Day two of our trip

We drove back to Bryce Canyon from Escalante along Scenic Hwy 12.  It was definitely scenic.

We didn't have time to see everything in Bryce on Wednesday so we went back on Thursday to take the rest of it in.  We started at Bryce Point.

Then we moved on to Inspiration Point. It was all so amazing!

Next we drove to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  This is our first good view.  On the way into where we parked, Mike quickly looked off to the side and said, "Big."  What an understatement!

It took us about four hours to get from the North Rim to the Route 66 Inn in Williams, AZ.  It's a good thing it was late and we were really tired because it was another winner of a room!!

Vacation with my hubby

Mike and I are on a road trip in Southern Utah to see some of God's amazing creations. Today we visited Red Canyon, some of Bryce Canyon and Escalante. Here are a few of the things we saw today:

Mike by the sign just before entering Red Canyon and

Cherie in front of a rock tunnel in Red Canyon.

Some of the beautiful "hoodoos" (rock formations) in Bryce Canyon

We took an .8 mile hike (we learned from our White Pine hike not to try to go so far) into the Tropic Waterfall.

The amazing thing about this is there really is no water to be found anywhere else. Mike had even commented on the drive that he'd seen several river beds with no water in them.

This is a shot out the car window on the way to Escalante.

We are staying in a rather ancient motel tonight in Escalante. I don't remember the last time I stayed in a motel, but the price was right and there really weren't that many options here. It's clean, has air conditioning, a microwave and fridge, free wi-fi, and a bed (I hope it's comfortable) so it's all good.

Tomorrow we plan to spend some more time in Bryce Canyon and then head over to the Grand Canyon. Mike has never seen it, so I'm pretty excited to experience it with him. The only time I have been was when I was 15, so I am really looking forward to it as well.

Summer Fun

School has started for the Child children and summer is over, but I was taking pictures off our camera and organizing them on the computer and found some pictures of a few of the fun things we did this summer.

Tyler participating in a "Minute to win it" game (I think that's what it's called) at the annual Beckstrand Family Reunion. And he did win due to a penalty assessed to the other contestant.

Mike's Birthday party and Candice going for a Harley ride with Uncle Rick afterwards

Heather took a couple of friends to Bear Lake and the McKellar girls joined us as well for a fun day at the pool

Our 24th of July Pioneer Primary activity and parade

Crazy girls having fun jumping around!

I'll have to look at these often in a few months to remind myself that it was warm once and may be again in another 9 months (I'm really trying not to depress myself, but I'm not sure it's working).

The love of gardening!

Last year, my in-laws decided they didn't want to have such a big garden so they were going to put grass in their garden spot. I asked them if our family could plant a garden at their house (they live about 5 minutes away) since we don't have a space for one at our home and they said we could. I had no idea I would like gardening so much. I'm so lucky because the soil is good, the watering system, they already had set up, is amazing which makes it really easy to water, and my in-laws have a ton of experience and knowledge they have been willing to share with me which has helped greatly in making my garden a success. My father-in-law actually started most of the plants in his greenhouse and then let me plant them. I have corn, onions, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, banana squash, butternut squash, zucchini, green peppers, and watermelon. Of those, I purchased some of the corn, the onions, one tomato plant (of like 10) and the squash and zucchini, he gave me the rest. It's been amazing to watch things grow and develop into food. Each time I go over, I'm in awe. Carrot seeds are so minuscule and they end up growing into these long orange vegetables.


You may think I'm crazy, but I love to pull the weeds and take time to look at everything to see the progress from the previous visit. Of course this has been my project as my kids are usually in bed when I go over to pull the weeds (when it's a little cooler) and Mike loves to see the progress, but he does not like to do yard work. These are the tools I use and take back and forth with me. My garden gloves, a bucket to throw the weeds into, and my favorite tool ever. It's called the Wee Weeder and was made by our neighbor, Kent Ashby. It makes weeding a snap. The wire on the top cuts into the soil like butter and it gets the weeds at their roots. It's probably the best $7 I've ever spent.


And here are the some of the fruits of my labor I got today. I had zucchini, grape tomatoes and new potatoes for lunch and made a triple batch of zucchini bread this afternoon (if you want some, let me know). I can't wait to have a tomato sandwich and some fresh corn on the cob. I'm so grateful to a Heavenly Father that made it possible for us to create things here on earth so we can experience the same joy He must have felt when he created this beautiful world for us!

These are a few of my least favorite things . . .

What is on your list of least favorite things? Here are a few that top my list . . . Migranes, I've had one for three days straight; Ironing, I'm looking at a pile that needs to be done, aargh; Mopping, I was the one that did it the best of the kids in my home growing up so I got that assignment quite often. I didn't like it then and it hasn't changed; People that think they know more than anyone else and don't hesitate to let you know it; When things don't get done how and when I want them to (my poor husband); and last but not least, early mornings. I'm not a morning person and I never will be. My problem is I'm a real night person and usually don't get to bed before 12:00 a.m. so morning seems to come way too fast. I've told myself to just go to bed earlier and then it wouldn't be so hard to get up, but that just doesn't work, especially with teenagers staying up until all hours of the night. It's actually the thing I'm dreading most about school starting in a week.

What's in a name?

So I showed my kids my blog and they all asked, "What does 'capers' mean?" (but they pronounced it cappers). Am I really that old? I actually started worrying about whether or not it really made sense, but I know it does and this is why I named this blog what I did. I wanted to come up with something unique and creative about myself to use in the name, but I decided what this blog is really going to be about is my family's experiences so I knew I wanted our last name to be a part of the title. Then, I'm a little silly I guess, but I wanted to have the other word start with a "C" as well so I thought of "Capers". So, even more silly, I went to Microsoft Word and typed "caper" into the thesaurus to make sure it was what I thought it meant and the words that came up were escapade, adventure, and experience so I figured that would work. What I probably should have done was look up the definition of caper online because I did just that a minute ago and it said,"an illegal plot or enterprise, especially one involving theft" or "a wild, foolish action or prank". I guarantee you that is not the kind of caper I had in mind or our family will be involved in, but I hope you enjoy reading about our every day experiences.

