What an adventure

So, we thought, let's go to City of Rocks, we've heard so much about it, and this is the best time of year to do it. Yes, a Father's Day trip (originally planned once we found out that bishopric meeting would still be held that day) to celebrate Stan and our love of the outdoors, camping, star gazing, climbing with our new trad!!!! and bird watching to boot. What we hadn't planned on was the rain followed by more rain, followed by more rain. If you ask Israel about our camping trip he'll tell you it rained the whole time. We actually had hours here and there without rain and Monday was blue sky beautiful, but that rain had an impact. We even had an exciting booming thunderstorm that turned into a hail storm as we all hovered in the "parent" tent, stayed dry, tried to stay warm, and munched and munched on all the goodies we'd bought at the store.
Even though the trip didn't turn out as we'd planned (such as our air mattress getting a fast leak and the kids tent no being as waterproof as needed), we did some really fun bird watching, seeing 10 species we'd never even seen before including my favorites the Lewis's woodpecker, hooded oriole, and night hawks. We saw altogether 5 long eared owls. (Did I ever tell you how much I love seeing owls?) I'm the spotter and Stan usually the identifier when it comes to our birding trips. You'd think after 8 years of marriage I'd be better at birding, but it takes a lot of work. Getting my own set of binoculars 2 Christmas's ago really has helped. Okay, enough of my yapping, here's some great pictures of the trip and yes, we did get to do play with our trad on Monday, and no we didn't fall on it, but we think we placed it well. We had to find routes that were anchored on top as we don't know how to make trad anchors, and getting down is a little important:)

Israel named this one the cupcake rock- see the wrapper markings on the left and the obvious rounding - you can even see a cherry on top.

Our first night there. We stayed in the Smoky Mountain Campgrounds (flushing toilets, each site had water and electricity. They even had showers. City of Rocks was full) The dots are rain, in case you were wondering

Sunday Morning- isn't it gorgeous. This was some of our best birding time.
Why am I including a picture of the Almo Ward building? This is the first church I've ever been to so off the beaten path. It's on a dirt road with impressive pot holes and notice the cattle guards over the entrance.

Eliza found this hole in the rock and actually smiled in a picture (instead of her usual fish face)
We found a rainbow on our last day. We could see both ends, but couldn't get it in the picture. We love rainbows and took probably 10 pictures of this one. After all that rain, it was so wonderful to behold.

Julia, chilling in her kid chair

the kids learning about being yoked

Israel "this is a BIG piece of chicken" he said of his ground beef tinfoil dinner

Another incredible view

Israel became quite good at placing trad and he used them for aid climbing. He liked our wallnuts. We can totally see him becoming a really powerful climber one day.

Tomorrow I'm off on my next adventure- house hunting! Wish me luck (and safety)