Calf Creek and Fremont Falls II

I’ve only ever been to Calf Creek once, and that was while Andrew was still on his mission. Ever since then I’ve been too tied to children (ie. nursing) to take off and go cliff jumping for hours on end. I’m alright being holed up at the cabin though because cliff jumping? It’s really not my thing.

So Tuesday morning Andrew headed out to Upper Calf Creek Falls with everybody else while I stayed at camp with the girls and Grandma and Richard and Michael and Katharine and Kayl.

The hike down to Calf Creek only takes about fifteen minutes but coming back up takes at least a half hour. It’s a barren hike with little other than juniper bushes to provide shade and the blazing sun deep-fries everything within its reach, including the backs of some less-than-fortunate members of our family. *cough*Andrew*cough*

The good jumping spot is a little farther upstream where the water is as icy as ever and the height slightly terrifying. For me. Others find it thrilling. Like little Matthew Wight who, two years ago cried for 2.5 hours of a hike after scraping his knee, jumped 34 times just to beat last year’s record of 33 times, proving himself much braver. Andrew jumped a couple of times and then spent quite a while capturing everyone else jumping.

Even Grandpa jumped in. I don’t recall this happening when I went five years ago. But here’s photographic evidence that he did.

I think he’s even catching a Frisbee midair, which is only one of many tricks attempted. People were doing 360s, some even dove in, while others, like Andrew, merely attempted to dive in. The Zander boys are on swim teams and dive teams so diving off a 15 foot cliff was like diving off a 15 foot platform. Andrew hasn’t ever dived off anything other than the poolside so for him to decide to attempt a dive off a 15 foot cliff was a little…unstable.

After standing on the ledge of the cliff for an hour or so and really scorching his back, Andrew managed to pull off a spectacular belly flop. I admire his bravery but not so much the stupidity. He is still in pain from the sunburn, though I think the sting from the flop has worn off.

Meanwhile, back at the camp…

The girls and I hiked up the hill, also known as the “steepest mountain” to some two-year-olds in our company, to play at the forts, also known as “The Diamond Castles” to aforementioned two-year-olds, that Daddy helped build when he was younger. We spent a long time “magicking” away bad guys, cows, deer, and wolves with our wands that looked a whole lot like sticks.

Disclaimer: The only things we saw were cows and, occasionally, deer. No bad guys or wolves were actually involved in our play.

When we (Rachel) got sick of that game we went back down to the cabin and played puppies. Rachel was the owner and I was the mommy puppy and Miriam was the baby puppy. That meant that I spent about twenty minutes trying to prevent Rachel from maiming Miriam who was not as willing to play puppy as you might think.

Rachel was happy when Kayl and his mommy returned from their drive and when Michael and his daddy returned from their hike so that she could run around with her cousins. Both the boys had taken their shoes off in the cabin while we were having lunch and Rachel ran over to me to ask if she could, too, because she wanted to be “just like her cousins!”

She wasn’t actually very successful at making good friends with her cousins this trip. Unfortunately both those boys have rather large personal space and Rachel doesn’t. She kept trying to hold their hands and hug them and kiss them (and pull or push them in the direction she wanted them to go). She’s not entirely malicious about it but I think the bully inside her kind of enjoyed the power it gave her to make them upset.

When Diana was explaining to someone that Michael was upset because he has this “bubble” of personal space that Rachel was invading, Rachel walked up to Michael and started poking him with her finger.

“I’m popping his bubble!” she laughed, “Pop! Pop! Pop!”

We’ve been working on respecting other’s personal space for quite some time. I guess it’s something we’ll have to keep working on.

That afternoon after the Calf Creek troupe returned we headed out to Fremont Falls again so that Rachel, Miriam, and Michael could get some more adventures in.

I actually think that the next two pictures are from Monday, not Tuesday. Our cameras’ timers are still set to Egypt time so the dates on our photos are all messed up. And Andrew looks far too happy to have sustained second degree burns all over his back. Clearly these were taken before that incident.

These pictures are from Tuesday, though. You can tell because Grandpa is wearing his new BYU hat that he got for his birthday (I won’t say how old he is, but I will say he’s twice my age) on Monday evening after we had been to Freemont Falls and in the other pictures he’s wearing, what I believe he refers to as, his “goofy hat.”

Rachel had a lot of fun playing in the shallow water and wouldn’t let me get anywhere near the waterfall. Instead we played in the mud and built dams in some feeder streams. Miriam just sucked her thumb—it was getting late and she was getting sleepy.

Watching the sun set over the red rock in Southern Utah is amazing, just sayin’.

Hmmm…I think this photo is from Monday night as well…Andrew and Jacob were rather excited that they started the fire using only one match.

We made s’mores with “Giant Roaster” marshmallows. Those things are huge. Apparently they are the same size as four large marshmallows combined, which in my opinion is far too big. They seemed to get all cooked on the outside before the inside was melty, which isn’t very good for s’mores. Rachel didn’t care, though, since she was much more interested in roasting the marshmallows than eating them, which is just as well since it was so close to bedtime and Rachel gets visibly more hyper after consuming sugar.