A Grand Hike and Hidden Falls

Winter is ­­getting closer and with already having our first snowfall, we have to make good use of the “nice” days here in Rexburg. A few weekends ago Jason and I went with our friends Rex and Jessica to Grand Teton National Park in Jackson, Wyoming.

We left pretty early in the morning, eating breakfast burritos and smoothies along the way. Just after the sunrise, we arrived in Jackson and pulled up to a river where we could see the reflection of the Teton Mountains in the water.  It was absolutely gorgeous and so peaceful.

After taking pictures of the beautiful scenery, we drove to Jenny Lake where we began our hike to Hidden Falls (I guess Jason and I have a thing for waterfalls). We actually planned on taking a ferry across the lake to cut our hike in half, but of course, the boats had stopped going the day before. So we had to hike the whole way – all 2.5 miles of it. The hike was kind of long, especially because a lot of it was uphill, but it was probably the prettiest hike I've ever been on. The leaves were still changing colors and the lake was beautiful.

Filling up 

What a let down!

Jessica and I during the Hike

On our way to the falls, I told Jason to take a picture of me in front of my favorite tree with bright yellow leaves. Just after the picture, I felt a pinch on my arm and I looked down and saw this HUGE BEE!! I screamed and flung my arm around and yes, I cried. It was my first time being stung and it felt horrible! I was not a happy hiker. Luckily, the stinger didn’t get stuck in my skin and I wasn’t allergic. It was just so frustrating because I was avoiding every bee I saw along my path and then when I was just standing still, one got me – probably because I was wearing my pink shirt, mistaken for a flower. Side note: when I was looking at my pictures a few days later, I saw the actual bee on my shirt!!!

It's hard to see, but the bee is the black spot under the "i" on my shirt.

Other than that wonderful event, it was a great hike. Hidden Falls was amazing once we finally reached it. You could only get so close, but the view was incredible.

Hidden Falls - Photo Credit: Rex Warner

Rex, Jessica, Danielle, Jason

Me and Jase

Back in Jackson, we went to Bubba’s Bar-B-Que place and ate ribs, pulled pork, and chicken. The waitress was especially generous in refilling Jason’s favorite drink – a Roy Roger’s. When I go somewhere new, I like to go to restaurants that you can only find in that town – somewhere new. We also walked around the town a little bit. I’ve been there at least 3 times now, but I still love going to the fun shops. 

One of our fun findings in Jackson,

Our Humble Abode

It’s weird feeling like I’m all grown up especially since Jason and I have our own apartment. No more rushing home in Jason’s car to make it back for curfew – now we can spend more time together sleeping and waking up in the same place. Coming back to Rexburg, we had so much fun spending two full days of unpacking and exchanging gift cards at Bed Bath & Beyond and Target for furniture and a few needed items for our home. It’s also weird that Rexburg isn’t just a place where I go to school and Jason and I first met – it’s our home. Our apartment is small and comfortable with a view overlooking train tracks where a cargo train will greet us twice a day. As far as how the actual apartment looks – I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Before:

I literally made Jason wait to open the door until I got my camera out. 

Kitchen (Yes, the table is midway between the living room and kitchen)

Living Room

Hallway to the bedroom 

Bathroom

Bedroom

After:

Living Room

Kitchen

Bedroom (Finally found a bedspread we LOVE)

Bookshelf in bedroom assembled by Jason himself

Bathroom (weird angle, but I wanted to show the lovely curtain and red accents)

I’ve also been cooking for myself and Jason. It has been fun, but it’s time consuming so I can only make a “nice meal” once or twice a week. The good news is there are always leftovers. The bad news is there are always leftovers. Anyway, Jason says I’m “a great cook” and that’s all that matters right?

Lasagna (thanks to the recipe on the back of the noodle box and mom's tips)

Shake n' Bake and Rice o' Roni (Love our plates!)

here comes the sun.

Jason and I arrived from Hawaii in California at about 5 o’clock in the morning on Saturday– the day of reception #2. We both attempted to get as much sleep as we could before another crazy-filled day. Our reception was at the beautiful Dove Canyon Country Club which had another gorgeous backdrop of putting green and sand traps.

Jason’s mom put together a travel theme for the event. She had pictures of our engagement in a hot air balloon, a bulletin board map of places we had traveled to, a sign in book with pictures of all of mine and Jason’s adventures, and black and pink napkins with our names on them. I had so much fun meeting Jason’s family (especially some of his cousins from Arizona that I had never met before) as well as his close friends from high school and Comedy Sportz. Again, I danced the whole night with people I knew and people I didn’t know as well. We had a lot of fun, although it was very difficult to not fall over and crash because of how tired we were.

During the next two weeks, between wedding madness and going back to school, Jason and I spent some time in California and Arizona. One day, Jason took me to Balboa Island. This was so much fun! We rented bikes on the Balboa Peninsula – I hadn’t ridden a bike since middle school so I wasn’t really sure how this was going to go, but I was still really excited! We rode for 30 minutes with the ocean to our right and colorful beach-side homes to our left, and took a ferry across Newport Bay to Balboa Island. Once on the actual island, we biked through residential areas on the streets until we came to Marine Avenue and locked our bikes up to a Stop sign and went shopping on the busiest street on Balboa Island.

On the Ferry

Bikes!

At one place I bought a chocolate covered banana and Jason got chocolate covered marshmallows – our favorites! We bought taffy from the Candy Shop and a book from Jason’s favorite store – Art for the Soul. The book, All About Us, is a question book for couples that we intended to fill on our road trip back to Rexburg. We went to a few other shops along the strip and just really enjoyed our time on the island. We biked all the way back to Balboa Peninsula after going on a quick Ferris Wheel ride overlooking Newport Bay at the Balboa Fun Zone.

