Many of you may not have heard of the Hole in the Rock trail that some of the early members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints traveled down in Southern Utah. I know I had never heard of it until last year. My grandfather has just finished writting a book, The Undaunted, about the amazing difficulties that those people endured. Jens Nielson who was part of the expedition had also traveled with the Willie Handcart company. He wrote that the Hole in the Rock expedition was far more trying than the winter storms the Willie Company endured. The story is an amazing one, but too long to share in a blog post. The pictures above are the actual "Hole" that they had to take wagons down. Pictures don't even begin to do justice to the steep, rocky, long, narrow road that the pioneers had to blast and dig. For the last 4 days I went with my mom's family over some of the hardest parts of the trail down near Escalante. It was astounding what those people went through. I enjoyed being with my mom's family. I hadn't seen my Aunt Becky since my sister's wedding two years ago. Here is her youngest playing with Adria. 
They had a great time playing together. Julia also really enjoyed playing with her cousins! 
Every time we have come up to Utah lately, Julia has wanted to climb a mountain. On the trip, Grandpa Stoddard helped her to climb her first mountian. This is Julia climbing San Juan Hill. She actually made it (slowly) most of the way on her own. 
You can't tell in the picture because they are almost to the top, but it really did feel like a little mountian. Julia was quite proud of her acheivement. The family also rented ATV's for the big kids to ride over the trail on. Julia and Adria got to ride around a little bit when the big kids were doing other things. 
Julia liked it as long as we weren't going too fast, but Adria loved every second of it. 
Julia's two other favorite things were riding the ferry across Lake Powell and swimming in the hotel pool with all 23 of the cousins plus aunts and uncles.
They had a great time playing together. Julia also really enjoyed playing with her cousins! Every time we have come up to Utah lately, Julia has wanted to climb a mountain. On the trip, Grandpa Stoddard helped her to climb her first mountian. This is Julia climbing San Juan Hill. She actually made it (slowly) most of the way on her own. You can't tell in the picture because they are almost to the top, but it really did feel like a little mountian. Julia was quite proud of her acheivement. The family also rented ATV's for the big kids to ride over the trail on. Julia and Adria got to ride around a little bit when the big kids were doing other things. Julia liked it as long as we weren't going too fast, but Adria loved every second of it. Julia's two other favorite things were riding the ferry across Lake Powell and swimming in the hotel pool with all 23 of the cousins plus aunts and uncles.
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