Fun Day with Cousins

A Fun Day with the Grandparents

Grandma and Papa Cottrell were here to spend the week with Shawn and Stephanie and to go to Chloe's Recital, but we got to sneak in some time with them as well!

We all went to the Denver Zoo to enjoy the animals.






 Romping and playing in our backyard and taking advantage of the heat and hose!

S'mores for an afternoon snack!

Great Sand Dunes National Park

Heading out for a fun filled camping trip with Jennifer's family.  We camped near the Great Sand Dunes National Park.  The perfect way to spend Memorial Day Weekend.

The Great Sand Dunes National Park

We entered the park from one of the back Jeep trails to add a little adventure to our trip and to try out our Jeep on some real rocks!!  We led the way followed by Jennifer (Kevin's sister) and family in their Suburban.  What would have taken about 20 minutes in the RZR took us about 90 minutes in our vehicles.  The trail was pretty sweet though.  Really rocky in places and then pure deep sand in others, and then about 18 water crossings!

Driving on sand sure felt strange as it pulled our vehicle in all sorts of directions.  And yes, we actually got the Jeep stuck!  After playing in the sand and water, we started on the shorter section to get to the Visitor's Center.  There is a deep section that we had watched vehicle after vehicle attempt it, get stuck and have to air down their tires before trying again.  Well, Kevin just had to try it himself without airing down.  We switched to sand/mud mode and hit the gas.  Uh, oops.  We got to the deep part and were just spinning our tires!  We worked our way backwards by spinning the tires and twisting the steering wheel and tried again.  Same result.  Finally, we had to admit that we needed to air down!
We told Jen and Ryan what needed to happen and I could just see Ryan itching to try it himself without airing down too!  Oh these men and trying to prove something!
Aired down, we made it through without a problem at all!!!  Nice that the national park has air available to fill back up! (except the wind was strong enough that we probably cold have just opened the valves and the wind would have done it for us!!!)

The water crossings sure were entertaining.  A few were DEEP!!!  We really got to use our hydraulic lift and raise ourselves up by five more inches to avoid drowning the engine!  Below is a picture of Jen & Ryan plowing through.  They pretty much buried their whole bumper, license plate etc!!

 We made it to the Dunes!!!  WOW!  Amazing sight to see the massive rolling sands steeply plummeting into the river below.  There are times of the year when it is windier that other times, but the rangers say that it is usually between 10-15 mph.  Well, we arrived on the windiest day!  You could barely stand up, let alone catch your breath if you were facing just right.

The river at the base of the dunes was spread out about 60 feet wide and never more than 5 or so inches in places.  The water would come down stream like normal and then the wind would rush it back upstream only to allow it to come down again.

Off came the shoes and we all plunged into the river to the dunes.  The wind was so strong that none of the shoes would stay down.  Burying them in wet sand did the trick!!

Jadeyn loved it!!! Buckets, water, sand, sunshine, cousins! He was in heaven!!  They climbed the dunes, slid down, made sand castles and did everything that makes little boys happy.

Three of the cousins all perfectly be-speckled in we sand!

After the trail, it was pretty sickening to look at our Jeep.  There was a lot of branches that reached out to grab us.  Thankfully, all these "scratches" were just where the branches touched us and then the dust collected!

Here are all the boys!!!!!

Ethan, Jadeyn, Kaiden, Tyler, Karsten, Kaleb

Here is our evidence of the winds!  There were High Wind Warnings posted all over the Visitors Center (as if we needed to read about it in order to notice!!).  Today's max speed was 48, but that was at the Visitor's Center, not out on the exposed dunes where we were.

The boys got filled out their reports and lined up to receive their Junior Ranger Badges.  This was Jadeyn's first one and he was so adorable being all serious as he listened closely to everything the Ranger told him.

Hanging out in the hammock.  I wish I had gotten a good picture of all six boys in the hammock this year, but this one is sweet!

The trip didn't end there. Unfortunately, two days after we got home we discovered a juicey tick dining on our little boy's neck, right above the hairline.  Poor kid!!!  We told him that we had to take it off and he started crying saying, "Its just a mole, why do you have to take my mole off!?"  We realized that since he couldn't see it, it felt just like a mole to him.  So we told him it was like a big sliver and we had to get it out or it would hurt worse.  We laid him face down on a blanket and he actually held still the whole time!  We were shocked.
We found out that the appropriate way to remove a tick is to take tweezers, put firm pressure on its body for two whole minutes before beginning to pull gently.  The goal is to get everything out, including the "cement" that the tick injects in to keep himself in place.  Sure enough, when the tick was finally free, he had a tuft of white stuff firmly in his mouth!  Wild.

Jadeyn did great, just has a little scab and no sign of anything else from the tick!  What a trooper.

Rally on the Rocks - Moab, UT 2012

Rally on the Rocks MOAB 2012
Four sweet trail rides, beautiful scenery, red Moab dirt, bloomin' cactus's, meeting lots of nice people and even a visit to a National Park to top it all off.  We had quite the vacation and the best way to spend our birthdays!!!!