At-home camping

We hadn't been camping all summer in our trailer so we planned to go last night. Of course Candice and Megan had made other plans even though they have been bugging us all summer about going. So Mike, Tyler, Heather and I were going to go. Mike had gone up on his lunch hour to reserve a spot at the Bridger Campground, I went shopping for S'mores fixins and other food items, and Tyler had helped get chairs and sleeping bags where they needed to be.

As I was preparing the foil dinners at home, it started to rain. It didn't pour and the little rain storm didn't last too long so we thought we might still be able to get up to the canyon. But when we got everyone home and things ready to pack up, the skies opened up and it decided to pour so camping up the canyon was out!

We were all pretty disappointed, especially Heather, so I decided since we had everything together we'd just have our camping trip at home. I put the foil dinners on the grill and started some charcoal in the charcoal starter for roasting marshmallows and Starburst (if you haven't had a roasted Starburst, you really need to try it. They are, in my humble opinion, ten times better than cold Starbursts. They kind of make a mess of your roasting sticks, but it's worth it). The dinners cooked up pretty well. We had some burn and some were perfect just like on a regular fire. We ate dinner in the trailer at our little table then we went into the garage to roast our marshmallows and Starburst. Tyler had a S'more but Heather just like putting a piece of chocolate inside each roasted marshmallow. I just like to eat the marshmallows without anything else. The coals worked pretty well, actually.


When we were done with the treats we went back to the trailer for some game playing. Heather won a very long game of SORRY and then we cleaned everything up and came back in the house to play Scum because we decided it would not be real easy to change places, possibly after every game, in the confined space of the trailer.

We wimped out and didn't sleep in the trailer, because it was really windy after the rain storm and we knew we'd get such a better night's sleep in our own beds, but we had a pretty fun night together "acting" as if we were camping.

Crazy idea

I decided I wanted to have the family take the hike from Tony Grove to White Pine Lake on Saturday. Candice's friend Ben was here from Philidelphia for the weekend and Candice had wanted to go on a hike so we invited them to join us. Ben unfortunately wasn't feeling well in the morning so he didn't come but Candice decided to still go with us. Megan was working and she also tweeked a tenden in her right foot at a volleyball camp during the week so she wasn't able to come either.

We had hoped to leave about 10:30 a.m. but of course didn't get off until 12:00 p.m. so with the drive we didn't get on the trail until about 1:15. Just as we got started, someone asked how long the hike was and Mike said, "It's about 2.5 miles." I thought, "That's perfect!" Then we walked for what we thought was about a 1/2 a mile and came to a sign that said it was 3.8 miles to White Pine. I kind of knew we were in trouble then, but we trudged along. A little ways farther, I said to Heather, "If the next sign we see says we have have 3 miles to go, I'm not going to make it." Tyler was always quite a ways ahead of us, but he stopped to take a break in the shade and announced, as we reached him, that we had gone .8 miles (he had this chip in his shoe that registered on his iTouch the distance he'd gone) so it really was still 3 miles to our destination and Mike also told us at that point that once we got to the summit it's a pretty steep descent with switchbacks down to the lake so maybe we could stop at the summit and then turn around and come back. We were also a little pressed for time because Heather was supposed to be carving pineapples for the Ward Luau at 4:30, Candice wanted to get back to spend time with Ben, and I was supposed to put together a spinach salad for the Luau that started at 6:00.

So we kept going and we reached the summit at around 2:30. We began talking about turning around and heading back and Heather didn't want anything to do with that. She wanted to see the lake and figured if we'd come that far, how in the world could we turn around and head back without seeing it. Candice and Mike were really fighting for the turning around option, but I told Heather I'd go with her if she wanted to go and Tyler said he would too so we all ended up heading down the hill.
Me and the kids made it to the lake about a half hour later and Mike came down about 15 minutes after we had gotten there. Everyone but me took their shoes off and soaked their feet in the lake for a few minutes. I didn't want to put in the effort. Then we decided we better get back.

We finally got back on the trail, after a potty break in a not so desirable outhouse, at about 4:00 and knew at that point that Heather would not be assisting in pineapple carving and I was starting to worry about getting home in time to make a salad.

The trek back up the switchbacks to the summit was very difficult and there were a few times that Mike thought about sitting down and staying there for the night or maybe longer. Tyler and Candice left us in the dust but Heather and I made sure Mike was still with us. Once we made it back to the top, the rest of the way was mostly downhill and quite doable, it just took time to go the 2.5 miles back to the car.

We finally made it back at 5:35 and Tyler said he'd been there for at least a half an hour (he had been smart enough to take the keys so he could enjoy the nice air conditioned car while he waited for us), Candice had gotten there about 15 minutes after Ty and she was ticked because it had taken us so long and she hadn't been able to spend the day with Ben, and we quickly realized we were not going to be on time to the Luau and no spinach salad was going to be made. But we accomplished a great thing and I was so glad that Heather talked us into going the whole way. We were tired and thirsty but, believe or not, after all of Mike's complaining he said, "I would do it again next Saturday." I'm not so sure I would, but I would like to go again sometime when we aren't in such a hurry and we can take our time to enjoy the scenery, especially White Pine Lake. It was good to be together and accomplish what I perceive as a great feat for our family.