Catching up: Get ready for the pictures!

Since my horrible first post which seemed only to be a paragraph long but took two hours to post, I have taken a break and I am ready to try this again. The reason why I wanted to start blogging was to keep everyone posted on stuff that we have done that maybe you would like to do. Now we have done tons of stuff and I haven't kept up.

John and I have done things as a family, but he also has adventures that I just don't have enough courage to go on quite yet. We'll wait for him to post that because there are stories behind every picture. Here is just taste of what you will get to see when John starts taking the time to blog.


John, his brother Ryan, and his dad hiked King's Peak, the highest peak in UT last weekend. What they planned to be a two day hike actually turned into a one day 28.8 mile hike. They came back alive, but John was redder than a tomato. This picture of Ryan was just interesting, so I had to put it up to give a taste of what is soon to come.


John also climbed King's peak which is the highest peak in Idaho. I was going to go and even had a few people to come with because I am a super slow hiker and John runs up all the mountains. Plus with all the research that John did, I wasn't sure if I could make it to the top of a 12-thousand-plus mountain considering that Rexburg has been the highest elevation I've ever been in. Luckily, our friend Aaron went with him. The conditions were a bit dangerous and they didn't have everything they needed, so they didn't make it to the top. When they got home, both John and Aaron swore that they would not even attempt to climb it again until next year when they were in "marathon shape". A week later the pain wore off and John wants to climb it again asap before it starts snowing. Anyone want to go with him?

Now here is all the neat things that we've done together that we remembered to bring a camera. John and I are horrible at taking pictures, but here are a lucky few that we remembered to take. I'll try to go in order, but then again we have 4 months of neat things that we've done, so I can't always remember when they happened. Here it goes!


Once every year in Idaho there is free fishing day. We bought a fishing pole to share, and invited two of our friends who know how to fish to come with us. We just stopped at a place with water off of the freeway and walked down this walkway to a water spot!


And this was the spot that we choose. It was horrible. First of all, John and aren't fishers. John had only been fishing a few times in his life and I had been fewer times than that. We picked this spot because it was the first open spot and we were so excited to fish, we didn't even attempt to go any farther to find a place where there actually were fish. We got so frustrated with the fishing string getting caught on everything that we gave up after about an hour and decided that we would wait until the next free fishing day before we attempted to go again. At least now we can say that we've been fishing.

Next we went to Craters of the Moon which is a National Park about a two hour drive away from where we live. John, John's brother Jacob, Glenn (John's old roommate), and Cyndil (my old roommate), and I all drove down there with a plan in mind. John planned out everything that we would do, how to do it the most efficiently, and about how long it would take at each stop. It worked out well because we were able to see a lot of things and take even more pictures.


This was our first stop. Over two thousand years ago there were a volcanic eruption and that is why we now have Craters of the Moon. It's a small seven mile loop that you can drive through and there are several different spots along the way that you can stop. This was just a huge mound, surprisingly with trees and bushes on top.

Here is a close-up of John and Jacob.


And here is the far shot. Just in case you can't tell, this is a big plain of lava that is cooled. It's not a smooth surface. In fact the brochure says, "The lava is extremely sharp and abrasive. Wear sturdy shoes and watch your step." Jacob was running over it and recording himself. I thought he was going to fall and crack his head open. I guess I was just over reacting because he made it alive and we have boring video of his camera pointing at the ski to prove it.


These were tree mold where the lava came up around the tree instead of plowing it over. There are some vertical ones and horizontal ones, but the vertical ones are more fun to stand in.

We did a few other things, but the last thing that we did was explore 3 caves and a tunnel. The road was paved it each tunnel and there were a lot of families there, but each one was fun to go in.

One of the caves.


I don't know which cave this is, but it is hard to get good cave pictures because it's mostly black in the back. This is me and Cyndil.


Tunnel sign


Tunnel

The weekend after we went to Craters of the Moon, or maybe it was the same weekend, we went to the Mt Timpanogos caves with my old mission companion Morgan and my friend Craig that I have known since I was a baby. It was a short 1.4 miles up to the top then a nice tour-guided walk through the cave. Definitely worth the $7/person to get in.


Pictures inside the cave are usually sandy looking or the background is completely black and the flash only shows people. I won't force you to go through a bunch of in cave pictures. It's definitely something that everyone should do by him or herself rather than relying on just pictures for an adventure.


This is the view as we climbed up the mountain.


A picture with us and our tour guide at the end of the cave.

And now Jared, John's younger brother is with us for a couple of weeks, so we've been trying to bring the camera on the adventures with him. This first one might be my favorite.


Jared and I went to Idaho Falls to go shopping, visit John at work, then watch Inception. We had an hour to kill after John got off work before the movie started. John and Jared played some shooting arcade game and got really into it, so I had to take a picture.


I took Jared up to R Mountain, the 2nd largest Menan Butte in the world. I've been up there a bunch of times, so I don't take pictures of it anymore. This is a picture of when John and I went up at the beginning of the trail.


And this is Jared and me at the top.

This is the coolest thing of all that we did. We drove out to the ice caves and it was the coolest thing that I think I have ever done in Rexburg. It is about 25 miles outside of Rexburg and the drive out there is not fun for anyone that gets carsick easily. Our friends Dawn and Cyndil came out with us (single ladies for Jared to flirt with). Dawn, since she is from Idaho, brought us out in a truck to save us six miles of walking. After driving 25 miles down the winding paved road, we turned off and had a three mile off roading experience. Again, carsick people should get out and walk. It was worth it in the end.


Cyndil, Dawn, and Jared walked down while John and I were looking down into the cave. Here is the first picture before the adventure!


We came in just behind this mini ice mountain. Jared was the last one through and put his ridiculously powerful flashlight up to it and it lit the entire thing up. In this picture everyone's flashlight is on Jared so we can see him in the picture too.


Part of the cave we had to slide around on our stomachs! It's little harder than I thought it was going to be. Oh, and remember to bring gloves if you go. We all forgot, but it wasn't bad.


As we got deeper into the cave, we had to get on our backs in these tubes that look like slides on it's side. Then we kicked on the roof with our feet to get through.


Johnny and I just smiling on our way out.


Group picture. Notice the wet knees.


We made it out alive, but this is the butt shot just to prove that we really did go into an ice cave.

The last three pictures were all taken in our house, but they had to be posted. We had our friends Jessica, Marcus, and Jonno over for dinner, but before they arrived, John got really excited about his new camping stuff that came in the mail and had to try it all on.


We got a new 0 degree sleeping bag. It was 97 degrees that day and he had to try it out. Right when we tied him in, our friends walked in for dinner. I'm sure they enjoyed it.


About a week ago, John got a new hiking backpack online. Then mixed in with his new sleeping bag, he had to pack it, re-pack it, re-pack it again, then wear it to dinner. He wore it the entire three hours that our friends were over. It made me laugh.


The group picture.

Okay, hopefully we will be better with this. More adventure will be coming soon!