I spent the weekend in Hanksville Utah. It is in central Utah by Goblin Valley. The area I was in is also called Towerland because there are sandstone towers everywhere.
Our goal, the Utah Climbing Club, was to learn to climb up to the top of these towers.
The trick with this kind of rock climbing is that sandstone crumbles. Quite often you put your fingers on a hold or your foot on a ledge but then ... it just crumbles away when you try to stand on it.
This is me on the "Dirty Devil" a 5.9 trade crack climb--- an 80 foot tower. It was amazing standing on top of it. I am about 1/3 of the way up the tower with a red shirt on.
We camped one night in the sandy desert. The sun was hot - thankfully only in the high 70's, low 80's. We had to haul our gear all over.
This is me on top of "The Castle" a 5.10 80 foot tower. I didn't lead any of these towers, meaning I didn't go up first. I am far from that good. But I did climb up nice and steady once the rope was secure on the top!
I got to climb to the top of three towers on Friday.
On Saturday Ang my friend showed up and she and I attempted and succeeded in climbing "The Strummer." We had a "coach" helping us learn what to do to climb this very tall tower. How tall it is, I don't know. But it is rated an A3. What that means is A0 means if the person climbing falls the belayer and the climber will be fine. A6 means if the climber falls the climber will probably be dead of very badly hurt. We climbed an A3. Right in the middle. Thankfully we didn't have to lead it, we just hung safely from a rope a GOOD climber had put up several days before.
Ang is on the big rock and I am sitting holding the rope by the smaller group of rocks.
Slightly out of order, but the desert was amazing at sunset.
You can see our coach teaching Ang how to place gear correctly so she wont fall. We were learning to place lots of interesting things into the rocks. Pitons (metal you hammer into the rock), cams (funning looking jaws that you squeeze together into the rock) and nuts (little small metals pieces to jam into the rock)
And all these things are supposed to hold you into the wall. But we were also learning about aid climbing. We didn't' actually "rock climbing" up this we "aided" up the wall. We used ladders and things called aiders to get up the rock. You can see a ladder Ang is standing in.
This is me with our coach. He was my guardian angel. He stayed with me for the full 3 hours I climbed. I was a bit ... chicken!
You can see some gear in the wall... so interesting to think a little tiny piece of gear can hold me! Well I hope they can, if I place them correctly!
We got off the wall after 6 hours of climbing. Headed into Blondies and inhaled a burger and a milk shake. Then settled in for a long drive home.
It was a great weekend. Definitely an adventure!
We tried to capture a picture of all three of us. Pam, Amy and Angela.
2nd try!
Third try might be the best!
The drive took us 5 hours from Seattle. My AC was not working at this point and my check engine light came on for the entire 5 hours. The car was emitting a funny bad smell. I got it all checked out in Spokane and found that some fluid had leaked out causing the check engine light and smell... so they wiped up the fluid and done... they didn't even charge me. And the AC was easy to fix too. Super grateful!
Another one of the highlights of our trip was the nightly wrestling with Uncle Eric. The wrestling match started out with Eric kneeling on the floor saying something like... And in the middle of the ring Daddy Allen, world champion, weighing in at 150 pounds.... Then announcing the kids in a similar fashion. Then they came to the middle and started. There were so many smiles and laughs and tickling! 
Four kid against one daddy! My oh My!
We also went downtown one day to a beautiful park. We had a nice picnic lunch and let the kids run around.
Here is baby Miles. He was so sweet. I love his shirt!
Our last day there was beautiful! We got in our swimsuits it was so warm. 
It was warm, but that doesn't mean the water was warm. Would you go down the slide this way? Ella sure did! COLD!
Darren said in Utah is was raining and cold the whole week. Ella went sledding in the pool just for daddy.
I think we will have many more fun memories ahead... with all our cousins!
Tyler was feeling rather homesick on Thursday night. So instead of taking two days to get home (stopping in Boise again) I packed up the car late Thursday night, slept for 5 hours, then put the kids in the car at 4:30 AM and started the drive home. It was fantastic. The kids slept for half the trip home. We talked, sang songs, ate good food. 
Rob spent a lot of his time answering questions as fast as he could.
Their little dude Ely was super easy going on all our outings. We are excited for him to start running around with all his other cousins.
We went to a really neat Naval Museum on Bainbridge Island. Tyler continued with is 4,000 questions.
They had a really fun park there with cool water sculptures.
Talk about hostess. Rachel even found the local electric train store. Tyler walked around and around. There were so many neat trains in there. Then we went and got some great ice-cream at the local hub.
Sunday night we went for a super cool drive around the industrial side of Seattle. I think Tyler took at least 100 pictures on his camera of this area. I am not sure how we go so lucky, but just as we arrived at this little look out a little tugboat was hauling this huge empty cargo ship. Those are some big boats.
Tyler loved these big cranes in the back ground. They lift up the containers from the trains and move them horizontally over to the ship waiting in the harbor.... pretty cool!
This is a Missile Radar Detector thing a ma-bo-ber. It is a huge floating ... ship thing. You know, to detect Missiles. It was pretty huge and pretty neat. It is behind the big yellow ship ... which shows how big it is since the yellow ship is pretty huge!
We missed our Daddy a lot on this trip, but we sure had a whole lot of fun!
Darren spent all this time with us away...working! But over the weekend he did get a beautiful mnt bike ride in up at Corner Canyon in Draper. A storm was moving in, but his picture sure looked beautiful. 
We got to see some fun glass art work by Dale Chihuly. When I was studying in Israel I got to view some of his art work in Old Jerusalem by David's Citadel. 
He has a huge bridge going to his museum which is filled with great art work. It was a great "museum trip" for us.
Elena who is 6 skipped school one day to go to the Zoo with us. We went to Point Defiance, which houses the zoo and a huge beautiful park. A highlight of the trip for sure!
The trick with this kind of rock climbing is that sandstone crumbles. Quite often you put your fingers on a hold or your foot on a ledge but then ... it just crumbles away when you try to stand on it. 
We camped one night in the sandy desert. The sun was hot - thankfully only in the high 70's, low 80's. We had to haul our gear all over.
This is me on top of "The Castle" a 5.10 80 foot tower. I didn't lead any of these towers, meaning I didn't go up first. I am far from that good. But I did climb up nice and steady once the rope was secure on the top!
I got to climb to the top of three towers on Friday. 
Slightly out of order, but the desert was amazing at sunset.
You can see our coach teaching Ang how to place gear correctly so she wont fall. We were learning to place lots of interesting things into the rocks. Pitons (metal you hammer into the rock), cams (funning looking jaws that you squeeze together into the rock) and nuts (little small metals pieces to jam into the rock)
This is me with our coach. He was my guardian angel. He stayed with me for the full 3 hours I climbed. I was a bit ... chicken!
You can see some gear in the wall... so interesting to think a little tiny piece of gear can hold me! Well I hope they can, if I place them correctly!
