B was born this time of year, so we had a birthday party for her at my parent’s house along with Grandma DiAnn and Barry:
Happy Birthday B!
Today we shopped for costumes and prepared our shalach manos for Purim:

I also got to go on a nice 20 mile ride into the hills of Anthem:
Good Shabbos from Las Vegas!
This morning we packed up and said goodbye to Lake Powell and Lone Rock:

We stopped in at one of the visitor centers in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the kids received their Junior Ranger badges:

We continued West to Pipe Spring National Monument, which preserves the Native American and Mormon histories of North-Central Arizona:





The kids received their Junior Ranger badges here as well. They also worked through the workbooks for
Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument here, since there is no separate visitor center for GCPNM, and received their badges for that as well.

We arrived in Las Vegas towards evening and will be here for Purim. See the trip map for details.
This morning we walked our kayaks down to the shore of Lake Powell and paddled out towards Lone Rock:

We had found a lost decoy duck when we went kayaking on the Salt River. B named the duck and tethered it to her kayak. The natives came over to meet their synthetic friend:

We rounded Lone Rock:


In the distance, we spotted a slot canyon:

We pulled our kayaks up on shore and hiked up the canyon:


The last 20 feet of the canyon was very narrow. Here’s the view straight up:


We hiked back to the kayaks and continued our trip:


The herons were out:




Some channels among the rocks were narrow:


In the afternoon, we played on the beach:


…And had a campfire dinner at towards sunset:

Tomorrow we will head back to Las Vegas. We’ve enjoyed our stay here, I’m sure we will be back soon!