Good times at the ranch!

Quads, zip line, chopping wood, centipedes, kick the can...we sure do love it there!

Queen Creek West Pioneer Trek 2015

What an amazing adventure we had!  Four days and three nights with this great bunch of kids.  We were "Ma" and "Pa" to the Mullenaux Family.  We had 10 kids.  5 girls and 5 boys in our family.  It was a terrific group of kids to work with!  We learned to work together and help each other and love each other.  

Our family:

Zach Lyon,

Pa, Ma, Jade Brooks, Sabrina Steadman, Solomon Brooks, Zach Steadman, Emily Sherwood, Lexi Taylor

Belle Lyon

Elijah Mills, Kris Anderson

 Just getting started!

 The first two days were dry and warm and beautiful!  We had some pretty strong kids and they worked well together.  A couple of the girls had some difficulty with the long walk, and weren't able to push very much, but the others sure made up the difference!  That team in the yoke (Kris and Elijah) were the ones who spent the majority of the time right there in the middle.  All of the boys really stepped up and worked hard!  They were so thoughtful of the girls and of me, always helping and lifting and asking what they could do.  We were so blessed to have all of them!

 Sabrina and Lexi were the tough girls in our family! They more than pulled their own weight when others couldn't!  They were so dependable and hard working and fun to be around!

 The first couple of days were long walks, and we had some good times to rest and visit and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

 Our first night sleeping under the stars!  We had a good gathering for dinner and spent some time talking and having an enjoyable devotional.  Pa was always quick to add spiritual messages and ask questions that started discussions about our ancestors and our heritage. What an amazing leader he is! We were all so lucky to have him.

 Dish patrol!

 There was plenty of time for us to visit and get to know each other.  I'm so glad we had those chances!

Toward the end of the first day came our roughest road. A precarious incline that was twisty and full of rocks.  We had to turn the handcart backwards and slowly bounce down the hill.

Good thing we had Pa to help us!

This is the way we would pull the hand cart most of the time.

On the second day we made it to Fort Smith.  It was a fun afternoon visiting different shops with candy, ice cream, root beer floats, hair washing and all kinds of frontier games.  Each family had a trial before we got to camp.  We were given a paper with our trial on it...Ma and Pa were sick and had to be carried.  So our kids had to pull us into town.  Once we got there we went to the bank to get money and then to the doctor to heal us before we could spend our money at the fort.  It was pretty awesome!

Ocotillo Ward

Mullenaux Family (with serious pioneer faces)

Not so serious

Stake presidency

First counselor Beckstead, Pres Smith, Second counselor Filly

The evening of the second day we were to cook dinner.  The boys stepped up and did a fantastic job of cutting vegetables for beef stew.

After dinner was a hoedown.  It was fun, but had to be cut a little short...here came the rain!

 The rain started the evening of the second day and continued off and on.  We were blessed to have some dry times at night so the boys (who had to make their own shelters) could stay dry and we were able to eat and pack at relatively dry times.  Pa became a master hand cart packer-even in his poncho.  

 I love this picture of our family sitting together for lunch (very very sad that Pa is not in it...).  Bishop Cardon (standing in back) ate with us at most meals and was a great help.  He's a pretty awesome guy!

 Trekking in the rain was pretty exciting!  The first day wasn't so bad, but by the second day everything was wet and heavy and the roads were a quagmire!  It was slow going and rough roads.  Our feet were covered in mud up to our knees and it made it hard to pull that cart, but again we had some amazing kids that stepped up and did a fantastic job!

We had a tough two days of slogging through mud before we reached Zion.  I can't say enough about how wonderful the stake was.  We had so many people supporting us.  They brought meals, planned terrific messages and spiritual experiences along the way, hauled water, tarps when it was wet, propane fires to keep us warm...so many things.  There were thousands of man hours spent.  They did a fantastic job.  It was an amazing experience and we were blessed to be a part of it!

Backpacking trip to Black River

May 2015

It was a little bit of a last-minute decision to go on this trip, and we were in the middle of getting ready for trek as well.  I was a little stressed out about making it happen, but we really wanted to do it!  There was a little scrambling to do, but we pulled it off.  I really love backpacking! For me it's all about the gear! For Dale it's all about the fishing gear.  He made sure we were well prepared!

 The Anderson's told us of a great fishing/swimming spot so we decided to try it out.  It was a long bumpy ride to get to the trail head, but we were told it would be worth it!

 I sure love hanging out with this man!  I enjoy all of our adventures together!

 We planned on staying for 3 days, so we had to pack all our stuff with us.  It was a pretty heavy pack, but we made it, no problem!

 Starting out at the top of the mountain.  Way way way down at the bottom is the river.  It was a ROUGH and ROCKY climb down.

 The terrain was quite rocky.  There was only one good flat place to camp on the edge of the river.  It was an open rocky space, but it put us in a good position to fish up and down the river.

 Our cute little backpacking tent!  The campsite doesn't look too lush, but the river around it was beautiful.  We were happy to find a flat place for our tent!

 The fishing was great! The first day we arrived we headed downstream and found some nice pools and caught some good ones!

 Later that evening I headed back to camp to start dinner while Dale did more fishing.  I heard him yell for me and I came running.  He wanted me to take a picture of the fish he had caught.  When I got there I was shocked to see a gash on his forehead and blood on his face.  He had slipped on a rock and cut his head open.  The fish was pretty awesome.

 It looked pretty scary to me.  We were worried about maybe needing stitches..  We were at least an hour hike out of the canyon, plus having to pack up all our gear and then a 4 or 5 hour drive in the dark to anywhere we could get help....after thinking about it we decided to try and patch him up the best we could with what we had.  We had brought a small first aid kit with simple bandages and such.  We finally decided the best way to help close the wound was with duct tape!  It worked great.  That night we prayed about our decision to stay and felt good about it.  We were able to enjoy the rest of our trip without incident.

Our patch job worked out pretty well! The tape stuck the whole time and it seems to be healing well!

The river was so beautiful and we enjoyed it so much!

 Yes! We caught a lot of fish!!

This was from way across the river with my camera.  My little Nikon Coolpix has survived many backpacking and camping trips and does a pretty good job!

I love the plants and the beautiful trees along the river.

 There were some really high cliffs right next to our camping spot.  The fishing wasn't really great in this area, but swimming and jumping off the cliffs would be awesome! We will have to do that the next time we come, and bring the kids!

There is our tent, on the top of the cliffs.

 I actually caught some fish too, just never took any pictures.  I was content mostly to sit and enjoy the scenery and watch Dale in action.

What a fantastic trip!  We will have to do more backpacking (fishing too)!