One of the awesome benefits for working at Adobe is that employees are given a one month sabbatical after 5 years of service. This is of course in addition to the normal holidays off, sick time, and 2-3 weeks of vacation time. It really is a pretty sweet deal, and for people that love to travel like us, it pretty much is the coolest benefit ever! And lets not forget the 2 weeks of paternity Adam was also able to take after Jamis was born. We really feel so blessed to work for such a great company! Adobe Rocks!
As Adam and I thought of how to use his sabbatical – one thing was for certain – there would be a trip to Alaska fishing with his brothers on the itinerary! Especially considering it was Adam’s turn for a week long boys get-away. So plans were made and flights booked.
Adam ended up planning his Alaska trip for the week of July 17-24 and while he was gone the kids and I kept busy by exploring some new areas. My friend Shauntai told me about a cool place up Diamond Fork Canyon called Red Ledges, and so one evening the kids and I filled up a picnic basket with fruit and chips, grabbed a bucket of chicken from KFC and headed up the canyon.
We unfortunately weren’t sure exactly WHERE Red Ledges was (only that it was up Diamond Fork canyon on the left) and so we drove down a few roads trying to find it. One such road led us to a bunch of camping areas (which we are excited to try out sometime in the future) and we decided since it was getting late that we would just pull over and eat at the next open camp spot. It was right next to a dried up creek bed and had lots of grass to spread a blanket out on.
Here I am showing off my beloved KFC chicken. I actually absolutely LOVE this stuff because it is associated with some of my favorite memories growing up, but Adam isn’t crazy about fried chicken so we almost never get it. I loved being able to re-enact one of my childhood memories with my kids by getting a bucket and heading for the canyon! It was so nostalgic!
After we were done picnicking the kids went exploring and interestingly enough found just a bunch of random flowers sitting in the creek bed. I couldn’t tell whether this was a memorial of sorts because someone had died there or if someone was possibly proposing and had set up all the flowers and stuffed animals to surprise their sweetheart with. In any case, we just left it all as is, but it was fun for the kids to find. Brans took pictures for me since I had stayed back near the car to watch Jamis and clean up.
After dinner we headed back to the main road and almost headed home, but I decided to give myself 15 more minutes to find Red Ledges before giving up. So we continued heading North up Diamond Fork and wouldn’t you know it within 5 minutes we drove right to it. It was literally just right there off the main road! Sa-weet! We loved hiking around and exploring.
Hard to see but there is a really big arch in this picture behind the boys.
See the arch better now?
There was a family rock climbing as we were exploring and I just happened to grab this picture of one of their girls repelling down after her climb! So fun! I so love repelling!
It started to get stormy just as we were heading out and then we drove home in a rainstorm. I loved coming out of the canyon and seeing the windmills against the bright sky in the distance. So pretty!
Then once we were home we were greated with this amazing sunset! And you can see the storm we just drove through to get home. Amazing!
Life sure is good! I love making precious memories with my kids!