Gooseberry Mesa

Corey and I are back home after a quick get away to St. George. We woke up at a decent time, enjoyed the free breakfast they served at the Marriott Townplace Suites. I read in 4 of the 6 books I brought, not bad (I was trying to justify why I brought so many, cause I didn't know what I'd be in the mood for!) Corey did some work and I stretched while I read, then we checked out at noon. Filled up the car, stopped by Lowes for a screw for the Velocirax, then we headed to Hurricane to find the Gooseberry Mesa trail. It was a longer drive away than we thought. The "main street" of Apple Valley is not your typical main street. It was lucky that we didn't try to do this one yesterday. We started on the trail at 2:20 and rode the South Rim trail up to the ridge that overlooks Highway 59 - 

This trail is not a black diamond... apparently it was a double red diamond! 

As the Snowbird advertisement billboard says, this trail was for a different breed, and that breed is us! We did pretty good! Not bad for two almost 50 year olds!

It was other worldly and super fun!!

It was a perfect experience to finish a great little get away. We rode the ridge up all the way to the last rock where we got a great view of both sides of the mesa - 

Pretty fun!! Then we rode the north rim back down to the car. We started this with no idea what to expect, but some google reviews said it was a 4 hour thing, yikes! So we did great for going into this thing totally blind. It worked out just perfectly - it was 10.21 miles, took us 2 hours 15 minutes to do it, 644 elevation gain. Even though we had to drive home in the dark, I'd do it again and I hope we do go again next year post Christmas. Actually Corey and I are thinking this might be a quarterly thing that would be good for us. And the kids did great at home! We just got back, all the older kids are awake (Joseph through Abi) and all the younger kids are in bed asleep! And the house is clean. Mel and Hyrum were the miracle workers, and Abi made dinner. Joseph and Wes were doing school all day, but they put away all the Christmas decorations, and the house is totally clean. Mel said Katharine was perfect too! Katharine is asleep with Natalie, but I'm going to go grab her cause I need her to nurse. I didn't pump since this morning. We have one day home tomorrow, and I'm hoping I'm able to take advantage of Mel's help and do a bit more with me here too. They cleaned up our bedroom, but just moved all my piles to the side of the room. I'd like to get rid of the piles for good, but I need some help, so we'll see if we can do that tomorrow. Friday we are going up to Wolfcreek to ski there Friday day, then sleep over, and maybe ski again Saturday, then Sunday is church and heading up to Brighton. It's been a full and busy winter break, makes it feel too short! Perhaps we planned to much. Next year we'll maybe skip the over night ski trip, but we are taking a couple break again. It was wonderful. I'm excited to go do Gooseberry again someday.