East meets West

For the first ten years of my life, my sister and I were it. If I wanted a playmate, she would be the one. If we went on a family vacation, it would just be our parents and the two of us. I remember the day she packed her bags and left for college. Ever since, except for a short stint in Millcreek, we have lived too far away from each other. This past summer Lisa brought her four boys and two darling girls home for July. They graciously coordinated their vacation with our trip West, and specifically with Jonathan's baptism.  We were the beneficiaries of their efforts to vacation in Utah; we spent a day in the Uintahs with them and then a long weekend in St. George. I don't know what it is, but there is just something about cousins, and our time with the Flindts was no exception.

  

Lisa's family stayed up at my parents' cabin for a week and they invited us to visit. Our day began with a hike around Mirror Lake. For us, it has become an annual tradition, and hop scotching across small streams, skipping rocks, picnicking under pine trees and wading over to small islands is all the more fun with our cousins from Seattle.

We cooled off at the new pool in Kamas. The kids floated in the lazy river, raced down the water slide and splashed in the dumping buckets and spouting streams of water.

Mom and Dad met us at the cabin for a BBQ in the evening. With Dad on the grill and mom tossing the salads and cutting the fruit, dinner on the back porch of the cabin, with the Uintahs surrounding us, couldn't have been better.

The next weekend, the Flindts joined us in St. George. We spent our time exploring "Dixie" and cooling off in the pool. 

On our first day together, we found a little hike called Red Bluff. The hike in was short and picturesque. In late spring, I am sure that this spot is nature's water park. There are three pools that stream one to the other, over mossy sandstone, creating a water slide. The pools were not full enough for us to enjoy, but we did find a nearby pond that had enough water to swim in, cliff jump into (level 101), and build sand castles around, for those less daring. We brought a little picnic and enjoyed a couple hours of play.

Our next excursion was to Zions. I had told Jonathan about hiking the Narrows and he absolutely had to do it. The complete 17 mile version was not possible, with babies in tow, so Jonathan settled on a hike up from the bottom, with a short distance through the water. The older kids immediately jumped in the river and floated down, over and over. Fortunately Bryce, Sophia, Alyssa and Ezra were content to stay back and toss stones in the current. On our way home we stopped at the Bumbleberry Inn for huge slices of Bumbleberry pie topped with gigantic scoops of vanilla ice cream. For me,  this was a favorite stop in high school over our annual spring break trips and I hadn't been back since. I wondered how I could have forgotten such a culinary  gem in Springdale!

On our last day together, we fit in as much swimming as we could, toured the Jacob Hamblin House stopped at the St. George Temple Visitor Center and ended the day with Blue Bunny ice cream and an evening at the new water fountains on Main Street.

We can't wait until our next adventure with the Flindts. How about in Seattle or Boston?