back to Manti to spend the rest of the weekend. We had a great time spending time with family. The kids had fun lighting sparklers and watching the fireworks.