Fun Memorial Day

The kids have been asking me to take them fishing a bunch this year. I ended up buying some gear and a fishing license (for Gavin... the other kids don't need one yet) and tried my best to teach them something I never really had an interest in learning. I soon figured out that I didn't really know how to catch fish around here. I didn't think there was really much to it other than a bobber, hook, bait, and lots of patience. I asked a friend of mine from church to take us to his his favorite fishing hole this morning and teach us how to fish. Wow, we learned a lot and there were several things we were doing wrong which certainly hindered our success. We caught four trout in the three hours we were out there. He taught us how to clean them, and then we cooked them up tonight for dinner.

Then later after lunch, we decided to do a hike we heard about called Red Mountain Trail. It is basically a volcano that erupted out the side of the mountain (a long time ago) which allows us to see and walk through some really unique formations. Here's some pictures:

Gavin's First Boy Scout Outing

Gavin and I (Zac) went to a Boy Scouts camping trip last weekend. It was at a place called Lee's Ferry, which is one of the main entry points for canoes and rafts to enter the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. We stayed Friday through Sunday and the first night we had really high winds and rain. A few of the tents collapsed and so some of the boys and dads ended up spending the night in their cars. Our tent held up ok, but we didn't get much sleep.

On Saturday we did a three mile hike to the river on a trail called Jackass Canyon. This was a fun and challenging hike because it's like walking through a big crack in the earth and climbing over all the big rocks that used to have water flowing over them. You can see a few pictures below. We got rained on a little that day, had lunch and did lots of fishing once we got to the river, then hiked back out the three miles. We all slept much better that night :-)

On Sunday we did a similar type hike to the river again on a trail called Cathedral Wash. It's really cool to see and walk through the formations of what thousands of years of water and erosion create. We did lots of fishing again, but Gavin and I are not skilled in the art of catching fish. I'm feeling insired to get better though.

The campground. There were 24 of us on the scouting trip.

This is a shot of Cathedral Wash

More Cathedral Wash

Gavin got a couple bites over the weekend, but the only thing he caught was one of his socks :-)

These guys decided to grab some of the other people's fish heads and make "fish-head kabobs"

This is part of the reason Gavin didn't catch any fish... he had more fun just playing in the water

Here's one of the challenging descents on the Jackass Canyon trail.

Good thing we brought the ponchos on Saturday!

Micah's First T-Ball Game