Reunion, Day 2

Friday morning we woke up to a BEAUTIFUL day! It was cooled down because of the rain we got Thursday, so it was perfect hiking weather. We ate breakfast (our family tends to have GREAT meals. So it seems that I'm always talking about food!!).

Then piled in my big brother's truck . . .

to go hike around the Valley of the Goblins.

If you have never been to this remote state park, I would highly suggest it. The facilities were SO good - bathrooms with FLUSH toilets AND water, HOT showers, plus it was beautiful! We're definitely going to go back again! Anyways, the actual Valley has all sorts of mushroom shaped rock formations. Several thousand years ago, they were all as one big plateau that eventually eroded down to hoodoos like at Bryce Canyon. I would imagine that in the future, Bryce Canyon will look very similar to this. The kids had so much fun climbing and playing on/around the goblins. The trouble came when we decided to play hide and seek. One of my 8-year-old nephews was looking for a really good hiding spot and managed to get on a ledge and lost. 2 hours later, we (using the term loosely, I helped watch the kids and felt very helpless) got him out from his predicament.

We learned a lot about this experience:

1) Prayer works (apparently he had said a prayer that the Holy Ghost would show his dad where he was stuck at. My little brother had said a prayer that he would find him and heard a voice that said to get to the highest point. Up at the highest point, my brother was able to hear the poor kid yelling help, thus showing him where he was. Plus we had said a prayer as a family that they would find him and all would be well. The kid was stuck in an area that was VERY difficult for my mountain-goat of a sister Gordon to get to - she said she has NO idea how he got into the situation, and he said he didn't know how he got there - there was a guardian angel of SOME sort holding him onto the ledge and out of the 100-200 foot crevasse under him.)

2) We had a great metaphor of life from this experience. You may not be able to see where you need to go - you need to have someone up above helping you to find your way. My brother could hear Nathan, but he couldn't see him. He would tell the others where they needed to go so they could find what they were looking for. Sometimes they would take a path that looked like it would lead them to him, only to find that they had picked a path with a dead end. My brother was there to help them find a different path that would lead them eventually to where they were going.

3) If you are hiking in that area, provide emergency whistles to 8-year-old boys who might go and get themselves lost!!!!

After hiking with the goblins, we went back to the campground for lunch, then went over to Little Wild Horse Canyon, one of the MANY slot canyons in the area. This was a great hike for everyone. It was pretty flat, not much of an incline, but enough rocks that people could climb if they wanted to.

This picture doesn't give it justice, but we also had to wade thru waist-deep water for quite a while. We didn't go all the way through the canyon, but it was a ton of fun as far as we went.

After hiking, we went back to the campground for more good food and went to bed, exhausted.