ZION

(I almost forgot to share with you some of the masterful pictures that Parker took!)

My cool Mom

A cool Lizard

The cool, baby waterfalls

My cool parents.

For Memorial Day weekend this year we wanted to go to Zion! We stayed with our good friends, Jacob and Deidre in St. George and went on some pretty awesome hikes!

On Saturday we hiked to the Emerald Pools. There are 3 levels to the pools and we hiked all the way to the top! Parker did extraordinarily well and the upper pools were so worth the climb! I think we hiked about 5 miles that day...

Here we are at the lower pools where the water falls.

Up we go!

Here are the middle pools. It was so gorgeous!

Parker had his own little camera this time and took lots of "interesting" pictures.

Upper pools! Yayyyyy! (We were super hungry and should have brought a picnic for when we arrived up there... note to self...)

Parker, as you can see, had a blast jumping in the water, throwing sticks into the water, and making drip castles.

Diedre and Jacob- our wonderful hosts!

To keep things interesting I pointed out wild life along the way for Parker to take pictures of... Here's a lizard. Super cool!

(Notice his snap shot of it up above...)

Middle pools again...

Parker writing his name in the sand at the upper pools...

Tan Tan the Camera Man

Jacob climbed all the way over to the other side and then was kinda trapped there...

We took a different trail on the way back down that had some pretty cool scenery.

That night we were supossed to camp but it was SUPER windy (which makes camping miserable) so we decided to just shack up with Jacob the whole weekend. After the hike we went back to his house and BBQed by the pool. Such a wonderful day!

Here's Jacob fulfilling all of Parker's desires and giving him a ride on the motorcycle after the pool. :-)

The next day, just the 3 of us headed back to Zion for a few more hikes. We stopped at a restaurant to eat lunch before we set off.

It started off well...

And then Parker got upset for some strange reason. I think he was tired.

So we told him if he doesn't start being a good boy we were going to put Tabasco on his tongue. He straightened up pretty quickly! :-)

We hiked to Weeping Rock. It was beautiful!

And we took the trail that leads to the Narrows.

The Narrows are closed due to high water so we just sat on the banks of the river and relaxed a little bit before heading back. Parker threw a million rocks in the river and we saw some squirrels and baby ducks!

The bigger the rock the better!

Zion was amazing! We had so much fun!

Before we left we stopped by Bumbleberry for an ice cream cone and to get a world famous Pie! My Dad has ties to the restaurant and I have memories of him talking about his "Bumbleberry days" so it was a real treat to taste it!

That night Jacob and Deidre made us the most amazing dinner and dessert- we were so ready for that! We hung out and Jacob drew tattoos all over Parker and we laughed and laughed. It was really great spending time with old friends. We were bummed we couldn't camp but you can't beat a soft mattress and hot showers! :-)