Labor Day Weekend at Zion National Park - Part 1 (Zion Canyon and Kolob Terrace)

Back in early July I threw my name in the lottery for a top-down Virgin River narrows dayhike permit. Our names were picked for Monday of Labor Day weekend, so that made deciding what to do over the long weekend a no-brainer (assuming we found somewhere to stay, which didn't happen until a week before the trip).

We LOVE Zion National Park. I don't want to play favorites, but it might be our favorite. I think we've made 5 trips there since we have lived in Utah.

We drove down on Friday afternoon and went for a nice run out to the Grafton ghost town. Our Saturday we did some hiking in the main section of the park (Observation Point). With crowds building due to the holiday weekend, we headed up to the Kolob Terrace after a longer run on Sunday and had the place pretty much to ourselves. Then on Monday we took a shuttle up to Chamberlain's Ranch and hiked along/in the Virgin River back to Zion. 

I'll save the Monday photos for another post - here's some from the first couple days of the weekend...

Europe 2016 - Big Photo Gallery

We are really dragging our heels with the Euro-blogs, but we did finally merge the photos from multiple phones and real cameras into one big Google Photos album:

Europe 2016 Photos

This is probably our best photo album ever. We're trying to figure out how we are going to top this one in 2017.

You might need to sign in with your Google account to see the album. I'm still getting the hang of the new Google Photos. But I'm fairly certain everyone has a Google account, right?

What could go Krong in Europe?

I'm really bad at blogging in two scenarios:

1. Summer

2. Big events / trips

Its easy to sit down and knock out a post after skiing every weekend during the winter and spring. But during the summer the thought of spending 15 minutes on the computer during the evening just never seems reasonable. Outside > Inside. And when I'm inside, I typically just want to go to bed!

And the big events with lots of photos are simply hard to get started on. Luckily we haven't seen any of our wedding photos yet, so technically I'm not behind on posting those. We did, however, get back last week from a sensational 17 day Alps/Dolomites vacation... and we have hundreds of great photos to share and stories to tell. 

I think that within a week or so we'll start posting our honeymoon recaps. We are almost done sorting through our photos.

In the meantime, here's the pictures we were posting on Instagram during the trip...

#WhatCouldGoKrongInEurope

You can view this gallery on a computer even if you aren't an Instagram user.

Wasatch Wildflowers at Alta

The wildflowers are out in full force at Alta right now. We are headed to Europe soon, so this was essentially our last chance to enjoy them... with how hot its been, everything will be burned out by the time we get home.

Easy walks yield fantastic displays of flowers - all of these shots were taken on the Albion Basin trail and lower half of the Cardiff Pass trail. We took lots of photos while strolling around this afternoon...

Still happily married after a full week

We got married!!!

By the power vested in our good friend Rob Murphy, Andrea and I were finally married on Saturday, July 9th at the Alta Peruvian Lodge. It was probably the best multi-day stretch of my entire life. All along, we had a vision of an action-packed weekend in the mountains that would leave everyone exhausted (and exhilarated) from dancing, laughing, and running/hiking at high altitude. It all played out in a way, and with an energy, that I can't even begin to describe - a perfect celebration not just of Andrea and I, but of the family and friends we love so much. I think the festivities reflected exactly who we are, and why we are together in the first place.

I'll have more photos and videos to post as they start to roll in (and after I get some sleep - I've been operating on pure adrenaline for the past two weeks!)... our awesome photographer (Logan Walker) took roughly 5000 shots. For now, here's a few from our phones and some I stole from my friends via Facebook.

You can find some of these and others on Instagram: #AndreaJakeWedding and #WhatCouldGoKrong