We arrived late Tuesday night to the OK RV park to set up camp.  Pretty humorous, there are well over 50 RV sites, and well, 4 tent sites!!!  We were on a little island of grass at the end of a row of the huge toy haulers!!  Great campground though: showers and even a little black camp cat!!  About a one minute ride away, was the Arena where all the events were staged, vendors showed off the wares, the banquet was held and the UTVs lined up for the daily ride.




Most of the rides were were honored with a police escort through the streets of Moab  It was quite the site to see scores of UTVs all lined up parading through town!  There were only a few trails that we had to trailer to.

Kane Creek Trail
The perfect trail to begin our journey!  It had some rocky challenging areas, but beautiful scenery and the best part were the frequent water crossings.  After the first few crossings of the creek, we quickly decided that we were already dirty enough so we might as well get filthy!!! Splash!  We soaked ourselves and the RZR and then just let the dust coat us into a lovely tan of Moab red!!

There weren't a lot of kids at the event, but Jadeyn latched on to Kyle, a boy from Arizona.  Or, I should say, the boy latched on to us!

They played in the sand, and had great conversations!!

We only had one RZR 800 get stuck!  He was going over a soft incline and just spun himself a nice hole trying to get out!  A little tug of war action later and he was back in business!

I just got a new camera for my birthday, so I was a little shy on the picture taking for this first trail being paranoid about the dust.  The scenery was beautiful, slightly overcast, and the cactus were in bloom!


Fins 'n' Things
Early Thursday morning we headed out to the notorious Fins 'n' Things trail known for  slick rock and sandy hill climbs!  I didn't think anything could beat hiking the fins for the 360 degree overlook of slick rock, but riding the trial that high up was spectacular.

Slick rock inclines steeper and higher than you could imagine were pretty intimidating at first.  But once the RZRs tires touched the vertical rock, they gripped on perfectly and up we climbed!!  The same for the descents.  Hanging on the edge of the rock, clinging there waiting for the level ground to come was a little nerve racking, but we didn't have any trouble at all.  We were quite impressed.

 

Our guide was fantastic.  He lead us with confidence and before we knew it, we had completed every single one of the optional obstacles.  There were bypasses around most of them, but we didn't take them!

Riding along the fins!

We couldn't take too many pictures of the soft sand whoop-de-woos because as soon as we hit them, everyone hit the gas and FLEW through them at pretty intimidating speeds! (intimidating for me, that is!)

 360 degree view of slickrock as far as the eye can see!!

Jadeyn was so excited to find the giant rock dinosaur that we had read about.  We searched and searched and finally found it!  It was a huge brontosaurus.  See it just to the right of Kevin's head?











Arches National Park!

We had a few hours Thursday night and figured, hey! lets throw in a National Park just for fun!!  We headed to Arches for a nice leisurely hike to the fins, and then a fun Jeep trail, yes, in our Jeep!

 
 We came across a nice sized gopher snake (I think) along the trail and it was fun to follow his snake path in the sand.

  Jadeyn was determined in this next picture that he had found a place where a rattle snake had been sleeping and the circle in the sand was where the sand had buried him!

Dinosaur Footprints!!!! On a Jeep trail in Arches, we came across a section of slick rock that had real dinosaur footprints scattered over it!  They were from some kind of Therapod and were spaced apart about as far as we could jump!  It was pretty sweet to actually see them not in a museum and to be able to touch them!

7 Mile and 3D Trails
This obstacle was pretty sweet looking.  Its called The Crack and as you crawl over it, it twists your vehicle in all sorts of directions making for some pretty cool photo opportunities.  Pretty funny though, we all thought it was harder than it looked because our guide got himself stuck in his RZR 800!  Kevin made it look like a piece of cake in our RZR 4!

There were several places on this trail that felt quite 'tippy' but wouldn't be too difficult if it weren't for the slick rock plummeting pretty much straight down beside us!!

Rusher Tunnel is a favorite spot on 7 Mile.  There long tunnel where two massive rocks have fallen against each other creating a prefect triangle to walk through.  It is so long that as you start in the tunnel, you cannot see the light at the end of it and are walking blindly in the dark trying not to knock your noggin'!

Nice family picture on the ledge!!

Check out the dust!!!  RZR after RZR on the open trail really kicked up the dust.  I made us some dust buffs and we sure used them on several sections of trail!

Hell's Revenge

The final trail of our adventure!!  More slick rock and steep slopes, but by this time Kevin was pretty much an expert!  The views were incredible, the rock formations sweet and we had a blast!

Some nice steep slickrock!

Up at the top viewpoint all the vehicles perched on the rock over looking the mighty river below for lunch!

This is one of the "Hot Tubs" on Hell's Revenge.  Its a pretty tricky obstacle, but much to the RZRs dismay, we weren't allowed to attempt it while we were part of the Rally.  Bummer.  Here is a RZR 2 trying it out and needing a rope to give it just enough grip to keep from flipping as it came out.

The final obstacle on Hell's Revenge is called Tip Over Challenge and WOW was it a cool lookin' one.  The vehicles would go up in three wheels, teeter for a minute, raise up on two before settling back down!

Yeah, Jadeyn thinks he is pretty cool stuff getting to ride around in a RZR all day through such beautiful country!!  Nice feet!!