House O' Sullivans

Zeke and I had a little father and son quality time yesterday.  After breakfast and scripture study, we headed over to the Home Depot to get a few sleeve anchors and a couple of boards to make a cross brace to fix the door to the chicken coop.  When we had returned, Helen was gone with the girls to run some errands, so Zeke and I proceeded to start in on our project.  Pretty soon I had the door up on bench in the sunny part of the driveway between the garage and the back door to the house.  Zeke was getting bored so I set him up on the trampoline which he thoroughly enjoys.  I was busy trying to engineer the cross brace on the coop door so I was pretty focused.   After a while he wanted off the trampoline too so I unzipped the safety screen and let him out on the lawn.  Since the door was off the coop, the chickens were out on the lawn and Zeke proceeded to take up with them like he often does when they are out.  I had gone i...

Saturday brought balmy 70 degree weather and a day in nearby Snow Canyon.  We hiked out to Jenny Canyon--a very short hike to a high-walled slot canyon. The kids could have played in this sandy wash all day.  They played and explored like they were on a beach and didn't want to leave. Casey found these sand circles all over.  Upon closer inspection, it was evident that multi-directional wind blowing small plants created them. After we hiked to Jenny Canyon, we started on the "Butterfly Trail," heading out past a mass of petrified dunes and through ancient lava flows.  We'd driven up to see the cinder cone (extinct volcano), located just outside Snow Canyon State Park, before starting on the trail.  It was crazy to imagine lava flowing over this landscape as long as 2.5 million years ago and as recently as 10,000 years ago.  Crazy talk! We stopped for lunch on some giant petrified sand dunes.  This was the magnificent view from...

After a hot springs morning, you know it's going to be a good day.  Once we arrived in St. G, we checked into the Coral Hills Hotel downtown.  With our kids, it's all about the amenities, particularly the POOL.  We suited up again and hit the hotel pool.  Every activity was punctuated by more swimming.  Zeke learned a new word on the trip: "im", which means "swim."  He was always begging, "wa-tah, im?" Interestingly enough, Zeke enjoyed doing laps AROUND the pool and hot tub more than he liked being IN the water. After we got the hotel swim out of the way, we blazed a new trail up the face of the red-rock cliffs that towered above the hotel where we stayed.  We named our new route the "Dixie Direct" and ended up in the Red Cliffs Reserve (the Dixie Narrows).   Our return route was just as interesting.  Urban free-form hiking at its best. 

We went to Saint George last year in February and had so much fun that we immediately planned for a repeat.  This year was just as much fun.  Casey actually said on the drive home (Monday) that this was "the BEST family vacation that he had EVER been on."  Imagine THAT! We started off last Friday at the crack of dawn, heading south on I-15.  We were all STOKED because in the Sullivan family, anticipating the trip is half of the fun.  As we neared the small Utah town of Meadow (about half way between Salt Lake and Saint George) Casey and I both agreed that we needed to introduce our kids to the Meadow Hot Springs, otherwise known as "The Waters of Kanosh."  This is a place that Casey and I had both frequented in our single years--a natural hot spring--literally situated in the middle of NOWHERE.  Where is Meadow?  Where is Kanosh?  No one knows, right?  So the hot springs are somewhere between these two microscopic towns in th...