Crazy Conger Crew: Day4: We are officially insane! (Peekaboo and Spooky)

*warning* this is long and picture heavy, but I promise that its worth reading

Today we were doing more slot canyons. My family did this same hike when they were here 5 years ago (BTW I missed that trip because I had strep throat) and assured everyone that this was an easy hike that even the littlest kids could do. Ya, apparently they are dillusional! The day couldn't have started out worse. Apparently there is a really cool hike that meets up with this one, but is even harder than the Egypt 3, so only the 5 strongest people went on that one. Leaving the rest of us with all the kids. We went to go load in the cars and realized that since the trailhead was down 26 miles of really bad dirt road and my sister didn't want to ruin her brand new minivan we had 17 people and 2 cars- my mom's highlander and my grandpa's truck. So we did what any normal family would do. We put the carseats in the 2 cars first, then filled the gaps with bodies and piled everyone else in the back of the truck. The truck stopped at the gas station to get ice, but apparently the highlander didn't know we were stopping and continued on. About 5 miles down the dirt road we got a flat tire. So, we got to stand out in the 100* heat in the middle of desert with 3 babies while they changed it.

Soon we were back on the road, and about another 15 miles
down the road we came upon the Highlander pulled to the side of the road. They told us that about 2 miles down the dirt road their gas light had come on. No one in that car had their wallets on them, and they didn't know were we were, so they just kept going. That means that they had to make it approximately 50 miles on a dirt road in the heat with the gas light on! Good luck to them!

So we continued on, and started the hike. It was miserably hot, and we knew that since we had so few adults and so many babies we were going to be tight on how much water we could carry. We started out anyway. The first part of the hike was extreamly steep. After about 20 minutes of 2 of the babies screaming non-stop those 2 and their mothers turned around. They decided that they would take both the cars and put gas in the highlander, and come back to get us. Sounded like a good idea at the time. So, we hiked down to the canyon and it was not what we had expected. It was hard! The first ridge was super high and we had 2 babies in packs and a newborn in my sister's arms. We decided that there was no way we could get the babies up there, so my dad and I were going to turn back. But then we realized that we would be sitting in the parking lot for possibly hours with 3 babies and no water or shade. That didn't sound like a very good idea, so on we went.

After scaling the first ridge we changed our minds. There was no way we were going to make it through the whole canyon like this, we were turning around. We sent my dad down first and decided that we would hand the kids and babies down to him. Only problem... my dad coudn't get down. It was too steep, and too dangerous to jump. We were stuck. If he couldn't make it there was no way the rest of us would. The only way to go was up, so up we went. We took the 2 older babies out of the packs to lift them through, and Linocln actually loved it! about half way through it started to sprinkle, and then we got really nervous, but luckily it only lasted a minute.

At the end of the first canyon we met up with the group that went on the hard hike. I can't even explain what a relief it was to find them! We had more help now! We had a short hike the the second canyon, then all we had to do was get through that and do the steep hike back to the car. Easy enough, right. Ya right, maybe in a perfect world. We got the the second canyon, and it was much different that the first. It was narrow. So narrow that the adults had a hard time fitting through even without any packs on. PLus there were a few really steep drops. But the worst part was that about 5 feet into the canyon it started pouring rain. I'm sure you've all heard how dangerous it is to be in slot canyons in the rain? Well, we were in a slot canyon in the pouring rain with a bunch of babies! We started freaking out! The strongest adults and teenagers took all the babies and kids and decided that they were just going to get through it as fast as they could. The rest of us adults were in the back with the packs. Let me tell you, this thing was so narrow that the packs barely fit through half the time. My brother's was ruined trying to shove it through.

Finally we made it through! We were all fine, and no one even got lost! Of course its easy to not get lost when there is only one way in and one way out. We sat on the rocks in the pouring rain and gathered our composure. Most of the kids were crying at this point.

A few minutes after we got out the rain stopped and we continued. The hike back up to the cars was steep and long, but we made it and our cars were even there waiting for us! Then we realized another problem. We now had the people from the adult hike with us, making 24 people and 2 cars! We managed to cram everyone it, doing some fancy work, like 3 people in the front seat of the highlander, 4 people in the tiny 3rd row, 7 people in the back of the truck, etc. We were stopping at Devil's Garden to play while 2 people went back to get the adult hike people's car, so we only had to make it 16 miles. Those 16 miles were torture! But we made it in just over an hour and this was what we saw there.