At the beginning of the summer (early May) we went camping at Capitol Reef, UT with my family. Jack and his cousin Asher were only 2 months old, so the whole "sleeping" thing didn't really happen. The infant stage is brutal, guys. Jack's only getting up once or twice a night these days and I'm still perma-tired. I have literally no idea how we made it through those first couple months where he was up every two hours and it took him an hour to eat each time. HOW. I have very few memories from that time. It's all a weird fuzzy haze. I'm glad I'm back to blogging so I can hold on to a couple memories.
Jack did better than I thought he would for the 3-hour car ride down. Homeboy HATES his carseat and it was even worse back then. Luckily he mostly just slept on this ride and he woke up once to eat. Our whole group stopped to lunch in the shade of a church tree. This was in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Utah. After I fed Jack he looked so content. This is the most milk-drunk he has ever looked (picture above).
^^We put a bandana on Jack and he looked like he belonged in a biker gang full of middle-aged men.
We stayed at a campsite right in Capitol Reef. Our spot was grassy and right by a cute little creek. In the last couple years I've had the toughest time getting comfortable and being able to sleep on camping trips. Maybe someday we'll get a camper, because I don't love the whole tent thing as much as I used to. I do love the daytime part of camping though!
^^There are some cool Indian petroglyphs in Canyonlands you can check out. Utah is so cool.
^^The view from our campsite.
^^Caitlin climbed this huge tree. My mom was worried that she'd be stuck up there forever, but then we all remembered that Caitlin's an experienced rock climber. My brother Chris talked her down step-by-step pretty easily. One day when we have more moneys Jared and I want to get passes to a climbing gym so we can get good at this stuff too.
^^We hiked Cassidy Arch together. It brought back memories of when I was in my Canyoneering class at BYU and we hiked/repelled this same arch.
Blog post here from that trip. For anyone who is in college or will be soon, I HIGHLY recommend taking one class every semester that's a "fun" class. That made my college experience so much more enjoyable. One semester I took canyoneering, and in other semesters I took backpacking, cycling, floral design, fly fishing, guitar, and probably a couple other fun ones I'm blanking on.
^^I'm not going to lie, hiking is
slightly less enjoyable when you have to carry a baby and stop when they scream to feed them and when you're in pain since you're still recovering form birthing said baby. But all in all it was still a great hike. I've always dreamed of hiking with my own babies since it's an activity I enjoy so much. This was a good start. And look how cute bb Jack is in that little cap!
If you want a better view of how big Cassidy arch is, go ahead and click on the link I included up above of my canyoneering trip here in college. Even there you can't see the giant hole you drop into if you're going to repel off the arch. Chris and Caitlin repelled down in, but the rest of us were like, NOPE. I had to go back with Jack to feed him so it wasn't really an option for me anyway, but even if I didn't have Jack I still would have chickened out prolly. It's easier to do high-adventure stuff like this when you're in a college class full of college boys and you HAVE to do it to pass the class and not look like a wuss in front of the college boys.
^^The hike back down. Looks pretty treacherous, but it wasn't so bad in real life. We did the hike down quick because it was getting hot and we needed to get Jack into the air conditioned car so I could feed him.
I asked Jared if he had anything he wanted me to write to remember this trip by. Without a beat he said, "Ya, write about how when we go there in the future with all our boatloads of money we're going to buy up all the patches and paraphernalia at the gift shop and ranger station." So there you have it. My memories are of red rocks and beautiful hikes. Jared's memories are of gift shops and tourist paraphernalia. Jared is a professional patch collector and professional cool guy.
