Saratoga Springs Temple Open House

 The kids and I were able to check out the Saratoga Springs Temple during the open house. It of course was beautiful. 

Watermelon Carving

 The young men carved watermelon for an activity one time.  Here's Ezra's creation

Meanwhile the girls were in the church sewing PJ shorts. I didn't get any pictures though. They turned out cute!

Havasu Falls Backpacking Trip

 Flash back to February 2021. Not too much earlier I told Marisa about this cool place in the grand canyon and showed her some pictures and she said "I want to go!" so I parked my butt in front of the computer on February 1st and found some tickets for June and got really excited to go!

We started preparing by hiking on weekends and buying gear.

Then the whole world went nuts and Covid became a thing and they moved all reservations to the next year.

2021 was a questionable as they canceled two weeks at a time. I was happy they canceled because we weren't ready. Our reservations were moved to the same dates the next year.

2022 we were luckier in that they decided in February to postpone reservations one more year with a commitment to Open up in February 2023.  At least we weren't in unknown land.

February came and they actually opened up. It was time to get hiking.   Marisa and I hiked just about every weekend starting in March. 

With all the snow we got this winter most of our hike lengths were determined by how far we could get before the snow was too deep.  It worked out perfect as we could gradually get further and further with our last hike being Squaw peak which was harder than I remembered.

The day finally came just one day after getting home from Ohio. Marisa and I hopped into the car and drove to Arizona. 

We stayed the night before in the hotel in Peach Springs that the tribe bought. It's old and straight out of 1980 but it got the job done. The whole area was literally Radiator Springs. To a T.

Next morning we were up at 3:00 am and on our way. You have to drive a little over an hour to the trailhead and we got there just as the sky was turning blue. 

The hike down was nearly all in the shade and after the first two miles just becomes a gradual downhill. It was gorgeous!

It was fun to see the mules head up the canyon to get the packs of those who paid for it. $400 was a little steep and we're capable.

Nearly there!

Just before making it to the village which is 8 miles into the hike I saw two men hiking towards us and they had two little black tags on their shirts. I thought.... 'no way there are missionaries down here'  As they got closer I could see that yes, they were missionaries.  They were going the other way and I was getting tired and they only said 'hello' but i have so many questions about why they were down there and if they live there. We didn't see it until the way out, but there is a little branch building. Had we known we would have gone to church!

Anyway, we made it and found a great little site against the canyon walls that was pretty secluded and shaded. 

There were prettier sites  closer to the water but they were crowded and didn't have a table so both of us were really happy with our little slice of heaven.

There were lizards everywhere and we had this little guy pass through camp twice. He seemed pretty docile so we didn't care. It also helped that both times we saw him we were safely resting in our hammocks. 

We rested and hiked around a little the day we got there.  We hiked to the top of the hill for some Indian fry bread sold by some locals who hike the two miles from the village every day to sell it. It was nice to have some good fresh food and a cold soda.

We spent some time at Havasupai Falls at the top end of the campground.

We hiked around the campground

Day two we hiked down Havasu Creek which involved scaling down this cliff to get to the bottom of Mooney falls.  It's not steep enough for rappelling but it definitely makes your knees wobble and you have to wear gloves with rubber grips because it's steep and involves chains and ladders that are wet. 

Marisa was super brave and this is where I think it was great that she was 3 years older at this point. I know she was capable of doing it when she was 13 but she might not have been quite as brave.

Mooney is tall and beautiful.   

From there we hiked four miles down to  Beaver falls which is a multi tier falls with lots of pools to play in.  It was cool although there are many points along the Creek that were just a tiered and beautiful. 

The only thing to do from there was hike to the point where Havasu creek meets the Colorado river. It was another 6 miles and we could have done it but neither of us were terribly interested so we opted out. I'm sure its really neat to see that crystal blue water merge with the murky water of the Colorado but... meh.

On our way back we came across this guy....

And this guy. 

This one was right on the trail and Marisa spotted it just before I was about smack right into him.  We pulled back and waited, then he started walking right toward us so we pulled off the path and let him pass. I won't lie, I was a little worried he was going to trample us, but he just walked on by.

Day three brought a few degrees hotter and we felt it. We hiked up to the village and had lunch at the cafe.   On the way back we stopped at 50 foot falls and Navajo falls.  We met this squirrel who was very crafty and would wait till you weren't looking then go through all your things looking for something to eat. 

50 foot falls was the only one that we could really get underneath. It was fun to get a little shower.  We played at Havasupai Falls again that evening for good measure. I think that one was my favorite. It was beautiful, close and fun to play in. 

Apparently that's what it was like everywhere in the campground before the pandemic, but a few years made it so the pesky scavengers really left the campground alone. It was nice. 

We did spot this feral cat at the top of the campground one evening. It was peeking out at us. This can probably feasted on squirrels who didn't know how to survive without stealing campers food for the last three years.

And the frogs came out at night too

Day four started at 3:50 am.  The bats were just finishing up their breakfast.... dinner? when we were leaving.  We packed up, filled up our water and set out. We did not beat the sun out of the canyon but we did make it to the switchbacks while they were mostly in the shade. 

We made it out in about 4.5 hours which was amazing. Marisa is awesome. She set the pace and carried all of her stuff and did great!

From there it was the 9 hour drive home. I was completely caffeine saturated and ate my weight in sunflower seeds to stay awake. 

Worth the wait. Worth the money (seriously most expensive primitive camping trip ever and we didn't even use the mules or a helicopter), I'm so glad we got to do this finally. That said. I'm not sure I would make the effort to do it again. It was magical and beautiful. But incredibly inconvenient, expensive and dealing with the tribe with my reservations was a horrible and off-putting experience. (I actually had four reservations, but that's a story for another time.