Capitol Reef

Last week we took a trip down to Capitol Reef National Park for a trip with my extended family and the Phillips family. Almost every year when I was growing up my family went on a vacation over Easter. All, but once, we went to Southern Utah. Since Easter was early this year, we moved the trip to this past weekend. I'm so glad it worked it. It was an awesome weekend. I love the campground at Capitol Reef national park. It has grass and lots of shade trees.

My sister, Jennifer, and I left on Wednesday morning so we could get there and get some campsites. We didn't get down to Capitol Reef until 6:30pm and by then all the campsites were full. We ended up spending the night in a super nice and clean cabin at an RV resort in Torrey.

Thursday morning we got the the National Park early and acquired four campsites next to each other to accomodate our group of 27 people.

Friday we drove over to the Escalante Staircase monument and went on a hike to Calf Creek Falls. I was a little too optomistic in thinking that Ben would hike a lot further than he did, but it was a six mile hike and it was plenty warm. I forget to bring a backpack to carry Ben in. Chad ended up carrying him most of the way into the falls on his shoulders along with carrying Jack in the backpack. My brother Adam ended up carrying Ben most of the way out on his shoulders.

Saturday we went hiking in Cohab Canyon. Ben impressed me by hiking all the way to and all the way down from the canyon himself. We hiked up to the canyon, ate lunch, played on the rocks, and hiked back down again. It was a hot day, but it could have been a lot worse. They were having a Centennial/Heritage Celebration for a house down in Capitol Reef which was quite fortunate for us. The best part being that they had an old-fashioned pie and ice cream social and we got free pie (apple, peach, or cherry) and ice cream. Ben got soooo dirty. Every morning within minutes of getting him dressed it seemed he would lay down in the dirt. Ben was fascinated by the thousands of caterpillars all over the campground. The caterpillars drove me crazy because all night long pieces of the leafs they were eating would fall out of the tree onto our tent. I was told they are a horrible pest, so when I found some hitchikers yesterday when I was unpacking, I killed one. Ben saw me do it and was very upset, because "that caterpillar was going to turn into a beautiful butterfly."

Ben had sooooooo much fun this weekend. There were so many kids for him to play with. Today has been a hard day for him because their is really nobody to play with, besides me and I'm not in the mood to play, especially outside because it's hot.

I had fun this weekend too. Camping, especially with kids, is a lot of work, but it's fun sometimes. It was so fun to watch Ben having the same kind of fun that I had when I was his age. Some of my favorite child memories are camping in Southern Utah for Easter vacations with the Phillips'. It's fun that my kids are now having the same experiences with my friends' kids.