Thus far in our lives, Fall Break has rolled around and we have gone nowhere. I have scrambled to find things to do with the kids during their three days out of school (plus the weekend thrown in), and fought crowds of other people with their kids trying to do all the same things. This year, however, I vowed would be different, and I managed to convince Kent that we should get away for a couple of days and go to Cedar City. We could hike, we could swim in the hotel pool, we could see a play at the Shakespeare Festival.
So that's what we did. We hiked, we swam, we went to a play. The drive to Cedar City is only three hours, but we stopped in Parowan for lunch and to see petroglyphs at the Parowan Gap. Just before the Gap there is a dinosaur monument where you can see fossilized dinosaur footprints in the rocks. As we turned off the road towards the parking lot, a very long Great Basin gopher snake slither across the road. Too cool! There were markers to indicate where to look for the dinosaur footprints, and we all decided we would make lousy paleontologists; we never would have seen the footprints without the markers. And just to keep it real, while looking, Blythe had a huge fit because Brandt saw a footprint first and she was insulted that she didn't get to find it before anyone else, and Kent babied her, and she cried and cried and cried and irritated me and I wanted to leave her there with the fossils to have her fit and pick her up after we'd seen the petroglyphs. Kent wouldn't leave her (neither would I, really), and so our record of a daily mother/daughter fight remains unbroken.
Gopher snake.
See? Even with Brandt pointing directly at that footprint,
it's hard to tell it's anything other than just a rock.
Fossil hunters
I don't think Brandt is pointing at a fossil.
I think that is just a rock.
During the Blythe fit, we drove down the road and stopped at the Gap. There are many, many petroglyths along the rock walls on either side of the road, and they are low down and easy to see. You can walk along the road and see lots of interesting designs. When I was last there, you could scramble around on the rocks, but they have fenced the drawings in for the most part, to protect them from damage. There was a section where you could get right up by them, and we did scramble around there.
Brandt is up the hill in a part where I don't think he really should have been.
Blythe is all arms and legs in this picture.
She is getting so tall!
As we walked back to the car, Brandt wanted me to rest my arm on his head.
It wasn't very comfortable--for either of us.
From Parowan, we drove up the canyon, past Brian Head and Cedar Breaks, and went for a lovely little hike to Cascade Spring. The spring is fed by water from Navajo Lake, and comes coursing out of a fissure in the rock. When we have been to Cascade Spring before, there has been a lot of water pouring out. But this late in the season, in the middle of October, there was very little cascading. Still, the hike was very nice, the views were tremendous, and the colors brilliant. The kids were good hikers, and we were warm in the fall sun.
View towards Zion.
Trickle, trickle, trickle.
After hiking, we drove into Cedar City for dinner and a movie. I have been promising the kids we could see Pan, and as it was Friday evening and we had nothing else to do (Kent didn't want to take the kids to the play Dracula), we went to a show. We got to our hotel in just enough time to get ready for bed and turn out the lights.
It was a rough night; there was snoring and outside noise and kicking in the beds. I was glad when morning finally arrived. We went for breakfast, and then, as the play didn't start until 2:00pm, we went and swam until just before we had to check out. The "heated" pool was not very warm, but we boldly jumped in and paddled around, though we spent a great deal of time in the hot tub. Swimming burns off so much energy, I love it!
We still had time to kill, so Kent drove us around his old haunts. We went to South Elementary where he was in kindergarten and second grade, and then past the three houses he lived in while in Cedar. We also saw the tree he fell out of, landing on the sidewalk on his head and cracking his skull, when he was five. Explains a lot. We drove past the new temple under construction, and had lunch. Then we were off to the play.
We chose to see the play Charley's Aunt, a comedy with an abundance of humor even the children could understand. I reminded them before the show that all those in the audience had come to see the performance on the stage, not from them. They were super good, found the whole thing uproariously funny, and repeatedly quoted, "Brasil . . . where the nuts come from!" driving Kent and me (well, definitely me, Kent is much more patient) to distraction. It went so well, I think I'll be able to convince Kent we should do it again.
Immediately after the end of the play, we headed home. We drove straight through, with me reading and the kids playing on their Kindles. It was sort of rainy, and we saw the most amazing rainbow. Although not very long, it was incredibly wide, the widest we'd ever seen. It was a great fall break for all of us.
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