Jake and Maggie

Archives for July 2017

Badlands (by Lucy)

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At Badlands, we camped and made new friends. We set up camp, it was very fun. I like camping, because we’re not inside and there’s a lot more room outside to run around and not bump into things.

We went over to climb on the Badlands. They were very fun to climb on. Some were tall, some were small. Some of the ground felt like muddy, oozy clay, and some of it was hard. Climbing up, it was tall and slippery, like a rockslide. We drove through the park, and went hiking.

At the camp, we made friends with Willa and June.

Mount Rushmore (by Eli)

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We went to Mount Rushmore. I didn’t know what it was before we got there. I have heard the name “Mount Rushmore” before, but I didn’t know what it was. I knew that big-president-statue-faces-thing existed because I’d seen pictures of it, but I didn’t know that it was called Mount Rushmore. When we got there and I saw it, I thought “Wow!” I was wondering if you could actually go up there and touch it. We got there and there were all these benches going down to a big stage and when you look up, there it was. These huge faces of Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.  I thought it was – like maybe one of the faces was like 6 feet, but I found out later, when I saw a picture of the guy carving it, the nose itself was bigger than a full grown man! It was really super cool.

Lehi, Utah

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We headed north with the intention of visiting Bryce Canyon National Park. We went to a small town called Panguitch, Utah and stayed in a cute B&B for a night. We planned to visit Bryce the next day and spend a few days camping. But sometimes things don’t go the way you plan. Just as we were headed that way, the infamous “Brian Head Wildfire” was getting out of control. It had gone from 2500 acres the night we arrived, to over 5000 acres by the next day. Still a good 30 miles away but the smoke covered half the sky and ashes littered the air around us. It seemed like a good time to leave town. So, Bryce will have to wait for us. We hope to make it back someday.

Instead we went to Lehi, Utah; a growing city just south of Salt Lake. We parked ourselves there for a few days and made the most of an unplanned stop. We happened to be there at the time of the “Lehi Round Up,” an annual week-long celebration with all sorts of activities. We enjoyed the family days in the park, especially, with lots of fun things to do for the little ones (face painting, laser tag, wave running, etc.) and lots of long lines in which Jake and I waited to make activities easier for the kids.

On Sunday, we visited Alpine Bible Church, a small Christian church in the area. We were happy to have some great conversations, and make friends especially with Stacy Wall, the pastor’s wife, and their 2 children, Levi and Grayson. The next day we headed to Lehi’s Museum of Curiosity (a great children’s museum) and spent the afternoon having fun together.