Surprise vacation.....

First of all, Joseph returned from his mission in Brazil on Wednesday! We all went to the Grand Junction airport to pick him up after his exhausting 16 hour flight, and after lots of excited hugs and a drive home, he crashed for the night. It was fun to listen to him speak with a Brazilian accent, and to see his souvenirs he brought home.

The next day, Dani and I joined the family again for a drive up north, where the younger three kids were told that we were taking a "really long trip." Early in the morning they were still guessing our destination as we headed to the SLC airport, and they still didn't know where we were going until they were on the plane to Hawaii!!! Anna joined us from Alaska, and we all rendezvoused at the rental home we were staying at near the North Shore of Oahu.

When Dani and I arrived at our basecamp we quickly changed and took the three younger kids (everyone else were so pooped from the flight that they were napping) with some boogie boards to the ocean, a short 5 minute walk. As it was their first time to a beach, it was fun to watch them play in the water and sand. The water was so warm! The last time Dani and I had been to a tropical beach like this was when we were both teenagers, so we enjoyed rediscovering the ocean too.

It was incredible to see how different the landscape was everywhere you looked; the sunny, white-sand shore all along the coast line and then towering green cliffs inland, where rainclouds constantly fed hundreds of waterfalls through the rainforest.

On Saturday we were up before the sun was for the famous snorkeling at Hanauma Bay state park. We were not disappointed! This was another first for all the kids, including Dani and I. It was amazing to swim in any direction and see a new fish or sea creature! In Alaska Dani and I would see sea anemones, crabs, seals, and an occasional whale, but this time we were IN their world, discovering their habitats. One of my favorites were the parrotfish, nibbling on chunks of coral. Did you know that a single parrotfish can poop out one TON of sand per year, just from their diet of dead coral? Blew my mind.

After leaving Hanauma Bay we went to Waimanalo Bay for the body boarding. Dad, a So-Cal born-and-raised beach bum, went out with the younger kids to show them how to catch a wave and ride it back in. Olivia surprised us with her seemingly natural ability to catch the wave and ride it in, until she ate it hard and came back in tears. I was up next, as this was one of the things I was looking forward to the most. Dani and I were paddling out, ducking under the waves as they crashed down, but had a really hard time getting out far enough before the next wave pushed us back toward the beach. I finally started swallowing seawater as the waves seemed to get closer and closer, and I was getting pummeled. Despite dad's hollering to come out farther, I was exhausted and paddled back to the beach before I could get slammed down again. Let's just say that you won't be seeing Dani or I on the surfing channel of Extreme TV.

                                 

On Sunday we enjoyed touring Pearl Harbor and the USS Missouri memorial there. Mom Brading sent us pictures of when she reenlisted into the Navy at the memorial! After catching church on our way home, we took it easy the rest of the evening, just enjoying family time.

The ancient banyan trees in the rainforest are GIGANTIC.

The next day the rest of the family went to the Polynesian Cultural Center, and Dani and I took off to explore some waterfalls of Oahu - Manoa, Lulumahu, and Maunawili falls. Manoa Falls was incredibly tall but incredibly crowded, as it is the most popular waterfall hike in the area. Lulumahu was exciting to get to because the unmarked trail crossed private property and was a little difficult to find. Our favorite though was Maunawili. It was definitely the nastiest 2 mile slog through the mud to get there, but the destination was so worth it. The mountain stream crashed into two consecutive pools that were enclosed by tall rock faces covered in ferns. The refreshing water was deep enough to dive in, and we had the place all to ourselves. It was amazing.

                       

Tuesday the family headed to more snorkeling, this time at Shark's Cove, where we saw a green sea turtle! Swimming with it was the coolest experience - they move so leisurely and don't seem to have a care in the world. The massive underwater boulders were teeming with other sea creatures, and this snorkel spot was the family's unanimous favorite on Oahu. Later that day we drove to the Dole Plantation where we toured the pineapple farm and sampled the Dole Whip, a delicious sorbet-like pineapple dessert.

Discovering tide-pool creatures

The rainbow eucalyptus and its vivid colored bark.

On Wednesday the family called for more snorkeling, and one last trip to Shark's Cove. As it was our last day on Oahu, we had to run to Honolulu return the snorkeling gear in the afternoon. While we were on that side of the island Mom took the younger kids to the aquarium while Dad took the rest of us to hike the volcano at Diamond Head. From the top the view was amazing - you could see downtown Honolulu, the beach, and the reefs off the coast.

