Mathea slept in until 7 this morning. I think we're tiring her out. I know we're tiring ourselves out. But there's so much to see!
We visited one of the other two sections of Zion National Park today; Kolob Canyon. Compared to the main park, it's very tiny. You drive to the top of a mountain to a small parking area. There's a beautiful view from the parking area of Kolob Canyon, and you can also hike the Timber Creek Overlook Trail, a 1/2 mile trail leading out to a viewpoint where you can see Kolob Canyon and the Kaibab Plateau at the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, it wasn't clear enough to see all that way due to the fires in Arizona, but it was a magnificent view all the same.
Kolob Canyon
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Next, we drove to Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is north of Kolob Canyon on I-15. Cedar Breaks is all above 10,000 feet, and the temperatures were very pleasant (in the 60s) and breezy. There was a good bit of snow left on the ground.
We checked out the first viewpoint then had a picnic lunch while Mathea completed the activities for the Junior Ranger program, then Nate and Mathea went for Mathea's interview with a ranger to earn her badge and the right to (briefly) wear a real Ranger's hat.
We didn't check out the other viewpoints at Cedar Breaks because we had to get on the road to get our shopping done and get back to the motor home at a reasonable hour. But it was nice to get out of the heat for a while.
Cedar Breaks
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When we got to the shops, Nate decided to split off and find a couple of what he thought were drive-and-go Geocaches. One of them (GC13T9M "In The Tunnel") turned out to be in the middle of the road, in a culvert. The trick was to enter a rain runoff tunnel 1/4 mile from the actual Geocache and walk inside the tunnel to the culvert to get at it from underneath.
Synthetic pants and Keene sandals helped a lot, because there was no way to get to the cache and stay dry. The tunnel was long and a little creepy. Having cars drive over your head while you try to find a microcontainer is a tad unnerving. Keeping a GPS lock long enough to figure out which drain it was in was an interesting challenge. Needless to say, it was a thoroughly enjoyable Geocache.
Cedar City Geocache
 Entrance to the tunnel. |
 Getting close! Lots of art to admire on the way, too. |
 Looking up. The geocache is a teeny little micro stuffed in a crack right over my head. It took a while to locate it, but I was NOT giving up easily on this one! |
 Half way between the tunnel entrance and the cache, from above. The cache is at the drain in front of the white car. |
 The drain the cache is under. In the distance, just to the right of the silver car, you can see a concrete barrier. That's the entrance to the tunnel. |
 Dude! You're about to drive right over a Geocache! I could have charged several drivers for a detailed underbody inspection. |
Then it was home for a yummy supper of ham, potatoes, string beans, and applesauce. Mathea stayed in the pool until 8:00PM, which was nice because the pool was a lot less busy but unfortunate because she was still energized when we tried to get her to bed at 9:00, and had a lot of difficulty going to sleep.