1st day of school

 8th grade.  So excited to be an office aide!

 6th grade.  Miss Mary for homeroom and has Mrs. Milligan for reading and Ms. Jones for math.

4th grade with Mr. Anway.  He's our first kid to have a male elementary teacher.  He's a bit nervous but I've heard great things about the teacher.

 2nd grade with Ms. Fifelski...Zack had her and we are so excited Drew gets her.

  

Last year of three elementary kids.

Zion National Park

The last time we went to Zion, I was 8 months pregnant with Drew, it was hot...we had a stroller and toddlers that didn't hike well.  We've been waiting for the boys to get older to go again but just haven't had the time so we were excited to stop here.   

We got a fairly early start but that meant for long lines for the shuttle bus.  We rode the shuttle all the way back to the last stop and planned to work our way back.

The boys were so excited about all the squirrels they saw.  This one was begging for food.

 We did the riverwalk first.  It's a 2.5 mile but we didn't do the entire hike.  

Someone pointed this deer just above our heads along the trail.

We watched him eat for a while.

 We were hiking to Weeping Rock.  Even though it's only a 1/2 mile, it's steep, but worth it.

 You can see the boys enjoyed getting wet at Weeping Rock.

Last time, we didn't do the easy hike of Grotto trail so we did this time.  It was just a walking trail alongside the road to Zion Lodge..should've skipped it.  

Court of the Patriarchs 

 We had done 3 of the 6 easy trails and it was lunch time and already really hot so we decided to call it a day.  We had originally planned to go to Lake Powell but we knew it was going to be super hot at night and we didn't like being hot at night in the RV so we just decided to head home through Jacob's Lake.  

We saw turkeys inside Zion but were unable to get pictures.  As we were driving through Jacob's Lake I kept spotting more turkeys.  Then we passed a large group of mom's and babies.  We had never seen baby turkey's before so we found a place to turn around and went back to get pictures.  

There were so many that I couldn't even count how many there were.

We ended up home a day early than we had planned but it gave us time to clean the trailer and get started on weeds before school starts in a week.

Grand Teton's

So we literally stayed right outside of Yellowstone because we didn't want to drive through the Teton's during the dark.

An early view of where we were headed.

 We saw some more deer between the two parks.  

 We stopped to take a picture and a family offered to take ours.

 They were gorgeous!  There was still a little fog going on when we were first entering the park.  

 Our tanks were full and we needed to dump so we stopped and on our way out from dumping we saw a red fox in the road.

 The Snake River in front of the Grand Teton's.

 Next time, we want to do a rafting trip.

We stopped to have a lunch and there was a rock that people used to practice rock climbing so of course the older two had to check that out.  So we weren't paying attention and I guess there is a big loop you can drive and we ended up on the outer loop somehow.  We had wanted to go ride the gondola like Vickey had mentioned so we skipped going on the other road so we could do that.  The mountains were gorgeous, I don't know if it's because we ended up on the outer loop or what but we were done looking at the mountains.  

 As we stopped for directions (the road we were planning to take said no RV's allowed) I spotted our first antlered moose!  ;)  It even had droppings as part of the statue.  

 We got to Teton Village and much to our surprise they had a HUGE discount for a family of six to ride the 3 lifts.  First we rode the Air Tram which took us up the highest.  It was fast and fully enclosed.

 We chose the wrong side because on the way up they saw a moose bedded down and we never spotted any animals on our side.  

I tried doing a panoramic and I never do pictures on my phone so I messed mine up.  Luckily Preston took some.  

  

After being up here I understand why it's called Jackson Hole, Wyoming...it's completely surrounded by mountains and man was it a gorgeous view!

The second lift we rode was a gondola where our group of 8 all fit in one.

 I spotted this deer at the bottom right coming out of the bushes...we saw it again on the way back down too.  

Love that hot hubby of mine!  

 There was a five star restaurant at the top of this lift that opened later that evening and during the rest of the day it sold snacks.  They had couches and Preston and the boys turned a couch around so we could get a group shot with Jackson Hole behind us.

We stopped for a snack after that lift and the boys took advantage of the hammocks and the corn hole game that was out.

The last was the chair lift.  They had a biking trail that people were riding down from this lift.  It was crazy how many people were riding and how fast they went.  It was fun to watch them as we went up and down.  There was nothing at the top of this lift...it was mostly for the bikers to ride down.

The stream running down the hill

The colorful wildflowers were so pretty.  

After the lifts, we headed into Jackson and ate out for the first meal of the trip.  We passed this antler arch and I thought it was so pretty.

They had one on all four corners of a downtown block but I liked the Rustic Inn's arch better so that's where we decided we'd take pictures.

 Before heading to dinner, we went to the Jackson Visitor Center because Gary & Vickey said it was really neat and we'd enjoy it.  It also sat right at the edge of the National Elk Refuge and we'd hope we'd see some large herds of elk.  We asked while we were there where would be a good spot to see the huge herds of elk and if they had moose.  She circled some spots on a map for us.  We went to dinner and then headed out to look.  

 We didn't get very far down the road and we saw two people with a large camera set up on a tripod so we slowed down and the lady turned towards us and put her hands up to her head showing moose antlers!  It was the last thing on my checklist to see an antlered moose.  

 We were so excited...there were three moose and one of them was a bull.  

 We were on a high river bank and were able to stand there and watch them for a good 20 minutes probably as the sun went down.  

The boys with moose in the middle of them.  

With it being dusk, my camera wouldn't focus on all of us.  :(

 The lights on the arch we liked were on so we stopped and got our pictures.

We camped at forest service site again right near the Snake River.

 Preston got up and set up his hammock the next morning while we waited for everyone to shower and clean up breakfast.

 Ty was the only other one that joined him in the hammock.

 I was freezing so I sat near them in the sun to warm up.

We traveled the rest of the day all the way down through Utah.