From the top of Diamond Head state monument looking toward the crater and downtown Honolulu.

Early the next morning we headed to the airport to say goodbye to our perfect family vacation. It was one of the most memorable experiences we've had, and it was the best way to welcome Joseph back from his mission.

The brother's backpacking trip

This week Dani was scheduled on a 4 day Desolation Canyon river trip, but the morning she was supposed to leave she got pretty sick and didn't want to risk being 100 miles away from civilization still feeling crappy, so she stayed home. Unfortunately, I had already made plans to keep me busy while she was away with double EMS shifts, a long day at work on Friday, and a campout with my brothers. The time Dani had off was good for her to rest and recuperate.

Because I was going up to Springville to work for my dad this week (a 20 hour day), I took Wednesday off and left Tuesday evening to take my younger brothers on their first backpacking trip. We drove to the Gold Basin trailhead in the La Sal mountains, where we were bombarded with mosquitoes as soon as we stepped out of the truck. We're all Boy Scouts and none of us brought bug repellent. As we hiked the mile to our camp the buggers were relentless, and we finally donned our full rain gear just to keep them off of us. We enjoyed appetizers like cherries, carrots, and jerky while we waited for the cheese and broccoli soup to cook (Dani kindly packed all our food, thanks darlin'). When we settled down for the night in my two-person tent, I was surprised by how comfortably it fit the three of us.

A forested area that had been cleared by an avalanche last winter.

The peaceful tarn at the bottom of the basin.

In the morning we left our sleeping gear in the tent and took off through the woods in an attempt to summit Mt. Peale, the tallest peak in the La Sals. As we tromped through the underbrush we woke thousands of mosquitoes, and if we stood still for more than 10 seconds they would swarm our bodies. We kept thinking, "It will be better as soon as we're on the rocks above the treeline," but as we began our climb high above the forest the insects got worse! Finally we called it quits, we had had enough.

On our way back to our basecamp we stumbled across an old decayed cabin site, without any apparent roads or trails.

When we had packed up and come back home, we concluded that our trip was a success despite the annoying mosquitoes that plagued us constantly.

After work on Friday Dani came from Moab to pick me up on our way to Layton to check out an apartment for the fall. We stayed the night at Grandpa and Grandpa Hall's and enjoyed their company until we left in the morning to go look at a promising basement apartment. We arrived a bit early, so we drove around the neighborhood and noticed the nice balance of older classic homes and newer ones in the area. When we toured the apartment, we both were pleased with everything: a tiled bathroom, gas-burning fireplace, well-lit rooms, and lots of storage (heaven knows we have a lot of outdoor gear). The only downside to it is the small kitchen space, but for just the two of us it'll be just fine. We love that it includes all utilities (wifi too!) and is more than $200 cheaper than we budgeted for! We're pretty excited to move in, and everything is coming together for us this fall.

Matthew's Birthday and Ordination

This week was pretty laid-back with lots of work and some play. I had a backcountry call out to a mountain biker that fell and broke his arm near his wrist. He was fine otherwise, so we gave him pain meds, packaged him up, and drove him out on the SAR rhino to our ambulance. It was a pretty uneventful call, but I really enjoy using 4WD to get out to a patient and treating them in the wilderness. I'm so lucky to get these cool opportunities.

For Matthew's birthday, Dani gave him a trip down the river with a buddy, so we took some duckies after work and floated the rapids. Matthew and his friend Everett had a blast exploring side-streams and swimming and they had some great hits. At the take-out they had fun playing in the water while I hitch-hiked back to get our truck from the put-in.

Everett and Matthew after a successful run of Cloudburst.

While exploring they found some tiny reptiles!

It was his 12th birthday, so he was ordained a deacon today after church. Bishop Garrett remarked that he remembers when Matthew was born, and now he's the last of the Andrew boys to receive the priesthood!

Trout for Dinner

This week I had the chance to shadow the anesthesia department at the hospital. A brother in our ward, Laird Clark, is a nurse anesthetist and offered to show me what he does at work. I observed a couple hernia repairs, a tubal ligation, and laparoscopic cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal), but the gist of anesthesia was the same for all of them. As a nurse anesthetist, the patient's face is your workspace - you need to have control of their airway and breathing, and you monitor their vitals and responsiveness throughout the surgery. I left that day feeling very excited about potentially pursuing a career as a CRNA.

