Ockey Family Adventures: Zion: Day 1

We have been planning a Spring Break trip to Zion for nearly 6 months now. We've worked and reworked the schedule (we're big into schedules), booked the hotels, and packed up the van. Today was the day.

Seth is ready to roll!

The plan had us leaving at 7:00am and driving straight down the freeway to Kolob Canyons, the isolated section of Zion. We had only one stop along the way, and that was at the small petting zoo in Scipio. The zoo was still closed for the winter, but we walked around and enjoyed looking at the animals: the red deer, emus, llamas, donkeys, various exotic birds, and the camel. Seth was pretty excited, and it was the perfect place for a potty break and a stroll.

We had fun checking out all the animals.

Mark was happy that the camel came over to see us!

We arrived at the Visitor's Center for Kolob right on schedule at 10:30am. After spending just a few minutes, and bumping into some friends from our Stake, we headed up to try the Taylor Creek trail. We were a little worried, because it is an out-and-back trail that runs to a little over 5 miles, but we took along the hiking backpack for Seth and Mark packed lunch on his back.

The boys were awesome hikers on this one. Seth probably walked a mile and a half or more before he climbed in the pack. Dax didn't complain at all, and Mom's GoPro only gave her a bit of a headache. We expected to be back from this hike at about 2 o'clock, but it was much longer. We had lunch at noon, and stopped briefly to look at two ancient cabins along the way.

We always take a picture by the National Park sign!

We were excited that we were hiking in Zion's back country!

The trail is really beautiful!

The boys LOVED crossing the creek.

The boys really stepped it up and showed that they are amazing hikers!

At the end of the trail is a very large grotto that drips down above you. The boys really liked hooting and listening to the echo, though I don't think many of the other hikers liked it much. We only spent about 15 minutes at the grotto. By then, we were well behind schedule. Seth walked around a mile on the way back, bringing his total to over two and a half miles. Dax did all 5.2 himself, and Mark made it with the lunch, which was mercifully empty on the return, but it was his first hike with a pack.

Seth walked a long way, but he needed a ride for part of the hike.

The end was shady and cool, but the hike was the fun part.

Not sure what he's doing, but Seth likes to make all sorts of faces in pictures now.

After hurrying back to the Visitor's Center for essential potty stops, we drove to the end of the road and checked out the overlooks. Kolob is really beautiful, and is definitely Dad's favorite part of Zion.

It is beautiful up in Kolob!

Our next stop was to be Quail Creek State Park. We were way behind schedule at this point, so we pulled in and asked a few questions, notably about their Junior Ranger programs as the boys had filled out books they found online, but the program is not active. So, we didn't even enter the park, but instead headed down to St. George.

We arrived at Brigham's Young summer home at 4:32, just 2 minutes after the last tour of the day was taken through the house. That was a disappointment, so we headed over to our favorite restaurant in Washington County, which is Roy's Pizza. We'd been on a bad streak with the tour and the state park, but the pizza was as good as we remember.

Mom got the last breadstick for the first time since being married!

Everyone was happy at dinner. It is one of our favorite places!

By that time, the first day of our vacation was pretty much spent. We drove to Hurricane, where our hotel is located and had just enough time to swim in the pool. That was Seth's favorite part of the day. We probably heard a hundred times, "Are we going to the hotel now?"

The boys did great on this big day, and even though we had a few adventures fall through, it was an exciting, eventful day.