Fourth and last day in Zions

Sunday evening our friends, Heidi and Eric Miller met up with us. Heidi is from Southern Utah and even though they are in Arizona selling this summer they drove the 7 hours to hang out and to go hiking on Monday.

Which leads us to our next adventure... Our Monday Hike- the Subway!
First let me put out a disclaimer that Hannah did not join us for this hike. She was left in the safe hands of a friend in Laverkin (spelling?).

So EARLY Monday morning our friends started out on the Subway going from the top to bottom. This includes jumping off mountains to who knows where (well, actually they repelled), sliding down big rocks (Eric!) and did I mention hanging onto a rope with out a harness? It actually sounds like a lot of fun but with my fears of heights we decided that going from the bottom-up would be the best bet for me. So Chris and I decided we would start a few hours after them and then meet them in the middle and hike back. Simple right?
Well I don't know if you can tell by the pictures, but Chris and I didn't just skip along our trail. In fact the term hiking from bottom-up is kind of misleading. We started lower then the Millers and Smiths but we still had to hike down (straight down)The picture of me is at the top of the hike, unaware of what was ahead (see, I'm still smiling). The second picture is the river below us, we were about half way through the steep climb down to it. And the picture to the bottom of it shows the moutain we just hiked down. It was so beautiful though! At the bottom of the steep part is the river that you hike by, sometimes crossing through it. The closer we got to the Subway the more we had to hike in the river and climb over boulders. At about 2 and half hours into it we hadn't met up with our friends yet so we decided to head back to our car, worried that we had missed them. We hadn't, in fact they still had a little more to go and after eight hours of straight hiking they made it out! We have quite the amazing friends, they all had a lot of fun and made it all 9 miles! I think Chris really wanted to do the parts they hiked but he was a trooper for going with me. I have to admit, I kind of wanted to hike with them too, but my height phobia probably would have gotten the best of me!

After the hike we said our goodbyes to Eric and Heidi and loaded back into the car for our drive back home. And at around midnight we pulled into our place. It was nice to be home and shower! But it was sad to leave such a wondrous place. It's just great to get away from the busy life and take a break in one of God's most beautiful places.