the murrays: Another Dream Come True

We made this happen in July and I'm SO glad we did!! (well, we got on the website at 9 am on May 5 and got 2 spots miraculously! And then planned for it. ) Others thought about coming with us- Ryan, Cleo, Kurtis and Lauren, Marcie and Layla. but I'm actually so glad they didn't haha. This group was perfect. Here we are at the start: Lydia, Ryder, Phillip, Owen, Whitney, Eric, me and Katelyn.

We had tried to train for it a little.... I had gone on weekly hikes with Owen and Katelyn, and Whitney was playing soccer every day. Lydia and Ryder were running a mile every day. But we definitely should have trained with the packs! It was pretty hard to get used to them at first.

Me and Lydia got behind on those first couple of boring miles. But it was fun to talk to her, she's a cutie.

As soon as we got to the first crossing, Owen and Ryder wanted to be all in!! They kept saying "Adventure is out there!" and they were having the time of their 11-and 10-year old lives haha.

In hindsight they wasted energy and time walking in the water at that point, but it was so cute and they were so excited, we didn't have the heart to stop them completely. Here we are at our first "big" obstacle we had to climb over....little did we know there would be huge ones up ahead from the flooding the months before- wettest Spring ever, remember?

Eric with his people. And our first time going waist deep! It was hot so we were happy.

First time in "deep" water.

first big wall, and first little wanna-be arch.

selfie with Whitney, and Ryder excited to go deep.

Just enjoying the sunshine,

Pictures of the campsite map and descriptions, for future reference.

By late afternoon, we were splitting up a bit. Eric was out front with Owen and Ryder, I was in the middle with Katelyn and Whitney, and Phillip brought up the rear with Lydia. She is a slow and steady kind of girl. She did great, just slowly. Anyway, Here's one time when Eric stopped to wait for us; the boys climbed up on this rock to eat a snack. Eventually at like 6 pm Eric and the boys left us and said they would power ahead and set up camp. So we didn't see them again until 9 pm when we finally reached our campsite after 9 hours of hiking! Here's a picture Eric took of the boys by a little cave around 7:30pm.

Katelyn and Whitney going through the first actual Narrows!

Nice photobomb Kate lol. And the two of us,

and Whitney in a longer Narrows section. So beautiful! Then here's the waterfall we finally reached, and we were like CRAP we still have 2 more hours! So we just powered on. We reached the point where the other fork of the Virgin River comes in, and it was suddenly WAY deeper with much bigger rocks to walk on, so challenging! But Katelyn and Whitney just kept going. Whitney would go a little ahead and Kate was a little behind, so I tried to stay in the middle where I could see them both.

Here was a cool split-off rock! And a cave where we swear we saw a wild pig lol.

Finally it was a relief to start seeing the numbered campsites. We would call out to each other when we found one. But then at last we reached number 9- ours- and the boys were not there!!
Our campsite was off to the side up a hill, and the sign was NOT super visible from the river. They passed right by it! Whitney and I went up to the site, and called down to Katelyn when she came around the bend. I decided I would drop my pack and go after them. I was sure at some point they would notice another site and realize they had gone too far, but I felt TERRIBLE they were still hiking! I had hoped they would be done and resting long before us. Owen had run out of energy hours before and I was sure Eric was super frustrated to find they had gone too far!

Sure enough, I had only been going for a few minutes when I met them coming back. They had gone to the next site and turned around. Owen was so mad to have to hike extra! They were all exhausted. It was now 9pm and the light was almost gone and we still had to set up camp and cook dinner. But we made it! Phillip and Lydia showed up not long after.
These pictures are from the next morning; it was totally dark by the time we set up/made food at the same time/went straight to bed!