It was Olivia's birthday this week and for Dani's gift to her she took Olivia and a friend on a river trip! Olivia had a blast, and later I took her out for milkshakes at Milt's.

After a long week on the river, Dani was pretty burned-out and so we escaped to the LaSals for a cool weekend. I got a year-long fishing license (first time ever!) and we went to Medicine Lake Friday afternoon. We had the entire lake and campground to ourselves, and by the end of the day I had caught my limit. Dani enjoyed reading "Desert Solitaire" while I cast for hours.

Our favorite quote from the book so far: "A man on foot... will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles. Better to idle through one park in two weeks than try to race through a dozen in the same amount of time." -Edward Abbey

My salmon pictures from Alaska put these small rainbows to shame, but I was pretty happy to catch what I did!

Saturday morning after cleaning up camp we hiked around in the woods, grateful for the cooler mountain temperatures above the sweltering Moab valley.

Saturday evening I responded to my first "code" -- a patient with absent vital signs. We performed CPR for about 30 minutes, which ended unsuccessfully as we could not resuscitate our patient. As a new EMT I've looked forward to using the skills I've trained for in this type of situation, but also (for obvious reasons) I would never wish for a reason to use those skills, if that makes sense. The scene went smoother and calmer than I expected. I was surprised that the hardest part was after cleaning up, going home, and actually having time to think and analyze the event, prompting some hard-to-answer questions. The fact that it was a suicide made it even harder. I learned the less I know about the personal lives of patients the easier it is to handle. Luckily after a sober evening I was able to put it out of my mind and move on. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to work in the saving of lives.

MTB and Mt. Tuk

After work one hot evening, Dani and I rode one of the trails out by Klondike Bluffs. This blazing weather must have scared the tourists away, because we only saw one other couple out there. We had a nice ride on the Jurassic trail singletrack.

My sexy, hard-core, mountain biking woman

For dad's last weekend to train before his hike, we went to the mountains to hike Mt. Tukuhnikivatz (or Tuk for short, I sure can't pronounce the full name). The trail was only about 5 miles round trip, but we were at 10,000 ft elevation and we hiked to the summit at 12,482 ft. The last quarter mile to the peak was a lung-busting 45 degree angle climb, but at the top we were rewarded with views in every direction forever -- we could see the entire Moab valley, Arches and Canyonlands, the San Rafael Swell, the Henry Mountains, and even the peaks near Telluride, CO. We enjoyed lunch up there before the controlled burn on the other side of the range clouded the sky over with smoke.

Looking back on the approach to the ridge

The beginning of the ridge to the peak

Just snow and scree

Dad lung-bustin' up the 45° ascent in the snow with Mt. Peale in the background

At the summit! 12,482 ft, Moab valley behind us

I'm afraid that these "training hikes" have been more fun than they have been training. Dad will have to hike over twice as much as he's hiked in one day when he treks the Grand Canyon. It's hard to find somewhere with the long distance without getting bored of walking.

Murphy Trail

Our week was busy but uneventful; Dani is on the river almost every day during June, and when I'm not at the office I pick up as many EMT shifts as I can. Several times a week we are called on transfers. Moab Regional Hospital sends a lot of their patients to surrounding hospitals for different reasons. I say surrounding, but the other hospitals aren't very close - the nearest transfer is St. Mary's in Grand Junction at an hour and 45 minutes, and the farthest transfer we do is to SLC, 4 hours one way.

I don't hate transfers, it's just exasperating when I'm riding in the back of the ambulance with my stable (read: not exciting) patient towards one of these hospitals, and we hear on our radio the backcountry call that just went out to the back-up crew. I have to remind myself that quality patient care is most important, and try not to grumble about the fun the other EMTs are having.

With only two weeks left before Dad's rim-to-rim trek, we needed to put some miles in. A friend of ours suggested doing a trail in Island in the Sky (Canyonlands NP) that would give us a challenging distance and elevation. On Saturday morning we began the Murphy Trail, descending to the white rim. We followed the cliffside, exploring some of the neat rock formations. After we completed our loop, our total mileage was 12.4mi and 1,400 ft elevation gain/loss.

