Zion's Trip 2011....so FUN!!!

This past week we took a five day trip to Zion National Park. It was our third year taking the kids, and we had such a great time. They had just been out of school for a week for spring break. But we pulled them out of school this week anyways.

The river was just raging. That's Darin and the kids on the bridge. It was really great this year that the kids were able to do more of the hikes without giving us a heart attack. We hiked to all three of the Emerald Pools, did the Riverwalk trail and a couple other hikes. It is just so amazing in that canyon!!

The falls and waterfalls were so beautiful. There were little waterfalls all over the canyon from the rain and runoff.
We stopped off at The Zion Lodge each day we were in the canyon. Here we are having our traditional ice-cream cones, and the kids are playing chess in the lounge. (Darin is outside the window stretching.)

Of course the kids wanted to swim multiple times a day at the hotel. We stayed the same place we did last year, in the Angels Landing Suite.

One day we had lunch at the restaurant upstairs in the Zion Canyon Lodge. We sat outside on the deck and it was seriously one of our favorite parts of this trip. The weather was 80 degrees, the views right from our table were spectacular, and the food was really great.

We saw deer five or six different times.

And lots of little chipmunk things. There is one on the fence post to the left of Logan, and Ellie is pointing to one. Look closely at the other pic. I got an action shot of one chipmunk chasing another.

The kids got to "mine" for gems and fossils at this fun rock store. They came home with a full bag of treasures. It's a fun little spot--the water runs down a channel and you use the little screened boxes to wash away all the sand and pebbles from your "keepers".

We went to our traditional pizza joint for dinner one night. BBQ chicken pizza--yum. And plain cheese for the kids of course. And Fode and Mel treated us to ice-cream on our last day. We also spent a chunk of change in the super fun candy shop in Springdale. And this candy came with us tot he super fun Zion Canyon Theater. It is a huge screen--they say it is six stories high and nine times the size of a regular movie theater screen. One night we saw "Hop", and the next night we saw "Rio" in 3-D. "Hop" was cute enough---I didn't pay close attention to it. And we loved "Rio". I think it is a great little show!! And very cool to see in 3-D on such a massive screen.

Here are a few of the little chipmunk critters we saw. Logan says we saw 13. He kept track. He is probably exactly right.

Fode and Mel spent the day Saturday with us. We went for a hike in the canyon, went to lunch, played at the pool, played at the park, and went to the ice-cream shop. It was so fun to have them come up and hang out with us.

It was just an over-all great trip to Zion!!