The Narrows

Day 4...The Narrows.
When John told me he wanted to do the Narrows I looked it up online and had a fit.  There were permits, there were 16 miles, there was a river!  Are you crazy?!  "Trust me," he said. 
Apparently, you don't have to do the Narrows with permits and you don't have to do 16 miles and you don't get to go if it's flood season.  You can just walk up the river a little ways and if I didn't like it we could go. 

We ran for the tram...

We saw the Three Patriarchs out the window, and other impressive sights out of the sunroof.

We had a big snack before heading up the trail that would lead us to the Narrows.  Just a side note here...both girls look so cute in their sun glasses, but for some reason everyone stopped to comment on Katie Anne's.  She replied to everyone who said something to her, "Thank you.  They're just for fun."  It seemed Oriental people had the most delight in seeing her in these little glasses.  Jane got more comments about her Hello Kitty shirt :).

Heading in and being amazed.  Again.

We stopped for another big snack.  Peanuts, granola bars, fruit chews, chips, water.

John found a wild turkey on a little alone time excursion.

Jeffrey always seeks out a place of solitude which is usually a good thing.  He needs a little down time once in a while.  He ate his snack then took a little rest.

I probably shouldn't tell about this but...
Katie Anne had to go number 1.  We tried a few different times in a few different places but it just wasn't working out. We found ourselves kind of secluded at this spot so we set her on this rock and told her to pretend it was a potty.
Didn't work.

Water and a few big rocks always make for a good time.

The boys jumped off of some of the rocks.  See Jack just entering the water there? 
We had a lot of onlookers as they did this.

I didn't get any pictures on the way out.  We went about a mile in which seemed to take a long time, but as usual just made our way out rather speedy like.  Jack enjoyed being in the river the whole way out, riding some of the rapids as he went.

Here we are at the entrance, or exit I guess. 

We did it!
 Katie Anne was the youngest person we saw the whole way in, but on the way out there were lots of kids a lot younger, some in backpacks even.

That night we were dead tired.  We had dinner...shredded beef burritoes.  We assumed we'd crash right after but without any breeze and no hook ups to use the air conditioner we did the only thing we could...head down to the river. 
It's a hard thing to convey, but we felt so peaceful right here. 
The kids were all being so nice to each other  and we had enjoyed another beautiful day.