Thursday, September 4, 2008

The adventures continue!

On with my summer! The weekend after I got back from California, we had a HONK! cast party at Jeremy Madsen's house in beautiful Springdale, Utah. This reunion party has been a tradition for at least three years running now. I'm a big fan of tradition, and this one is no different. Jeremy's parents are so kind to let us come and invade their home with noise and disorder - but we always have a great time!

Their home is beautiful and I love spending time in their gorgeous yard. Plus, living amid the cliffs of Zion National Park, you get some pretty fantastic scenery - especially at dusk and dawn. So anyway, I'm obviously a big fan of this trip. Every year we do some hiking as well. The past two years we went up Angel's Landing - an amazing hike that everyone should do. It will definitely help to conquer (or intensify) any fear of heights a person may have. But this year we wanted to do something different. I'd never done the Narrows before, so the suggestion was made and decided upon. Here we are in the above photo starting out on the trail. We all brought our water-shoes and were ready to go. It was a great hike and we had a ball! My roommate Amber met us as we were turning back and we took a few roommate pics. It was a gorgeous day and so fun to 'swim' in the river - or fall in, depending on your point of view!

Here's most of our little group. After the hike we'd planned on tubing the river, but the weather turned against us. Oh well. While in Springdale, we also enjoyed a rousing game of wiffleball! Though I'm not terribly adept at most sports, wiffleball is, happily, one in which I excel. Well, maybe I wouldn't go that far...at least I don't completely embarrass myself like usual. One of the things I love most about this popular game is that it doesn't hurt when the ball hits your head, which is where I invariably get hit most often and in just about every sport I try. It all started in 4th grade during volleyball, and it's gone downhill ever since then. But I somehow managed to evade the ball with my noggin in our little Springdale championship and our team managed a victory. Tensions were high for a little while - mostly on the part of Jeremy's adorable mother (who was on the other team) - but we prevailed in the end. Go Team Voldemort!

It was a great trip with good friends. I'm glad we have this little tradition! Here are some more pics from the hike. There's no doubt about it - Zion's is really beautiful!!



We were going for 'Little Mermaid' here...see it?


Yay roomies! We're so adorable!


Cute kids on the shuttle - after the hike.