A Day of Adventure!!!

Yesterday, what we thought would be a 3 hour trip turned into an ALL day adventure. We set off early to pick Bryce up from Timberline Camp up near Mount Pleasant, Utah. One hour drive up, a hopefully short program and another hour drive home.









WRONG!!! You can not get David so close to the Manti Temple and not drive down to see it. So add another hour to our drive but NO!!! David got out the map and discovered if you just drive over this mountain you will be right outside of Ferron, Utah.

Ferron, Utah where is that? Good question and there are a very choice few who can answer that question. Small town in the middle of Utah (I would have written no where but did not want to offend our good good good friend Todd who is from Ferron).


Once in Ferron, despite Bryce begging to go home (poor boy just wanted to shower after 6 days of no bathing. OK we ALL wanted him to have a shower), we could not return home without seeing "The Wedge" (aka The Little Grand Canyon) and the petroglyphs!

Again, David discovered that if we just continue on this back road it would get us to highway 6 which is the very road that takes us to Utah Valley. Lets take the scenic route once again that took only 4 times longer but we did not see another living soul along the way. It is a good thing too the road was barely wide enough for our car and there were rock walls on either side of the roads!!!

The drive was Incredible! However I could not help thinking 1-I hope this is the actual road that goes to Hwy 6, 2-I hope we do not have car troubles (because we will be stranded for days not to mention no cell coverage there), and 3-Did we take the right side of the fork in all 3 forks? I took a lot of comfort in knowing that we had a tent, two sleeping bags and lots of water in the car.

It was definitely an adventure. No real harm was done except...
-David and I missed the Osmond/Mormon Tab. Pioneer concert we had tickets to
-A flat tire
-David spraying Ross, the inside and out of the car, and me with muddy water driving crazy through the once dry river bottoms that had water due to the storms we were witnessing all afternoon
-I was in flip flops (because I thought it was a simple up and back trip), try hiking in flip flops!!! OK, this was not harmful but just a little irritating.
-We did not have jacket. Normally we would not have needed them being in a hot triple digit climate but it was chilly day and would have liked having a jacket!

Despite these little annoyances, we would all do it again because this is what we saw/experienced...

-most amazing water and firework show put on by Mother Nature. Thunder is REALLY REALLY REALLY loud when you are only a 1/2 mile from where it strikes.

-The possible start of wilderness fire due to lightening (yes, we reported it). We never saw fire just smoldering.

-The most incredible and beautiful drive of my life, driving over a mountain. Where can you be in the most green and lush meadow and a half a minute later be in a desolate wilderness? We can show you!!! BTW, never ever assume cutting through a mountain will save you time!!! It was well worth it but 12 miles took 45 minutes!!!

-Learning the difference between Picturegraphs and Petroglyphs and getting to see both

-Cave explorations

-Fun with echos

-Learning to love Utah despite my resistance!
-Being beyond thrilled that all the kids left their DS, gameboys, MP3 players at home and enjoying the ride as much as the destinations!

-Seeing the transformation of a tired, cranky, camping pre-teen boy that was not particularly thrilled to see his family (or at least he hid it really well) become a cheerful, talkative (holy cow did he talk), happy to be with his family again after a weeks absent 12 year old son/brother.

-Hair standing up due to the lightening storm (yes, we made sure the storm was far far far a way before we got out of the car).

-Eating Gyros for dinner (I LOVE LOVE LOVE gyros, Umm good)

If only you could have seen our car at its dirtiest!!! We could have gotten a way with a crime because there was no way of reading our license plate. I went out to see the car this morning. Although it is not clean it is no where near as dirty as it was, thanks to the rain storm we drove through on our way home.

Here is a sum of the trip. I quote from my adorable 10 year old Pierce, "It looked like Dad wanted to see the Whole Utah in one day!"