Girls Camp!!

This is a post with not very many pictures, because most of the time I was at camp I was running around like a chicken with no head. Camp was such a great experience! I am the 2nd counselor in the YW presidency as well as the camp director for our ward, both very big but very fun callings. Camp this year was stake camp and it was held at Brighton Meadows up Parley's Canyon. The theme was Coming Unto Christ by B.U.G.S (becoming unified gospel sisters). Each ward was assigned one of the personal progress values and a bug. We were Virtue which is gold and our bug was a caterpillar. I had a hay day with our assignment!

We only got rained on one of the four days we were up there so that was a huge blessing! The girls favorite activities were canoeing, the zip line, friendship bracelets, painting rocks, shopping at the "flea market," camp songs, and human knots.

It was a blast to be up there with the girls and I felt like we really grew closer, which as their leader is the one thing I really hoped would happen!

Lower Calf Creek Falls

As promised here is a post about our hike at Lower Calf Creek Falls. We decided to do this hike on a whim the same day we hiked the Wave. These two hikes are very different. The Wave is red rock, very dry and has no plant life. Lower Calf Creek had trees and water, and we loved it!

Lower Calf Creek is about a 5 mile round trip hike, we had heard that there was a little waterfall at the end so we were excited to dip our toes and cool off a little! We felt like we had been going for awhile with no waterfall in sight when all the sudden we entered into a little grove and right there in front of us was our waterfall, but it was not a the little waterfall we had expected! It was HUGE and so beautiful, the water was freezing but we couldn't help but take a dip.

After the heat of the red rock from earlier we were loving the water and the shade, we stayed and played for awhile until we got to cold, hungry and tired to swim any longer.

I love these peeps and their sense of adventure!

After our swim we headed back to the cars.

It was so amazing to see two such different places in one day so close together. Utah is amazing for stuff like this cause we've got it all!

photos by David McClellan

Hiking the Wave

Over the past couple of years I have found so much joy in hiking and exploring areas here in Utah as well as outside of Utah. I have made so many friends and seen so many beautiful things by going on these hikes. 

A few years ago my good friend, Brad (who is now my husband) had been chosen to receive six permits to hike The Wave in Southern Utah. Because of the landscape of this hike they only allow 20 people to hike it per day and to get permits you have to enter a lottery. Brad had tried for three summers to get permits with no luck, so when he found out he was chosen this time it was a big deal!

So six of us hopped in the car on a Friday evening and made it to Kanab around midnight. We all squeezed into one hotel room where we had a short night of not so great sleep! Nevertheless we woke with excitement early to head to the bottom of our 6 mile round trip hike. It was the middle of June in Southern Utah and we were hiking across the border to Arizona, so even at 6:00 am IT WAS HOT!

We had plenty of water, a map and we were ready to go. This hike doesn't have a marked trail and you have to be very careful not to go off course. We had heard of hikers getting lost and suffering from heat exhaustion, but the map helped to point us in the right direction and we luckily had no trouble finding our destination.

The landscape that we saw while hiking was beautiful red rock but it did not prepare us for what we would see when we reached the Wave. It was like nothing we had ever seen before! It was so vibrant and so beautiful.

We stayed and explored the area for awhile before heading on our three mile journey back to our car. We took lots of pictures and we thoroughly enjoyed this (maybe) once in a lifetime opportunity.

I don't know if it was because of sleep deprivation or the heat or if we were just crazy, but instead of heading straight home we found another hike to do, because, I mean.....why not? We are young! We only live once right! Stay tuned for a post about our hike to Lower Calf Creek Falls.