Jacob's Moab Birthday

Insert from Chris, just because he was so excited about his first backcountry call: "On Tuesday at 19:00 we were paged to a mountain biking accident on a remote trail north of Moab. The other EMT and I staged our ambulance near the trailhead with search and rescue and we headed out on their ATVs to the scene. It took almost two hours on the rugged trail to reach our patient, but fortunately it was only a fractured clavicle and not critical. We administered some pain meds, put his arm in a sling and took off on the bumpy ride back. By the time we returned to the station it was around 01:00 in the morning.

One of the SAR rhinos for backcountry patient transport.

On my previous shifts I haven't had very exciting pages - I've been a "call killer." So I was pretty stoked to get my first backcountry run! Due to the remote nature of Moab's surroundings, I'm looking forward to many more interesting calls like this."

Now back to Dani: The highlight of our week was definitely when my brother Jacob and three of his friends came down to visit! Jacob's birthday is June 7th, and he talked some friends into carpooling down to Moab the weekend before to celebrate it in Moab. Chris and I planned some fun adventures. They left Provo around 7pm Friday night, and when 11 o'clock rolled around we were anxiously waiting their arrival when I get a call from Jacob telling me that they were going to be a bit late... "Where are you guys?" we asked. "... about 14 miles outside of Saint George." "Uh......"

Yep... St. George is 5 hours away from Moab, on the opposite side of Utah! Apparently everyone in the car thought somebody else in the car knew the way, and nobody bothered to say anything. Luckily they drove safe and the crew finally arrived here around 4am.

Knowing how tired everyone was, we let them sleep in a little as Chris and I ran over to the warehouse to borrow some river gear. Once everybody was awake we ate a good breakfast and then headed down river road to ducky the daily (a ducky is a two person, sit-on-top, inflatable kayak). Since nobody else had river experience Chris and I kinda got into "guide mode" with a safety speech at the put-in and step-by-step instructions on how to run all the rapids. We all had a lot of fun enjoying the river, and nobody flipped.

Jacob and Carley in White's Rapid

Our boat bent in HALF when we got surfed in the wave!

A quick lunch followed the river and then we headed back out to play. We originally planned on going to left-hand (a waterfall with limited cliff jumping) but thanks to it's popularity in town and online, it was too crowded to enjoy. We chose instead to hike up right-hand which is a much better kept secret. At the end of the hike there's some natural waterslides, and though the water was really high with snowmelt there was still a small section we were able to slide down. Afterwards we went to the much larger (and crazy fast thanks to all the flowing water) natural waterslide by the power dam. Everyone had a blast sliding!

                                         

Our busy day of exploring combined with their late arrival wore everyone out, and we spent the night with snacks and a movie. After church Sunday morning we had a family lunch and I surprised Jacob with a birthday cake. Jacob and I have always been HUGE Harry Potter fans, so it was only natural that I drew inspiration from Hagrid for his birthday cake.

It was sad to say goodbye, but I'm so grateful that Jacob and his friends were able to come visit. They all agreed that it was worth the 9 hour drive here, so we must have done something right as hosts/tour guides. We're just glad that it only took them 3 1/2 hours to get back to Provo.

Remember to pray and remember to play,

Mr. & Mrs. Andrew

MORE hiking?

After a week of recovery from our big hike, I hit the trail again with my dad, who is training for his rim-to-rim trek at the end of June. We hiked from Hidden Valley to the Moab Rim, and after scrambling around off trail it ended up being about 8.5 miles and almost 1000 ft elevation gain and loss. At the end of the Hidden Valley trail we visited some neat petroglyphs that I've never noticed before. There were a lot of desert critters, including a couple of bull snakes. It was a lot of fun to spend the time with my dad, and I'm looking forward to helping him train more.

My dad and I have very similar hiking styles. If we see something that looks cool, we'll go explore it... even if it takes us off the trail for hours, scrambling up rocks on the edge of a cliff, while jumping through pokey bushes. Unfortunately, we've both burned bridges with the rest of our family (who--for some reason--don't appreciate these kinds of adventures), but we sure enjoy exploring together!

That evening after Dani got off the river we went over to the Moab Arts Fest and bumped into one of our old buddies, Jason, who was selling some of his ceramics. We invited him and his new wife to float the river with us on Memorial Day before they left town. One of my other friends, Sheena, was in town for the weekend with her husband, so we invited them too.

On Monday, Dani and I grabbed a few inflatable kayaks from the Hazlett's and met up with our friends and their spouses to raft down the daily section of the Colorado. There was no whitewater carnage, but we had a good time!

Our buddies Kat, Jason, Tyler, and Sheena