Fantastic Weekend!!!! 2 of 2

Saturday afternoon we were looking for an adventure. We had planned on going to Lagoon with Kara, and my brother Ben with his wife Melissa, and their two children Olivia (almost 3) and Gage (10 wks). But the weather was not going to be 'lagoon weather' so that was out of the picture.

Instead we hiked up to the Timpanogos Caves. It was a BLAST!! It's quite the hike! (if you're not much of a hiker). Ben had Olivia in a back carrier, and Gage was strapped to Melissa in a front carrier. Good thing we bought some water bottles before heading up. The scenery was AMAZING! It's in American Fork Canyon, and you go up the mountain pretty high. We got some very fun pictures, Kara was quite the poser.

At moments the path was pretty crazy! A few weeks ago they had a mud slide and someone got hit by a rock and needed medical attention. They have red painted lines on various parts of the path which mean "do not stop or rest in red painted areas". And we were directed to move in towards the mountain, huddle and cover your head if you hear rumbles or falling rock. Which all made it a tad more interesting.

We got to the caves with about 20 minutes to rest before our tour started. We visited with some Chipmunks, I think they're just drawn to Olivia, she seems to be around whenever I see them. The caves were incredible! It was such a neat experience to walk through a mountain. They had some really neat stories, and the history of who found the cave (1800's) and how they explored it was fascinating. It's definitely worth the hike and money if you're thinking about it - I recommend it for sure! We got some good pictures... but it would have been better if we had the good camera.

When we were done with the tour, we came out of the cave to find Pouring Rain!! And then some thunder.... and super windy. How exciting!!! We had to leave Olivia's carrier at the entrance of the cave, so unfortunately Ben had to go walk down the path where it meets up with path that goes up to the cave entrance to get the carrier and then come all the way back to us so O wouldn't get wet. As we waited, the rest of our tour and the guide had already left to go down the hill. We waited a bit longer and decided to rough it out and meet up with Ben.

We were drenched within 5 minutes, but it was soooo much fun. Luckily nothing was slippery, the path isn't that wide and there would have been a very torturous fall if something bad happened. We met up with Ben, he was very relieved he didn't have to walk all the way back up to meet us! It was a fun trip down though... It would lightning or thunder and we'd cheer, haha. Kara got a wonderful pose on a nice peak. I stayed pretty dry b/c of an awesome rain coat, but we were all pretty wet. And Melissa had little Gage all wrapped up very well in her waterproof coat, so he was good. It was incredibly fun though, a memory we won't ever forget!!!

We went out to dinner at Tepanyaki after we were all changed in dry clothes and warm again. That is the best food ever!!! I'd go every day if I could. And we even got Subzero ice cream afterwards. . . we were stuffed from dinner, but had 2 for 1 coupons so we just did it. It was the most perfect and fun day ever!

I'm glad Kara enjoyed her stay here in Utah. She was a lot of fun to have around!! Walking out of Subzero she caught us all off guard when she yelled, " I am SO happy!" :) and we could all agree with that statement for sure!

FATHER'S DAY - Kara spent the night at our place. And we got to sleep in until noon since church was at 1:00pm. We went to our Sacrament meeting (second time) and they mentioned they had received our records already from our old ward and welcome'd us in the new boundaries in front of everyone. That was Fast!!

We went out to Pleasant Grove to the Anderson family home and celebrated Father's Day with them. It was a yummy dinner and dessert! And we watched The Patriot, good movie.

It was the best weekend we have had in a very long time! Very eventful! We are going camping again on Friday - I'm SUPER excited!! We'll have our own sleeping bags this time (borrowed from the Anderson's last time). It'll be a fun weekend again.