a good outing

our trip down to capitol reef np last weekend was great—short, but great. it was so nice to get away for awhile. we saw lots of animals, neat plants, and the super cool redrock mountains that the park is known for. below are some pictures and some of the highlights.

here's a pic of brian at the arch we hiked to on saturday. how lovely to be in a t-shirt in early april.


this is the one lizard we actually caught. there were a lot of them around, but they're super fast. william liked to ask about everyone we saw on the trails if they had seen any lizards. and if so, if they'd caught them and/or how big they were. he was proud to tell people that his dad had seen one yea big. and yea was about a foot long.

we went just outside the park to look for cool rocks. two of our best finds were a really cool conglamerate crystal rock and a smokey the bear magnet. it was a lot of fun to look for rocks. even though the ocean wasn't around, it sure felt a lot like looking for shark's teeth in nc with b's family.

the cool type of gnarly trees they have down there. we love how wild and rugged the wood is. it makes you realize how tough it really would be to survive down there in the hot months.

this shows the mountains behind the fruita area, which is right by the campground. some early mormon settlers came down here and decided it would be a great place to grow some fruit. surprisingly it seems to have worked (you can see the trees are still here), but it's pretty wild to think of seeing this place and deciding to develop some orchards. as our next door neighbor in the campground said those early mormons were very optimistic.

this shows the heart-shaped opening we saw on our sunday hike. w's fingers represent me, b, and w.

other highlights of the trip (in no particular order):

seeing the bison (outside the park), the shaggy deer (inside the park), the yellow-bellied marmot (on the scenic drive inside the park)

trying our hand at fishing (with no success)

lying in the grass and looking at the stars saturday night. b thought we saw a satelite

w getting an arrow head at a shop outside the park

going to church on sunday and attending a different ward

cooking smores in our feeble fire saturday night