Equal time for the boy who loves water

I was a little worried about how our trip to Utah’s national parks would be for Mik—at 13, he’s not a fan of “scenery” for its own sake, particularly if a hike is required to get to the scenery.

But, you know, I think he actually enjoyed himself! The landscape is so radically different in the Utah desert from what you see in Montana that it looked alien at times. And we stuck to short and/or impressive hikes (and tried to avoid the extreme heat in the middle of the day). For example, this view required a bit longer walk—and the braving of a thunderstorm on the way out, which was not a thrill for him—but c’mon:

The icing on the cake was the last day and our hike of The Narrows in Zion National Park. It’s through a deep, narrow (spectacular) canyon cut by a small river, and the canyon is SO narrow that probably about half the time you’re hiking in the river itself. I don’t have any pictures of this one, because I was not about to sacrifice my phone or camera to the river—which was a good call, actually, because before it was all over I fell in twice and got wet up to my shoulders.

We hiked about five miles total, but it took half the day because of the difficulty of wading. But wow. We all LOVED it. Unanimously our favorite hike ever, and I think Mik had more fun than anyone. You should have seen him prance up the river…come up laughing when he got dunked…POINT OUT the views to us. Someday (someday soon before I get old) I would really like to hike the full canyon, which is 16 miles top to bottom—maybe with an inner tube so I could just coast over the parts that gave me the most trouble.

Anyway, here’s Mik on our trip, with all the evidence you need that fun was had: