Jackson Hole

I am playing catch up. This was a fun trip too.

Jackson Hole!

We went up with some friends, rented a cabin and did some exploring. Matt and I went up a little earlier and did some hiking of our own first.

I say hiking but we biked as well. Look at Matt with his bike. :)

We rode our bikes from the visitor center to Jenny Lake. Took a little boat ride and hiked up.

Jenny Lake was quite beautiful.

Matt wanted to capture the belly at the lake. I think I'm less than 30 weeks here. 28?

Mama moose and baby moose. Apparently the Daddy moose took off when humans showed up.

I have to say I was pretty impressed with Matt's skill of taking a picture while riding a bike and getting both of us in the shot too. It was a gorgeous bike ride!

We met with Matt's friends and headed off to Yellowstone. 

We saw lots of gysers!

Bison too.

Some of us also decided to do some white water rafting. Here we are looking great in our wet suits. :)
The water ended up being pretty cold so lucky for us the wet suits were complimentary, no additional cost.

They even provided us with some pretty cute matching wind breakers!

Melanie & Salina

Eric, who strongly suggested/threatened that he was going to throw someone in. 

Luckily, we all stayed on the boat and no one got thrown in or fell out. Yes I was a little worried but it really wasn't that bad. I was honestly a little bit disappointed that we didn't go over more rapids. 

Anyways I'm not really sure what to say about the next series of photos. We did some hiking and took some fun shots. Yellowstone was pretty. 

Memorial Day Weekend

Of course, we went to Zion.

For Memorial Day weekend we headed up to Zion on Friday and stayed until Monday. Everyone went canyoneering, doing some pretty gorgeous hikes and I well.... did not. I blame pregnancy. I was kind of nervous, but in retrospect I probably could have done at least one of them. Oh well.

Matt tells me next year he'll take me back to some of the canyons they did. Here are some fun shots of their trip.

Iara, Zach, Matt, Jen, Duke, & Lauren-- They're hardcore.

When I decided not to go we invited Jen to take my spot, using the permit. She's pretty hardcore
and pretty funny too. Taking Jen was a good choice.

If you'd like to go canyoneering Matt would love to take you!

Now this was my part of the trip.... 

Rebecca was every so kind as to come down and do a little hiking with me. She brought her two kids and we explored a few trails. Her son Vincent was pretty adventurous. 

Vincent, Rebecca, & Joselyn 

For example, he really wanted a hiking stick and if you look really closely you can see which stick he selected to use. :) He walked around trying to balance himself, hunched over this with this 16 inch stick. We were able to find one more appropriate for his height. However, I was pretty humored at his excitement of using this twig.

If you look closely I was able to find a spot that kind of resembled a canyon. It was a gap between two rocks. There's even a pool of water! (I didn't climb up, but climbed around it. ;))

The view was pretty nice too. Unfortunately I didn't take any shots of us climbing up to this spot. (See the photo above.) There were a bunch of cacti. My most memorable experience was Rebecca's daughter Joselyn. We were climbing up a pretty slippery incline and the kids found it to be easier to hike barefoot up this slick rock instead of wearing shoes. Honestly, a good choice. However there were some cactus, which were easy to avoid, as well. Joselyn was coming up on some cactus and Rebecca points and says: "Joselyn don't step here it's cactus." Right when she says that Joselyn plants her foot down on the prickly plant. Yes it was painful. At the same time (I'm a bad person) slightly humoring. Joselyn shed a few tears but really didn't complain that much. She did great, really.

It was a lot more fun afterwards too. When she would complain about anything (not that she complained a lot) I would ask her, "which is worse, this or cactus?" Silence followed as she told me that cactus was by far worse.