tribute to the sun god

Over Presidents Day weekend, the gang decided to take advantage of the mild winter and trek down to Zion National Park for an overnight camping/hiking trip. That's college, right?

Sort of. Better late than never, eh?

So we headed out on Friday afternoon. Andrew and Daniel had some brotherly bonding time in the backseat...so that was good.

We had a few flashbacks to junior high music hits, listened to a little bit of Tina Fey's autobiography, Bossypants, and I may or may not have nodded off for a bit. Let's just say that I don't get that much sleep these days and it caught up to me. I have no excuses--Colby's Subaru practically caressed me and lovingly lulled me to sleep. There was no use fighting it. Not until Colby started randomly jolting the car every once in a while. Punk. Anyway, that was the end of that sleeping business.

We stopped in Cedar to eat at Cafe Rio, which was as amazing as ever, especially with all 4 of us squeezing onto a table for 2 that was conveniently situated alarmingly close to another table. And bolted to the floor. Awesome. Let's be honest though, I seriously considered stealing the table, so it's probably a good thing it was bolted to the floor. Point to Cafe Rio.

After another hour we finally got to Zions...and the campground was full. That required a slight change of plans. Say goodbye to legit camping, my friends, and say hello to the Quality Inn RV Park! Honestly, it was so dark that it didn't really matter where we were, so it wasn't that big of a deal. However, we did have a ridiculously hard time finding our little campground plot. Ten minutes and a few frustrated outbursts later, we were excitedly pulling into E7, and boy was it a beauty!

Andrew and Daniel put up the tent while Colby chopped wood and I collected kindling sticks for the fire. Obviously I haven't moved up in the world since my last camping trip 10+ years ago. Thanks for asking.

After we got the fire going, we recruited everyone else in the camp to play night games and tell ghost stories around the fire before we did some chants and sang kumbaya.

Oh, wait. That didn't actually happen. We thought about it, but then decided to keep it an exclusive party and gorge ourselves on s'mores, dutch oven cobbler, and hot chocolate instead.

colby, me, and andrew

thomas, brenda, and randy

colby, daniel, and andrew

hot chocolate. in a bowl.

All seven of us crammed in the same tent and it worked really well for warmth as far as I could tell. Maybe my sleeping bag was just the bomb, but either way it worked out quite nicely. And I'm sure all of us looked so adorable all bundled up in our twelve layers (okay, so that was just me) and our sleeping bags. Obviously I'm a slacker and I forgot to take a picture. Whoops. Next time.

We woke up the next morning around eight to make breakfast, pack up camp, and change for our hike. We made a new friend right after breakfast and Andrew gave him three or four names before he finally settled on Rolph. He was pretty cute.

colby and his new best friend, rolph

me, daniel, andrew, and colby before our adventure officially started

during the initial ascent

halfway up

When we got to this point, Colby says, "We made it" and we smiled and marveled at the view until a kind stranger interrupted our musing with, "Not quite" as she points to the actual top of the mountain (see below). Yeah...psych!

the rest of the trek

complete with chains bolted into the rocks

The chains were interesting and a little exciting...and then as we got higher and higher, they became progressively more necessary. The snow got deeper and the ice got more slippery and there was one particular section that didn't have chains and as I had a minor meltdown over the possibility that I could be seriously injured if I lost my grip on the icy rock, I realized just how much I missed those cute little chains.

at the top

da boys

yes, yes we do model on the side

victory, baby!

Then we started the descent, which was way more nerve-wracking. We slid down a few snowy sections and repelled down the rest of the way using the chains, which was pretty crazy and amazing. Getting to the top was incredible and I felt ridiculously accomplished, but once we got to the bottom and I took a look back at the entire thing, the feeling multiplied. We legitimately could have died, but we didn't. And that's pretty cool.

From there we drove to St. George. We dropped Daniel and Andrew off at their brother's house and we headed over to meet up with my mom at the house she decorated for the St. George Parade of Homes. After a tour of the house, we convinced my mom and Jill to take a break. We ended up going to their favorite beverage spot to get them giant diet cokes with a major coconut injection, complete with a sugar cookie on the side.

The next day and a half were pretty relaxing. We eventually got to shower and wash off the grime from our hike, but unfortunately the smell wasn't so eager to leave and I still feel like my hair smells like campfire. Mm mm, good. We waited an hour and a half to eat dinner, went back to where we stayed and watched a ridiculous show called "Doomsday Preppers," crashed at 10:30 (which is a miracle), got up, ate breakfast, watched The Proposal, got ready, hung out with a couple of cute kiddos, and had a minor water fight. Good times. After a nap and dinner (complete with fondue) at a great steakhouse, Colby and I picked up Daniel and Andrew and we headed home.

Basically it was an incredible weekend and I'm so glad that I was a part of it!

Bring on round two...