St. George

The journey to the Land of the Red Rocks has begun!

Every summer all students working for BYU leadership take a retreat with the purpose of getting to know each other better, having lotsa fun and of course throwing one or two productive things in the mix as well. ;) This year we went to St. George, and of course, you can't start a 4 hour drive without some Krispy Kreme's!

First things first, we got the business out of the way. As soon as we arrived we toured Dixie College and met with their student leadership. We bounced ideas back and forth and got some great tips for advertising, events, media and more. Very insightful! As the night came we ended up at the Tuacahn Amphitheater!! 

Our tickets were for Aladdin!

We got to do a backstage tour before the show. The theatre is set in the middle of the canyon, and the natural surroundings are also used in their productions. So neat!

Actors from Broadway and all over the world sign contracts from July-ish to November-ish to come and perform.

 In our tour we also saw all of the sets. The tour guide shared with us their secret to storing all the sets from productions, and the secret is......they don't! After each season they burn down the majority of them because there isn't room to store it all. 

Tuacahn also has their own small ranch were they take care of the animals that they feature in their performances. We saw camels and peacocks but the camels definitely stole the show!

While we waited for our Buffet Dinner to open up, we did a little window shopping at the souvenir shops. Our favorite find was these fuzzy animal rings. Who wouldn't want to have a small furry animal on their finger? Someone sane!

After our dinner the Pre-Show started. These kids have their own band called the 5 Strings. They are all 13 years old and under and they knocked everyone socks off! The little girl was soooo cute! She wasn't actually playing but she knew all the cues and did all the right moves at all the right times.

Above is our before the show shot. Steven is normal and Abe of course was too excited to keep his face in a normal position. Below is our after shot when the rain kicked in. My supervisor Lee is the bomb, and brought a bunch of garbage bags just in case. Our show actually got cancelled right after intermission since it is an outside theatre. We were bummed so of course Abe and I had to have some fun. We used our garbage bags to make super cool kid outfits, turned the tunes up on his phone, stood on the nearest wall and danced for the audience as they exited the theatre. They loved us! And our coworkers decided not to claim us...HA! We had a blast!

The next morning we did a hike on one of the many trails in St. George. The red rocks were way cool!

The crew before we started our hike

Steven and I found this funky rock!We had to crawl through on our hands and knees to get this shot. We were determined!

After we finished our hike, we went to the Devil's Crack! We had to hike up sideways because it was so skinny. Those that were bigger or claustrophobic had to sit this one out, which is sad because it was AWESOME!

Here's a top view of Emily and I as we made our way back down. 

After the Devil's Crack we stopped by Brigham Young's home for a tour. We were STANKY!! I definitely felt bad for the family that was there before us that was not prepared for a group of funky BYU students to come and raid the tour after they had been on two hikes. In this picture is Brigham's original hat and cane. Fun stuff! Our two day tripped honestly felt like a week, since we jam packed every minute, but every minute was worth it!