ON THE ROAD AGAIN

My sister Megan flew back home with Charlotte and I. I was excited to have her stay with us for a couple of weeks, and since I was still feeling ill the day we flew home, I was especially excited to have a helper on the plane. (Charlotte officially started crawling on the morning of our flight so an extra pair of hands was sweet relief.)

We may have been on home soil, but Ryan's finals were over which meant that play time continued. Ryan had arranged a fishing expedition in St. George so we tagged along and did some exploring of our own while the men disappeared into the wilderness.

Our first stop was Silver Reef, a ghost town that Ryan had talked up. We were expecting it to be pretty amazing; it turned out that Ryan had never been and had no idea what he was talking about. We parked up beside an old Wells Fargo building that looked promising. It took us about thirty seconds to realise the building was now serving as an art gallery. Assuming that we hadn't driven far enough we carried on a little further down the road, only to find a sign informing us that all we would find down the street were private residences. (Occupied private residences, not an abandoned building in sight) Back outside the Old Wells Fargo station we came to the disappointing conclusion that this really was it. We walked to the fork in the road so that Megan could take her photo standing next to the sign, but when an unidentified man in a white van pulled up next to us we decided that it was perhaps time to cut our losses and leave Silver Reef behind.

We embarked on what we thought was a relatively short journey to Zion National Park, but once again we didn't quite have our facts right and we were in the car for a lot longer than we were expecting. We bypassed the food stops since we thought we were almost there...it turned out we weren't. We were very hungry on our arrival at the park. Hungry and grossly unprepared since we didn't have any water with us and it was August in the desert. Genuis! (Disclaimer: I did plan for my baby; Charlotte had all of the food/drink/snackage her heart could desire, lucky girl. )

Since for some reason it hadn't occurred to us to bring water, or sun tan lotion, or wear something even slightly sturdier than flip flops on our feet, we opted to do the bus tour of the Park. We hopped on and off as we pleased and I made mental notes of hikes I wanted to come back and do with Ryan. It was nice to just sit back and enjoy the view for a while and Charlotte loved being on the bus since there were lots of people on board for her to grin at. We spent most of our time at the base of the Narrows hike, walking in the sand and wading in the river. Ryan and I are planning on walking the Narrows at some point and being there made me want to do it all the more. It's so beautiful, I couldn't get enough of it.

Except I could get enough of it because we hadn't eaten since breakfast and I desperately needed to fill my tummy! We still managed to get sidetracked however, because on the drive back to the car park the bus driver mentioned the mile long Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel and since we were already there we figured we might as well drive through it. After all, I don't think I've been in a mile long tunnel since we were in Switzerland when I was 10. It was definitely worth the de-tour! It always surprises me how far a mile actually is when it comes down to it.

It was a fun little adventure; too bad you can't just plan on things going smoothly if you didn't do any planning at all!