Ferris Wheel

Another day, Jason and I went to the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. We stopped on the way to eat at Pedro’s Tacos in San Clemente – mine and Jason’s favorite place to eat Mexican food. Because we didn’t have the time to go to an aquarium in Hawaii, I really wanted to go to one in California. This aquarium was small, but a lot of fun. I wanted so bad to see sharks – even though I’m pretty sure there is nothing that I am more afraid of in the ocean or on land. We had fun looking at all of the multi-colored fish, the octopus, jellyfish, and a wide-variety of sea-horses!

Pedro's Tacos!

Jason hates eels

Octopus

Jelly Fish

Eek! Sharks!

We spent a few days in Mesa, Arizona because Jason’s Aunt Kathy and Uncle John invited us to break up our trip back to school and stay with them. Lucky us, we were there during the hottest time of the year. It was pretty miserable. For our first day, Kathy’s beautiful daughters came over with their families and we had dinner together – while all of Jason’s many younger cousins ran around and swam in the pool. Jason helped me with most of the younger cousins’ names and who belonged to what family, but I still don’t think I remember half of them. It was still fun to be around all of the family even though we were a little tired from the drive.

I found out that my sister, Stephanie, lived walking distance from Aunt Kathy’s house! So one morning for breakfast, Jason and I met her and my sister, Sarah, and each of their youngest boys at IHOP! It was a lot of fun talking to them about the reception in California and the honeymoon.

For our last night with the Winn’s we went out to eat with Uncle John and Aunt Kathy and watched The Help. It was just such a fun week we spent with them and we appreciate them offering to have us stay with them.

On our way (but kind of out of the way) back to Rexburg, Jason and I went to explore the Grand Canyon! Believe me; we just can’t have an adventure without having another adventure. The Grand Canyon is amazing and as cliché as it sounds – it’s huge! We went to the North Rim and just stared into it for awhile and tried to catch a glimpse of a Condor in the distance. We didn’t stay for very long before we had to get back on the road, but the stop was definitely worth it.

Can you see the tiny people on the left compared to the Canyon??

our wedding video.

Hey everybody, do you remember our wedding video I told you about? The one that our good friend Rex Warner filmed and edited himself? It's here!! Please take a few minutes to watch it. It has awesome music and fantastic footage. It includes pictures of Jason and I growing up and montages of us outside the Detroit Temple and reception at Plum Hollow Country Club. Our wedding day was absolutely perfect and now you can enjoy it too, over and over again.

Slippin and Surfin (Honeymoon pt. 3)

Friday was our last day in Oahu, but our flight didn’t leave until later that night – so Jason didn’t waste any time planning our last day of adventure in Hawaii. We got up, packed, checked out, put our stuff into hotel storage, and went off to see a more tropical side of Hawaii in hiking Manoa Falls.

We had quite a lively tour guide for the Manoa Falls trip. He said he was required to give us a brief, detailed overview of Hawaii’s natural history. You could definitely tell he knew what he was talking about (although most of what he was saying was way over our heads), but the gist of it was that most of Hawaii’s plant life and animal life are not native to Hawaii.

After a 20 minute van ride, we parked in the street of a neighborhood and our guide lent us backpacks, ponchos, bug spray, and walking sticks. Yes, walking sticks. I felt bad for a Swedish mom and her two daughters who wore flimsy slip-on shoes and sandals.

Just after we started walking, our guide pointed out a Cockatoo in a tree – I never thought of just seeing one anywhere else in the world, other than in someone’s home as a pet. Our guide went on to tell us that an exotic bird shop had closed many years ago and the owner let the Cockatoos free into the jungle and they had since multiplied not too far away from the abandoned shop. Hiking further up the trial we also saw further examples of Hawaiian tropical trees not native, but thriving here anyway – East Asian Bamboo and Australian Eucalyptus trees.  

Cockatoo

Our Tour Guide

We're weird

The higher up the mountain and closer to the waterfall we hiked, the rainier it became. Upon rounding a bend – the rain suddenly started pouring, but looking down the mountain it was still sunny – definitely a bizarre feeling! From here, the path became much steeper and muddier. After 1.5 miles, we made it to the Waterfall. It was pretty incredible watching the water continuously fall from 150 feet! Unfortunately, Jase and I were so tired and a little upset that it was now pouring rain that we didn’t really get to enjoy it before we wanted to go back down. There’s only a small space to view the waterfall and we had our tour guide take our picture next to Manoa Falls and we started heading back down. Hiking back down was a lot more brutal than the initial hike and we finally put our walking sticks to good use. It was really muddy and slippery. Jason fell on his butt and was so frustrated that his whole backside was covered in mud.

When we returned back to Waikiki, we ate breakfast at Denny’s and Jason took a “shower” in the bathroom sink to look a little more presentable.

Jason absolutely wanted to get his surfing lesson in that he had just been dying to take. We went to Waikiki beach and bought a lesson and I watched as Renaldo (surf instructor) and Jason paddled out to the waves. He LOVED it! I watched for about 45 minutes while he was out catching waves with Renaldo, and then I had to get out of the sun since I already packed away my sunscreen. Jason’s surf lesson was at least an hour and a half and when he was done he was proud to tell me that he had gotten up and surfed every wave except the first! I’m really glad he had such a great time.

Jason's in the Blue shirt

We were happy to be able to get a courtesy room at our hotel to shower and get all the mud and ocean water off of us. After a few hours, we were back on a bus to the airport to head to California. Looking back at our Hawaii experience it was truly surreal that we were there and it all actually happened and wasn't all a dream. Thanks Mom and Papa Cowles for an amazing honeymoon! 

Our new favorite shirts :D