I want some more

For the first time in many, many years I did not attend the 24th of July parade. Which is a big deal for me because the 24th of July is one of, if not my very favorite, holiday. After all, what other state's holiday is actually observed and is so saturated with religious content?

But I am very dedicated to this summer of outdoors and earning the outdoorsy right to wear Tevas to church (just kidding! that is never okay), so instead I went backpacking with my new bag.

Just kidding again! That is just Kristen and me moving our packs from the car to the camp site. We were going to do a backpacking trail in Escalante but for various reasons (lazy), we just camped there at Calf Creek instead.

We did however run across this,

on our way to hike through this,

to get to this.

And then later I won at life because Aaron had to buy some Keens in town since he forgot one of his shoes (I was going to buy some a few weeks ago and he has pointed out to me every nerdy Dad wearing Keen sandals with socks since then. Justice!).

The next day we did a new hike that started through a lot of this,

and then we thought it ended somewhere after a lot of this.

But it didn't! we got to the top and saw that we still had all this way until the road.

You can't see how far away it is? Let me show you:

So we collectively complained because somehow it turned into a 6 hour hike instead of a 4 hour hike.

But at least there was the sweet victory of flip flops at the end and pizza and hot pots in Meadow on the way home. Camping success!