St. George

Last week, Ben and I took our mini summer vacation. Just like last year, we went to St. George to see some Tuacahn shows. These tickets we bought earlier this year for Ben's birthday. Then after we knew what exactly our summer was going to look like (working, Ben starting grad school at the end of June and me starting to teach in the middle of July) we decided that we better go on our trip before all of the craziness started :)

All packed up and ready to go!

We drove down late in the morning on Wednesday, June 18th. On our way to St. George, we stopped at Cove Fort and went on a tour of the historical site. We went there last year and we are so glad we went again! It is such a beautiful site and they have restored it so nicely. After our tour, we had a picnic lunch and then continued down to St. George.

These trees are the original trees that were planted when the fort was built! 

We pulled into our hotel around 2:30 and checked in. Then we went shopping at the outlets near our hotel before heading to dinner at Applebee's. We had a gift card that we got last year and hadn't used. It was a nice surprise to find out that it actually had more on it than we thought! So our dinner didn't cost us a dime.

After dinner, we went back to our hotel and changed before going to Tuacahn to see our first show: The Wizard of Oz. It was such a great production! They did lots of flying on the wires and had pretty neat sets. The actress who played Dorothy did a really good job. They had lots of animals that they used in the show which surprised us. My favorite scene was probably the tornado scene. They were really creative in how they portrayed it. I can't even describe it!

The stage during intermission, right as they're changing it to the Emerald City

The next day, Thursday, we really slept in and then went to the St. George Temple to do sealings. This temple is so beautiful! It was amazing to see how perfectly it was built and designed and to know that all of it was done by the pioneers who had nothing. It was also really special because this is the temple where Ben's parents got sealed. After, we went to the visitor's center which was overrun with youth for a youth conference. But we still had a nice time.

We went back to our hotel, changed and went to get lunch at Chick-fil-a. After lunch, we went on a hike to see petroglyphs. It was really hot and it was a really boring trail, but the petroglyphs were pretty neat. After our hike, we went back to our hotel and took a nice, cool swim. Then we went back to our room and rested/hung out until it was time to go to dinner.

Tuacahn has a themed dinner each night that goes with the show. We went to Ariel's Luau for dinner before seeing The Little Mermaid. They had really yummy food (my favorite was the grilled pineapple coated with cinnamon sugar) and even had dinglehoppers for us to eat with. After dinner, we found our seats and watched the production. It was AMAZING! There were so many amazing things they did with the scenes; the special effects were out of this world. They had water everywhere, a working boat for Prince Eric, the stage got flooded, they had curtains of water that they projected onto like a screen, it was just so cool! We also really liked the music that got added to it that isn't in the movie and we loved the slight changes to the storyline. Neither one of us especially loved the movie, but we absolutely loved the show. My favorite scenes were Under the Sea and the scene where the chef is chasing Sebastian.

The stage before the show started. We wondered why there wasn't any scenery, but we soon found out :) 

See how the water is coming down from the waterfall and is starting to fill up behind the stage?
It filled up all the way and then it started to flood the stage to create the illusion of the stage being an ocean.
It was so cool!

This is the stage during intermission.

Friday morning we slept in a lot and hung out at our hotel until the very last minute before check-out. Then we headed over to some other outlets and grabbed lunch before heading out of town. On our way back, we stopped in Kanarraville to go on this cool hike I read about online. The Kanarra Falls hike was so fun! The cost was $10 per car but it was so worth it. You hike into these slot canyons, often times through a shallow river, and end up at these amazing waterfalls. We only went to the first waterfall (there are two) and the whole hike, round trip, took us about 3 hours. It wasn't very hard, which I liked a lot :) The scenery was beautiful and it was nice and cool despite the 100+ degree heat outside the canyon. The pictures speak for themselves.

This is one of my favorite shots from the hike.

Isn't it just beautiful?!

After our hike, we pealed off our sopping wet shoes and soggy socks, changed into flip flops and headed back to our little apartment. It was such a great trip!