St. George and The Narrows

(Here I am enjoying life at the pool)

This last weekend, a group of us went to St. George for the weekend to relax. It was great. We stayed at Jessica's aunt's condo and it was a beautiful place. There were three pools behind our condo and about 15 tennis courts, too. The first day we just took it easy at the pool and playing tennis. We also went biking in the evening. The next day we went to Zion's National Park and we hiked a part of the Narrows. It was so awesome. I couldn't believe some of the scenery and the canyons that we hiked through. It was beautiful. We hiked in about 105 degree weather but about 90 percent of the hike was through water so the high temperature didn't bother us at all. Here are so pictures of our hiking trip.

(This felt so dang good!!)

I have so many more pictures but this will have to do for now. The most crazy part of our trip is still yet to come! The next was Sunday so we went to church at a nearby ward and them went the St. George temple. We all went and watched the Joseph Smith movie at the visitor's center.

Alright everyone, here's the crazy part of the trip. We planned on coming home Sunday night but were unable to because of a wildfire about 15 minutes north of St. George was burning close to the freeway. We decided to stay another night and to head back the next day. Early afternoon Monday, two of the guys left about 20 minutes ahead of us. About 2 hours into our drive, my roommate who was in the car ahead of us called me and said to get our cameras ready because there was another wildfire by the Cove Fort exit. He said there was tons of smoke and you could even see the flames. Well, the closer and closer we got, the darker and more smoky the sky became. As we approached the fire, they merged everyone into the left lane and then everyone was stopped. At this time, the flames were not far away from our stationary car and it was quickly gaining speed towards the freeway. I told Jessica and her roommate Ashley that I wasn't feeling too good about this fire coming towards us so quickly while we just sat there. When I said that, a group of trees right next to the freeway went up into flames. Everyone started to make U-turns to get out of there. Ashley was driving at the time and got really scared so we switched seats and I got in the driver's seat. A fireman came up to our window and everyone else's to tell us to get out of there and that the freeway was closed. As we left, we took all of these pics of the fire approaching the freeway. Within about a minute and half, the fire was had made it's way across both freeways and began moving up the mountain on the other side. Check out these flames. It was kind of a closer call than I wanted it to be.

Here we are getting closer

Watch now how these pictures progressively get worse and how the fire gets closer to the freeway. It was out of control!!! Click on all these pictures to enlarge them and to get a better view of the fire.

WOW

By this time we were turned around going the other way. Look at the flames beginning to go over the freeway...keep in mind that we were right there where the fire is about one minute earlier. Look at the cars that are still trying to escape the flames!

Good thing we got out of there when we did eh? This picture looks like there was an explosion by the freeway but it was just the fire engulfing the tall trees next to the road. You can't see too well but this picture enlarged shows cars speeding away from the smoke and the flames just in the nick of time.

If you look closely at this picture, you can barely see that on the left side of the SUV the glowing fire has already reached the median and is working it's way to the other side of the freeway.

We got back safely although I think everyone was a bit shooken up. It was one crazy way to end our amazing St. George trip!