Hiking: 2 miles
Part 5 of our 10-day trip. Check it out from the beginning or maybe from DAY 6 MESA VERDE.
The monsoon type rain continued through the night and into the next morning, we all were starting to feel waterlogged. As we drove back the sun came out and the road, heat damaged, was like a natural roller coaster. We drove to the 4-corners to see and experience it, but as we turned off the road and drove through what looked like a barbed wire military site we started getting the heebee geebees. We also found out to see this little non-wonder of the nation, you are required to pay $20! We decided it wasn’t that big of a deal and drove on to Natural Bridges National Monument.
It was an interesting driving through the desert that reminded me a lot of New Mexico and Texas last year. We got to Natural Bridges and the sun was out. We picked up a junior ranger book and started our tour through the park. We must not be rock people, because we weren’t impressed by Arches and Natural Bridges are the opposite creation, but the same outcome, we pretty much felt like we had been here and done that.
After Natural Bridges, the deluge began. We were on our way to Capital Reef National Park for the rest of the day. On our way, we saw flash flood waterfalls, I should have turned around and taken a photo, it was AMAZING!!! However, everyone was tired and we pushed on. We did stop in Capital Reef to see an old barn and the roadside petroglyphs which mesmerized the kids, they spent so much time trying to figure out what the petroglyphs meant. Earlier in the trip, both used their money to buy Petroglyph definition books, so they could guess at what someone might have said years ago.
Isabel had the worst road sickness, every time we got in the car she was mildly car sick it peaked when we got into Capital Reef. We barely made the visitor center at 4:59, she ran to the bathroom, passing the ranger who was about to lock the doors for the evening. At this point, we started thinking of stopping for the evening. We didn’t have a prearranged place and when Will and I looked at the deluge of rain and the campground, we just shook our heads and both agreed we were going to have to come back one day to this park, we wanted to stay in someplace dry. We kept driving into the evening and made it a few hours outside Great Basin National Park and were SO thankful to stay warm and dry.
We base our lives on our experiences and draw on those for relation to the outside world. We limit our knowledge by what we know and what we believe – we think inside the box. As children, there is no box, however children base their world on past experiences as they build the box they will live in. This is how we begin to limit ourselves to what we can do. While in the hotel room the next morning, Isabel asks me, “Mom is that a bear canister?”. I ask her what she is looking at, she points to the black ice bucket with the lid and I realize how unique Noah and Isabel’s childhood is and it brings tears to my eyes. Our children’s box that limits their world will include nature and nature is huge and vast. I hope with this, the box with their limits will be just a vast.
Next stop: Our Conclusion – Great Basin National Park
