this is happiness: come to zion come to zion

so this weekend i tripped down to St. George with some great friends Amelia, Pila, and Dallas. We left on friday night around 10:30.... and after the trauma of the day it was just what i needed. We stopped and got some cliff bars from the grocery store for saturday and then some fries from burger king because the wendy's drive through had a ridiculous line (apparently it's the hopping place to go on friday night). so we hit the road listening to one direction, call me maybe, and the last song that i remember is this

when i woke up (remember that it had been a very traumatic day) we were in good ol' st. geezey and it was 2 am. we pulled up to our condo and unloaded the car and trekked up the stairs only to find that the combination to the door didn't work... so we called our new best friend Jennifer who was the lady renting it to us and she gave us the real combo (we felt bad for waking her up).

this is our view from the balcony of our condo

Saturday morning we woke up and Pila ran to the store to get provisions for breakfast and returned with enough food to feed us for a week (love that woman). after eating 2 bowls of cereal and talking to Dallas about her conversion story (it's way cool and she knows Elder Callahan and knows his story and everything which i highly suggest you check out here! ) we were ready to head out to zions

riding in the car on the way to zion's me and dallas are excited!

we decided that we were going to try and hike hidden canyon and emerald pools. so we set off first to conquer hidden canyon first.

hidden canyon is cool because you get to do a lot of "scrambling" which is climbing on the rocks not on a groomed trail, after you climb up all these stairs cut in the rock and such.

nice butt shot i know

we hiked for about an hour when the drama started.... we were just blazing the trail and there was this tree that we had to step over and you know my left leg did great getting over it but my right leg was feeling just a little bit lazy and it got caught on a protruding branch and i had a huge gash on my knee

we didn't have any band aids or anything oddly enough... but we did have 6 water bottles, 2 camel backs, and like 30 granola bars and we had the sleeves of our shirts so pila started looking for a way to tear her sleeves off so we could at least cover up my knee. before we knew it we met some German's over here on holiday who had a knife and some tissues. we cut off pila's sleeves, and put the tissues to help absorb the blood and then we kept hiking for another 4 hours!

our makeshift bandage... terrible picture of my legs though

we found the arch and decided to climb up on top of it!

and we hiked some more!.... Amelia is a nut!

our fantastic group! dallas, mels, me, and pila!

once we got back from our hike it was 6:30 so we decided to plan emerald pools for another trip. we headed back on the shuttle, we met these German people on the shuttle (and i wasn't even scared and that's pretty close to public transportation look at me stepping up in the world) and they gave me a real band aid and told me to go buy o-zone gaze so my leg wouldn't have to be cut off.... we stopped on our way home and got in and out for dinner and then we went to smith's to get real band aids and hydrogen peroxide. and then the rest of the night was a blur of laughter, chilling at the condo, harry potter, and finally going to sleep.

on sunday morning we woke up and made pancakes, french toast, eggs, and had strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. then we tried to go to the Spanish ward at 12:10 but we missed it so we hit up and random sacrament meeting at 1 and then came home and Pila made us this yummy mexican fish thing and we checked out.

on our way out we stopped at the St. George visitor's center (I really wanted a picture in front of the temple) I was really hoping to be able to see sister barber but sadly it was her full area day and she wasn't there but sister anderson her companion from the MTC was there and i was SO excited to see her!

on our way home we listened to this fantastic talk and if you have an hour to spare i highly recommend listening to it. it is one of the most inspiring stories i have ever heard about knowing what you stand for.