Memorial Day Weekend

This Memorial Day Weekend, the Alsop family from our church invited us to go with them to Moab and go jeeping.  This was a new experience for our family.  In summary, I found it to be exciting, exhilirating, and terrifying, all at the same time.  We drove with them on Thursday night, so we could be ready the following morning to go out on our adventure.

Getting ready to descend

Maya and Arden loved riding on the jeeps.  At one point, Arden rode on one of the jeeps that was the most daredevil of our caravan and loved it.  Besides the Alsops, they invited the Morgan family from our church and they also went with another jeeping family, the Christiansens.
On the first day we went  on a couple of trails that I found them to be terrifying.  At that point I wanted to go home because it was so scary for me.  As we were on the trail, we would stop and let the kids get out and run around.

Holding on for her life

Playing with Easton at one of the rest stops

Maya really liked climbing on top of the jeep.  She cracked me up because she would also hold tightly as we climbed the different structures and were sideways.
Unfortunately, the weather wasn't to great that weekend. It was very windy and there was sand everywhere.

Playing in a crevace

I thought Newel was a very good driver and was very careful.  Even with his careful driving, I was scared of flipping over.  As we were on the trail, heading back, there was a structure that looked rather difficult. So Newel let Bryan and Kevin figure out how to drive the jeep Newel wasdriving up the structure.  Bryan was sure he could do it and ended up breaking the axil.  It took over an hour to move the jeep from the structure to a flat surface where to park the jeep.

Our dirty kids having a bast

That night, the guys had a mini bro out.  They got the new axil and around 11PM, they headed over to the trail to fix the jeep.  The guys didn't get home until 4AM. The following day they were tired, but they had a fun night.

On Saturday, the weather was worse.  It was more windy and it was so dusty.  We mostly stayed inside the condos.  We also went to Arches and checked out a couple of arches...but it was so windy, we didn't stay for too long.
The Morgans had to leave early and unfortunately they didn't get to try out jeeping.  In the late afternoon, the fierce wind, finally diminished and Kevin and Bryan took us on the Lion's Back and part of Hell's Revenge.  It was a bit terrifying, but it was also so COOL! It was so much fun!  I absolutely loved the trail and I can't wait until we get another chance to go jeeping. I would love to go on the rest of the trail.

At Arches

After dinner at a pizza joint, we had to leave that night since we needed to be at church on Sunday.  On our way home, Newel and I were commenting what a neat experience we had.

Even though the plans didn't turn out too well, like crappy weather, we had a lot of fun hanging out with the Alsop family and friends.

Lots of climbing

The Kids from the trip...Maya refused to pose