"I Ride Elephant!"

On Friday morning I had booked an elephant ride so we were picked up at the apartment and had a pretty drive along the coast to the jungle where the elephants were. It was pretty twisty and jerky though and inside a huge 15 passenger van so we were all feeling a bit queasy when we got there. 

The ride was really a pretty cool experience. The kids had been looking forward to riding the elephants all summer and what Hannah told everyone all spring was "I'm going to ride elephants in Thailand with my grandma and grandpa." We had to have 3 elephants so we split Hannah with Bryan, the boys with Kathy, and Hyrum with me and Taylor. 

At first it was a little scary because you are so high up and the ride seems wobbly, but after you get used to the elephants rhythm then it's really neat. The scenery is amazing and we went up on a beautiful ridge overlooking the ocean. The guys driving the elephants were pretty funny and they took our phones to take about a billion pictures. Then Hannah's driver let her take control for the end of the trip and he walked along side the elephant which she thought was awesome. 

I'm super glad we did this and everyone loved it. Hyrum still talked about it for months after whenever we saw an elephant picture he would say "I ride elephant." On the ride back to our beach though Hannah got really car sick and ended up puking all over the van. We pulled over in front of a random tailor shop (they were everywhere) and he helped us hose off Hannah and clean out the van...super nice. I ran to a kiosk and bought her some clean clothes to put on. Made for a memorable ending to a fun excursion. =]