Spring Break and All of It's Many Facets

So much to tell...

This week, the week of Spring Break, I have been very busy. I apologize to all of those who tried to talk to me or get a hold of me somehow (like the telephone or on chat or something), because I've just been gone from home most of the week. Here it goes.

Friday and Saturday have already been described - The track meet (see previous post). Sunday was Stake Conference, and it was a good one. I must also confess that I read the first Fablehaven book (Landon suggested it), and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Monday I was invited to go biking/rollerblading by Chantelle and a fairly large group of friends. We met at Whitney's house, then rollerblade-ed (everybody except me, that is, because I don't have any rollerblades) to Dairy Queen, got some lunch, then went back and tried out the Spendlove's tandem bicycle. I like it!

Also on Monday I had to plant two palm trees in our backyard while my family was gone to Abravenal Hall to hear Janessa play her violin in the Zion Youth Symphony Orchestra. The first one I planted by myself and the second one everybody helped with. After planting the second tree we drove to Toquerville to see who asked Chantelle to Prom, then ate an excellent dinner at the Gubler's house.

Tuesday was a day spent mostly reading. I was reading the second Fablehaven book. After I finished, I wanted to read the third one, but alas it was not to be. The third one is not out yet. In the evening I took my brothers and the Spendlove twins to my sister's concert for ZYSO (their farewell concert) at Pineview. A select group of ZYSOers headed to San Francisco, California that night, my sister included. She was very, very excited, and when she called to say hello on Wednesday, she remarked upon the magnificent view right outside of her window. She can see the bay and the bridge and a voodoo shop across the street.

Wednesday harbored a fun-filled day. My family (less Janessa and my dad, who is in Owotana, Michigan for a company training thing for the week) went an hiked Angel's Landing. We left our house at about 1:40 p.m., and by the time we picked up the boys from their sleepover in Toquerville and started up the trail it was 2:40 p.m. We got it done before dark, luckily. It was snowy and icey still up there (a little bit, at least), and it made the final part of the climb treacherous. I'm glad nobody was hurt. Afterwards we went into the restaurant that used to be the Bumbleberry...not for any of their food, but for the "famous" Bumbleberry pie. Unfortunately, the restuarant had been leased to new owners, and the new owners and their restaurant ("Wildcat Willies") had been open about a week and a half, with outrageous prices. So we left and went to a pizza/pasta place, which was very delicious. I'm glad we left Wildcat Willies. We came home and I had to pack until late at night for...

Thursday - our backpacking trip started. We left at 9:30 in the morning (that's a.m., for those of you excessively worried about political correctness, or excessively disinclined to 24-hour - sometimes called "military" - time). We (Jess, Ben, and I) drove in Ben's truck (rathered squished up, too) to the trailhead. Jess had a 35 pound pack, I had one just a little light, and Ben's was even lighter.

We started out by jumping a barbed-wire fence and then by crossing a stream. On the way back we saw that we needn't have jumped the fence; an opening was just 50 feet away. Crossing the stream became a regular occurance as we ventured further up the riverbed. We saw several likely campsites, but finally settled on a nice one about 4.2 miles up the river. We went a little further with no packs to find three pools that we thought were upriver a little bit, and find them we did. They were pretty cool.

Halfway up the trail Ben and I realized that we had forgotten silverware. I was very dissapointed in myself. It seemed like I had everything but silverware! I had extra clothes, and a pan or two that I never even used. I had three extra pairs of socks (in case we got wet crossing the stream, which we did - but I never used two of the pairs). I was prepared with soap and a pan scrubber and a collapsible water container and everything...but silverware. We had to improvise.

We set up camp at maybe 3:00 p.m., which allowed us a ton of time to do nothing. I carved a fork/spoon thing out of juniper wood. Juniper wood is not very good for whittling; It is so dry that every branch has a series of cracks running lenthwise through the wood, which is OK for making forks, but horrible at making spoons.

You can see my attempt here. It worked really well, though.

My food plan is laid out below:

Thursday:
Lunch coming in: Granola Bars, Nutri-grain bars, cheese cracker things (the ones with the little red stick), and a Cinnamon Toast Crunch breakfast bar.
Dinner: One package of Knorr Lipton Rice Sides (Chicken Broccoli flavor), one package of Garlic Instant Potatoes (We each had a different flavor of potatoes. I liked the garlic one - the others aren't so swell)
Various snacks of granola bars and nutrigrain bars, and even a piece of Ben's cow, George, who wasn't able to make it all the way up the trail without being salted and flavored nicely.

Friday:
Breakfast: Four packages of Instant Oatmeal in two batches. I had one batch a mixture of Blueberries and Cream and Peaches and Cream, and the other batch a mixture of two packages of Strawberries and Cream.

The rest of our snack food when we got to the car.

Friday is the day I got back from backpacking (that's today for me). We hiked a total of 9.19 miles. I put all of my stuff away and am now writing in this blog. My mother took my brothers and went to Bryce Canyon, which sounds like fun.

I will post more pictures in the next post from Picasa.