Cedar City Temple and West Rim Trail!

This week started off with a few stressful assignments and tests due on monday and tuesday but once I got those out of the way... the week was pretty awesome!  Thursday I had the opportunity to go walk through the beautiful Cedar City temple!  Ive never been to a temple open house before so it was super cool to see and walk through all the specials rooms that Ive heard about in Sunday school.  One of the missionaries that talked to our group was from Ireland and she had thee coolest accent. My favorite part by far was the celestial room.  It was beautiful and I wish I could've stayed in there longer.  Another one of my favorite pictures inside was one of the stained glass murals and it was of Christ with his hands stretched out towards us. A good reminder that he's always there for us, all we have to do is turn to him.  Wish I could've gotten a picture of it, but I didn't want to be escorted out by security so I kept my phone in my pocket.  Once we walked through, we took pictures outside and it was freezing.  Last weekend in Oregon it was pretty cold and I kept telling my friends "cold is a state of mind" so whenever I started shivering or saying how cold it was in cedar they made sure to tell me that cold is a state of mind lol. Anyways, its a beautiful temple and Im super excited to go back soon.

Definitely don't dig the cold.  

Next adventure of the week took place on saturday morning @ 3:30.  Me and Dad were on the road by 4 AM to ZNP.  We had our packs ready to go with water, gatorade, snacks, sandwiches, some meds and bandaids.  We met up with our "shuttle service" who actually turned out to be Dres. haha he's crazy for waking up that early to drive us but it helped us out a bunch so shout out to him.  We started running around 6:20.  It was still dark enough we had to use some head lamps but because of daylight savings, we only ran in the dark for about 20 min. It was also about 26 degrees when we started running.  I wore shorts, a short sleeve, a long sleeve and a jacket with some ear protectors.  Less than 2 miles in I was already sweating and taking off layers hah. We ran, hiked, took pictures, dad peed like 12 times, and we stopped for snack breaks.  It was soo beautiful!  The views were incredible.  We weren't setting any record fast paces but just having a good time enjoying nature.  There was a pretty canyon we were running through and decided to stop to take a picture. After the picture I turned around and behind us on the trail was a buck just staring us down. We of course took some selfies with it, tried to feed it and I actually got a video with it.  It followed us down the trail for a little bit and after we were taking too long he decided to bolt around us and head on down the trail.  It was super cool.  The last part of the West Rim Trail is the angels landing trail.  After seeing very few people on the trail for the first few hours, there were hundreds of people hiking angels landing. It was about 9 AM when we started descending angels landing, which is when everyone and their dog is climbing up.  So that was kinda funny to be running down while everyone is struggling to go up. My toes got to be super good friends with the tip of my shoes.  All the down hill trashed my quads and my toes but all is good, it was worth it for sure.  Raced my dad the last couple hundred meters to the grass of the great lawn and then we chilled there for a few minutes.  Caught the next shuttle to the visitor center and we headed to oscars for breakfast. Oh and as we were getting off the shuttle at the visitor center, there was a HUGE line of people waiting for a shuttle.  I go to  zion quite a bit and Ive never seen a line for the shuttle. You would think they were all waiting to ride splash mountain or something, not a zion shuttle. It was insane. I would recommend back country zion all the way just so you don't have to deal with so many people.  I am glad people are getting out and coming to visit zion though, its a pretty rad place and we are freaking blessed to be able to live so close to it. Anyways, Oscars was 10/10.  I ordered pancakes, bacon and eggs and they did not disappoint.  I told my dad as I was eating my bacon, "I was nervous they were gonna give me two wimpy pieces of bacon like most places do but heck ya they gave me four pieces of man sized bacon" lol I love me some good bacon. We finally got home around 1 and I took a much needed nap that knocked me out from 2-6pm. Such a fun day.  Thanks dad for being awesome and taking me to cool places. You're the best.  

Sunrise Selfie

One of the many amazing views. We were able to see the top of the subway canyon, the West Temple and South Guardian Angel. 

Meet Stanley. The bachelor buck just trying to get home for dinner but we were holding up traffic.

Sorry bout that Stanley. 

lol.

Dad got creative with the use of angles.

After I woke up from my amazing nap, not gonna lie I was a lil confused about where I was and what day it was, but I met up with shawn and we went and got ourselves a free cupcake at 25 main. Then we parked on airport hill and chilled for awhile but we finally got tired of being spotlighted so we went home and watched stranger things. Good good night. 

Free cupcake = happy girls. Romantic date night that costed us nothing. #blest