Escape to St. George

After conquering parent teacher conferences Wednesday and Thursday, and spending a lovely Thursday evening celebrating love at Cafe Rio and picking up last minute supplies, we headed down to St. George for a camping, hiking, and warm getaway with Ian, my mom, and sister Jen.

Quail Creek State Park

not a morning person or a matcher

We arrived in two cars to our campsite at Quail Creek State Park at 11 pm. Yeah, really late. Late enough that the gates were closed. We were concerned that we'd miss the 9 pm gate closure so I had called earlier and talked to a ranger who told us to park on the side of the road above the park and hike our stuff in for the night, and then check in. HOLY COW. Talk about a dark adventure, and a sleepless night worrying that the cars would be towed. Thankfully, that all worked out just fine and we got up at 7:30 to check in just in time to keep the cops from asking questions and writing a ticket. Whew.

mom and Jen

The Binks :)

Saturday we headed to Zion's, and did an overlook hike first. It was neat, especially with snow all over. Then we headed to Angel's Landing, where Ian and I didn't really tell my mom how challenging of a hike it was going to be. Thank goodness it was a perfect day temperature wise, and it was a beautiful hike. We conquered slippery ice on the switchbacks, but made it to the scout lookout point. Jen, Ian, and I decided to conquer Walter's Wiggles, so we gave it a shot and discovered ice and snow all over it. It was a little scary, but still super fun. Ian went all the way to the top and Jen and I turned around most of the way up. We then departed and had tin foil dinners, too many smores, and headed to bed extremely early haha.

walter's wiggles

standing on a log.

Sunday, we headed to Snow Canyon State Park, which was much cooler than the state park website let on, and apparently more popular than we thought. We hiked a half mile slot canyon, which was fun and easy. Then we went on Butterfly trail, and ended up off the trail and just headed towards crowds of people. That great idea led us to discover some LAVA CAVES! SO neat! We didn't bring flashlights because we didn't even know about them, but we want to go back so bad. We followed a large group of soccer tournament go-ers through one of the caves and had a blast. We went to one more hike and saw an arch, and then headed back to camp.

a slot canyon named for her!

our fun group!

lava caves!!

Wind had decided to ravage our campsite so we played games in a tent for an hour and started dinner. We made hot dogs and peach cobbler. Due to the cold wind still strongly blowing, we headed to bed around 8 and tried to sleep. In the morning, we packed up and made our way back to the frozen tundra of Logan.

eating lunch at the observation point

at Johnson Arch

It was a great President's Day weekend filled with great company and some fantastic good times. :)