The St. George Expedition

Today is Saturday Dec. 7th.  This morning I took Sophie to the High School at 6:15 to catch her bus to Cedar City for a swim meet.  As we were driving over there we noticed some snow flurries barely falling.  On my way back home it had started up a little more.  By 8am, when Ben had his first official basketball game ever (next blog), it was snowing but the flakes where tiny and not sticking at all.  An hour later as we were driving to the top of Snow Canyon to take Joel to catch up with the rest of the Beckstrand Boys for the Expedition Relay the wind had really kicked up.  The flakes still weren't big but the temperature had dropped and now it was sticking and coming straight at you.  We only had time to drop him off and head back because David's basket ball game started at 10.  When we got out  of his game the wind had gone down a little and the flakes were bigger.  You could tell that it was going to stick and pile up.  I was getting excited.  Little did I know what was in store.  We hurried and drove down to Sullivan Park just in time to see Daniel pass off to Brian.  Here are Tavien and David catching snow flakes on their tongues.

 Everyone huddled by the port-a-potties.

Here comes Daniel down the trail and under the bridge.

Then the tag to Brian and off he goes.

We went home after that to warm up and later we drove around and finally caught up with John running on the Highway to the airport to the exchange on the far side of Exit #2 by Sun River.  John was handing off to Joel, for the last leg of the race, so we went there and waited for John.  These are the pictures we took:

This is John.  The snow by this time was a good 4 inches on the ground and the best packing snow.  All you had to do is pick it up and you had a snow ball.  PLUS, it was the best tasting snow I think I've ever had.  Probably because we don't have any pollution.  This picture is of my yummy snowball inside of my warm van.   

 Another picture from inside the warm van.  It was totally white outside and we were trying to look for a red moving a object named John to come up and over the freeway overpass.

Here are the different teams waiting for their teammate to show up.  Good thing there were port-a-potties to get warm in.  Yuck.  The good thing is that they don't smell when it's below freezing outside.

 Joel, Ben and Josh getting ready for Joel to leave.  And seconds later we saw him.

 Because it's a busy road and they didn't want anyone to try to cross it, he didn't actually have to tag Joel.  He just had to run through the check in station and Joel took off.

We followed him for awhile and then we crossed the Bloomington bridge to wait for him to get onto the trail that leads to the Dixie Cneter where it ended.

 While we waited we got more snow to eat.

 

Then he showed up and we cheered him onto the covered trail where he said it was at least 6 inches deep and he was high stepping through it.

 Back at the Confluence Park behind the Dixie Center Brain and the boys got into a snowball fight while we waited for Joel.

Then around the corner we finally saw him and the team crossed the finish line together.

 

 They beat the best time by 1 minute which should really translate into 20 minutes due to the snow.  It will be a race that they'll never forget!