Alec, Emily, and Crew: The 4th in Grover

For the 4th we were lucky enough to be invited to go down to Grover which is right by Capital Reef NP. It was so much fun!!! We got up there late Thursday night and basically just set up camp. It was so funny, and I am bummed I did not get a picture of it, but our tent next to Mike and Shelby's was hilarious. Ours is a two person "hotel room" and there's is like a 20 person ski lodge.
On Friday we decided to go on a 25 mile mountain bike ride which was supposable all down hill:). So the whole gang got all dressed up and ready for our day of fun. Well we got up there and from the start you knew it was going to be a bit more technical than just the normal downhill bike ride!:)

Here Alec and I are at the top.... all smiles!:) The next picture is of Alec and CJ cruising down trying to race. This is about the point that things started to look a little bleaker than one might have expected (note we were only probably a mile and 1/2 into the bike ride).

Well, we all kept going until poor Mike's tire totally blew out, and when I say blew out I mean it (this is about 2 miles into the ride). Well, we decided that Mike was not going to turn around, he was going to run the next 23 miles and we were all going to switch off to get us home. The picture below is classic, I was laughing so hard. Well the running lasted about 3/4 of a mile and we decided that it just did not make any sense so Mike and Shelby took off to go back and try and find a ride home.

Here is the crew about 5 or so miles into it. Then the next picture is tough Meg showing us her war wound with a smile on her face and all. We kept telling her that she needed to tell people she got attacked by a mountain lion or something, it ended with Alec saying she got attacked by a tortious.

So I know that this might not look tough, but believe me, it was steep, slick, and crazy hard, especially for someone who has never mountain biked before like some of these kids. The picture above really does not give it justice, but look at Elle go, I was super proud of these girls it was way cool to see them put there mind to finishing and doing it!!
So when we got down to more the flat area and with about 2-3 miles to go out of the blue we saw Mike and Shelby. They were our rescuers!!! We were all out of water, blisters on hands, and some really tired, tired legs. Shelby jumped on Alec's bike to go back to the truck. The kids jumped in the truck and the rest of us finished the rest of the trail. It was so pretty riding in through the red rock! I would love to go and do that trail again, but this time with a little bit more water and food to keep up on our energy, oh yeah, and some bug repellant!

On the 4th we headed into Torrey and went and saw the Wayne county parade (the best ever, seriously!). The best thing about the parade is that it came and then don't you worry it turned around and came back a 2nd time. So if you missed something the first time like the weiner dog float, or one of the homemade mini pies, or smokey the bear, they came back around so you could see them!!:)
Alright, so blow up the next two pictures below..... do you see a resemblance! It was so funny. So this fake cop sits out at the beginning of town to try and get people to slow down.

After the parade we went and had a bbq and then we had the best flash flood ever. It was crazy. Mike was out doing everything in his power to keep his ski lodge from blowing over, as our little hotel room just stayed there being protected by it larger friend who was taking the brunt of the storm!:) I swear I could feel the lighning at times, it was crazy!!
We then headed into the park to drive around. It was so pretty in there!!! I loved it! We just drove around, got out and hiked around, saw some petroglyphs, it was all really cool!!

Alec and I then took a 4-wheeler drive up to this cool rock to climb. 4-wheelers are super fun, even though I still have flashbacks to when I got bucked off!:):)