Our camper

I thought I would show you a little glimpse of how the eight of us survive in our camper! We have a Keystone Outback that sleeps nine..supposedly. :) We are a little messy but how can 8 people in a small space not be? Except for that tiny house show and that is just not us :) Emma, Scarlett, and Alaynea share the back "room", Corey and I have the "master", the boys and faith share the middle area. We have a dining table that changes to a bed. That is where Logan sleeps. We have a pull out queen bed but Joel likes the air mattress on the floor and faith takes the couch. Makes morning clean up a little faster. Everyone has there own little cubbie for random stuff. I think my hardest thing to keep control of are the towels. It is hard to have a place to hang 8 towels everyday to dry and I certainly can not do laundry daily. :) Anyway, I cook as many of our meals in the camper as we can. Sometimes we cook inside and sometimes we cook outside. We do eat out some but we try to pack our lunches in the parks and while traveling.  When it rains we play a game or watch a movie. The bathroom is small but it works. No number 2's allowed in the camper :) Every RV park we have stayed at has had wonderful facilities so that is good. We have been noticing some folks camping inside the parks. Emma keeps asking us why we do not do that. There are no water, electricity, or sewage hookups in the parks. Keep watch though, we are going to attempt "primitive" camping at some point on this trip! We are on day 14 and have not had a campfire! This should not be! Here are a few pics of our home away from home. 

Zion

We decided to spend a couple of days at Zion NP.  Warning! There are a lot of photos! There are so many amazing hikes to do here. We began early to do the Angles Landing trail. It was a very difficult steep hike. There are 21 switch backs going straight up called the Walter's Wiggles. It was 2 +miles to the "chains" which we decided not to do with the kids. A bit too dangerous. Of course, when Joel got up there he just had to go to the top. He and Corey hiked to the top and had an amazing time. It is hard to describe but there is a chain connected to the mountain to hold onto and on the other side, well let's just say it was straight down about 1000 ft. The rest of us hiked back down to wait for them while playing in a cool refreshing clear stream. We did some other hikes the first day but nothing like Angel's Landing. Zion is an amazing, beautiful park with incredible mountain views, hanging gardens, and wildlife. I have been looking every day for a big horned sheep on a cliff. Well today I saw one in the middle of the road. That doesn't count :) I was hoping to see it on a cliff!
I actually took way more photos on the actual camera the first day and I forgot my cord to download them so I will have to wait to post the Angel's Landing and Walters Wiggles pics.

The second day we decided to do another very difficult hike. It was called the Narrows. It is completely in the water with mountain walls on each side. There is no way out except back the way you come from or 16 miles upstream. We only went a few miles upstream and then turned around. This one frightened me because we kept hearing the warnings of flash floods but when we arrived my nerves settled down. There were so many people in the beginning. Corey and I put this on our bucket list to come back and do without kids who want to turn around and go back! This was the most awesome trail! The crazy thing is, today the water was totally muddy. If we had done this yesterday, the water was crystal clear.
We did some other easy trails and ended the day turning in our Jr. Ranger books that Scarlett and Fatih do at every park. Those booklets aren't no joke! They have worked hard and now have quite a collection of Jr. Ranger badges from all these National Parks we are visiting. :)

leaving our mark at zion.