Malachi's Southern Utah trip

My mom has a fun tradition of taking her grandkids (and a parent) on a "senior trip" after they graduate.* It gives the same-aged cousins a chance to get to know each other a little better, and it has allowed my brothers and me to spend some time together over the years as well! Abe and I got to go to Philadelphia with Kenneth and Katy, and Sebastian and Lucy and David all went to San Diego together with me and Kenneth and Karl. And now this year it was Rebekah and Malachi and Karl and me.

It was a busy summer, and we could only go in the hottest part of the summer, so I suggested to my mom that we visit Southern Utah this year rather than Washington D.C. (another suggested option) so we could see some plays and have an air conditioned car to drive around in! Walking and public transit in the Eastern humidity did not sound fun! My mom agreed, and since Karl's family lives in Minnesota, Rebekah would still get to go somewhere she hadn't been before.

*Or after they don't graduate, in both Malachi and Rebekah's cases. They are both non-traditional scholars! :)

Here are a few pictures from our trip. Of course we had to visit the statue of our great-great-grandfather, Robert Gardner, who helped settle St. George!

We had a tour of the St. George Tabernacle and stood at the pulpit where many prophets have spoken. The senior missionary even let Karl and me play the pipe organ!

I had envisioned maybe getting outside a little when it was evening and the heat wasn't too bad, but of course Karl would stand for no such sensible plans. He had us out in Snow Canyon all day long even in the hottest part of the day! There were signs everywhere saying "EXTREME HEAT! DANGER! DO NOT HIKE BETWEEN ELEVEN AND SEVEN!" and there we were at 3 pm in 90-degree weather starting out on the lava tube trail with no shade in sight. I thought I would die!! But Karl cannot be stopped!

At least there was a little shade in the slot canyons! We didn't do any serious canyoneering, just went in the little short one by the sand dunes. Malachi was amazing! He could pull himself up anywhere!

Can you spy Karl?

It was cool to watch Karl climbing around because even just a year ago, he was so unsteady on his feet. He had neuropathy because of his leukemia treatments, and he walked like an eighty-year old man! He has improved so much in a year, and can now walk on rocky trails and even get into holes like this! Amazing!

I love these petrified dunes. They are so beautiful! (Even in 90º heat😡)

The hike to the lava tubes was the worst, because it was 2:00 in the afternoon, but it was also the best because it was so much cooler in the caves! We explored around (and by "we" I mean Ky and Rebekah and Karl, mostly) and Malachi found a whole new chamber I never knew was there before! (I guess I never shone my light that direction!) And then within that chamber, he found ANOTHER chamber which could be accessed by wiggling through a small hole. I would never choose to do that myself, but I quite enjoyed watching Malachi do it! I sat nearby and held the light for him so he could get in. Then 6'2" Karl came and wriggled HIS way in too! I don't know how (or, honestly, why) boys do such things!

Of course my phone light and camera were so inadequate to the vast darkness of the cave. But this gives you some idea of the small size of that entrance hole. It's the light part in the middle.

And now this shows what it looks like inside. I am sitting by that small entrance hole, pointing my camera inside, taking a picture of Malachi holding up HIS phone light to show the interior. It was so cool!

The place we stayed in St. George had five bedrooms, one for each of us, which was so nice…and then a lot of extra beds…this was my mom's room! She could have slept in a different bed every half-night! Ha.

Another slot canyon in that little park right in St. George, I can't remember what it's called.

Malachi squeezed through this tiny crack several years ago when we came here, and he did it again this time as a much bigger person! Needless to say I did not attempt this myself. Can you see him in there?

How can anyone fit through such a small slit??

My mom

Malachi did pull-ups every place it was humanly possible (and some where it was not). And he swung himself up onto little ledges like an owl or a squirrel or something.

We went to the new Red Cliffs Temple. It is a lot like Deseret Peak and Taylorsville inside. Very pretty! It was fun to be there all together. Karl and my mom and I all did the work for some family members from Quebec! 

We also went to the regular St. George Temple.

In the visitor's center, there's a display of the Book of Mormon in a lot of different languages. When you pick up one of the books, a voice starts reading a passage from it in the language of that book! All done with RFID chips, I suppose, but it's like magic! I wished so much that Ziggy, the language-obsessed one among us, was there with me to see it! He would have loved it! I took some videos for him. And when I told the visitor center missionaries about him, they showed me their other Book of Mormon closet—

…which has almost every language there is! I looked and marveled at them for a long time.

We spent time in both St. George and Cedar City. We saw Newsies at Tuacahn and it was fun (though honestly, that musical just gets more ridiculous to me every time I see it)—the highlight was seeing bats fly around above us in the twilight—and then we saw Macbeth (or "The Scottish Play" as Karl insisted on calling it) and The Importance of Being Earnest at the Shakespeare Festival. Both of those were excellent.

We stayed in this cute house that was right next door to the Shakespeare Theater, so we could just walk over to the plays. It was great! One of the nights, Malachi and I were racing over there right before the play started, and one of the Shakespeare Festival employees let us take a shortcut through a locked room. As we walked, he made small talk: "So, what's playing there tonight? Oh yes—Mackers."

Mackers. Macbeth=Mackers.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about that since. 

We also went to the Cedar City Temple. I haven't been there since the open house, which is a long time ago now—I think Ziggy was a baby when we went!

All of our driving, I should mention, was done accompanied by the mellifluous voice of Jonathan Cecil reading "Joy in the Morning" (one of the Jeeves stories). It was, as always, SO funny and SO good. It is one of Wodehouse's best, containing as it does shipping magnate J. Chichester Clam, Uncle Percy, and young Edwin the Boy Scout.

We did a little hike in Kolob Canyon. It was hot, but SO MUCH better than it had been in St. George that I hardly wanted to complain.

Malachi started doing some weightlifting with rocks on the trail. That was frankly not unusual for him this trip.

Cedar Brakes was beautiful as always, and even had lots of yellow wildflowers growing up at the top near the Visitor's Center!

So that was our trip. I think Malachi and Rebekah both had fun, and they were both delightful company. Some of my favorite moments were just talking together and playing games together in the evening. I had a great ping-pong tournament with Ky, and played double solitaire with my mom just like old times. I love my family!