Trip to Idaho

Towards the middle of July we started going stir-crazy and wanted to go somewhere. We settled on visiting Uncles Sammy and Jaybob (and Aunts Larissa and Kaleigh obviously) in Rexburg. It was a long enough drive to feel like a real road trip, but short enough to be only one day in the car. We left the day after my birthday and came back about 5 days later. In addition to the draw of seeing family, Rexburg had the added advantages of being hot and of having tons of outdoor activities- which was great for the middle of a pandemic.

While we were there most people hiked "R Mountain". However Timothy and Leona didn't feel like hiking in the sun and dust, so I stayed behind with them and they climbed in and around some trees that offered shade. We all went camping, played in the sand dunes, and the highlight of the trip- went rock climbing. 

In the dunes we tried cardboard boxes, bare feet, and the top of a skateboard. The kids had a lot of fun although we were glad that we went in the morning because helping kids repeatedly climb up the sand dunes was exhausting. On our way out of the dunes Uncle Sammy and Collin helped two teenage girls to dig their car out of the sand in a side road.

Rock climbing was definitely everybody's favorite part of the trip. The uncles and aunts took us to a place a little ways outside of town. The scariest part of the whole thing was climbing up the shale rockslide side of the mountain on our hands and feet to get to the climbing part. It was really steep and because of the shale, really slippery. I was wearing Timothy on my back in the carrier. He wanted to be climbing by himself and was pulling my hair and hitting me in his little toddler fury. Once we made it up to the rocks/cliff that we were going to climb the uncles free climbed the course to hook the ropes in ahead of everybody else going climbing. The girls were all little mountain goats, traipsing up the rock like it was not big deal. None of them were afraid of the height and climbed about 40-50 feet up. All the adults were impressed with their fearlessness and skill. The adults who weren't belaying climbers were trying to keep Timothy in his 2 square feet of safe space on the rocks and monitoring the girls so they didn't free climb higher than about 20 feet up.

It was a really fun trip, and a nice break.