Girls Trip: Jackson Hole

Last spring we planned an August girls' trip up to Jackson, Wyoming to do a river trip down the Snake.  I love the area, but I'd never been on the Snake before.  We stopped in Jackson first for a few hours, grabbed lunch, and walked around the town square.

We got on the river mid-afternoon.  The first day was the scenic portion, meaning we could just kind of sit back and let Sparky (our guide) row us down the river.  Except there was a strong canyon wind and Sparky got burned out.  So he thought it would be a good idea to turn the oars over to us and let us drive.  And that is how I sent us down the wrong part of the river and almost got beached.

This company was awesome--they pulled off at a camp halfway down the canyon where there was dinner waiting for us.  We stayed in these awesome little tents/cabins.  There was a not-so-awesome dead spider in my sleeping bag, but luckily I was tired enough that it didn't keep me up.

After dinner we headed up this mountain to watch the sunset.  The vista was beautiful.

Here is a picture of our camp from up above.

That night there was a meteor shower.  There was no moon and no city lights.  It was incredible!  We all laid on the benches by the campfire watching the stars rain from the sky.

The next morning we had a quick breakfast and were on our way for the adventure part of our trip.  Obviously, there were no cameras allowed but luckily there was a photographer at the big rapid, waiting to take our pictures.  As you can see, we got soaked!

We got back into Jackson around noon and headed home by way of Lava Hot Springs. (Interesting fact: at the first of August I had never been to Lava Hot Springs.  By mid-August I'd been twice.)  We soaked for awhile, got cleaned up, and left, stopping for dinner at Maddox in Brigham City.  

It was such a fun little trip with new friends and old!  Someone mentioned how it takes long road trips like that the get to deep conversations that you normally wouldn't be able to--I agree wholeheartedly.  I look forward to our next adventure!

The Best Thing I did this Summer

Last spring I was called to be the secretary in our Young Women organization.  I was ecstatic!  And I have to admit my first thought was Girls Camp!!

Early in August our ward went to Lava Hot Springs.  It was So Much Fun!  Almost as soon as we set up camp a huge storm (like, hurricane-force winds!) came through and nearly sent a leader and the tent she was trying to rescue into the river.  We were under enormous trees and branches were flying everywhere.  The situation, luckily, ended up being humorous.

Of course, being in Lava Hot Springs, we spent a lot of time in the water.  I convinced some of the other leaders to go on the speed slides with me.  They didn't love them (and I realized that I'm 33--not 23) but I still had fun.  We rafted down a river in a rainstorm.  We soaked in the hot springs.  Like I said, so much fun!

One of the best parts of the trip was going up to a little pioneer settlement called Chesterfield.  We learned about the early saints that settled the area and then did our service project, which was helping to restore this old building.  We had to fill the slats with cement, and it was not as easy as it looked.  I was so mad later because this was only 1 of 2 pictures that I took the whole time.  We had a camp photographer so I got lazy.

The best part, as always, was the campfires.  I got to know so many of the leaders and girls better this way.  We ended up missing our testimony meeting because, unfortunately, we got rained out the last night and ended up leaving camp at about 8 pm (and getting home at 1 am.)  I drove the 3 hours in almost complete silence in the rain (the beehives I drove fell asleep about 20 minutes after we hit the road) but it was kind of a cool experience at the same time.

The next morning we met to collect our soggy things.  I didn't realize how quickly, and how closely, I'd grown to these girls until I felt their absence the next few days after camp.  I gained a huge testimony on this trip just how important these camps are for the Young Women, and their leaders.

The Best Thing we did this Summer

In reference to the title, if you were to ask my kids what the best thing was that we did this summer, they would tell you it was our trip to Liberty Park.

We had planned on taking the kids to Lagoon this summer but we realized just how expensive it was going to be (and didn't want to relive Disneyland last year when Boy decided an hour was good for him and he was done.)  So when we were trying to think of something else fun we could do, I remembered the rides at Liberty Park.  I wasn't even sure they were still there, but they were and the kids had a blast!

We went over to Tracy Aviary, too.  I hadn't been there in a long time--it was really nice, I could tell they had done a lot to improve it.

The best ride we went on was the ferris wheel.  It didn't open until later in the day.  Boy did not like the merry-go-round, so I wasn't sure he'd like the ferris wheel, but he ended up loving it!

By this time they had opened up the canyon fountains so we let the kids go play in them for awhile.  My only regret was that we hadn't thought to pack their swimming suits.

We topped off the day with Slurpees.  They talked about this day for weeks.  I was so happy they enjoyed it.  Liberty Park was one of my favorite places to go when I was a kid, and it sound like it will be the same for Bean and Boy!