The Best I Can Do Today: A National Park Odyssey Day 31

Great Basin National Park to Zion National Park

Want to listen to a podcast about these parks instead?  Click here for Great Basin or here for Zion.

Our fifteenth park!

Thanks to a suggestion from my sister, Amanda, who, upon learning that I was stressed out about the blog and reconsidering my commitment to writing about our summer, encouraged me to channel my inner David Sedaris, this post is going to be different.  That’s why I titled it, “The Best I Can Do Today.”  Because it is.

1. Woke up from my first classroom management nightmare of the summer.  Got really frustrated with myself since I shouldn’t be having school dreams for at least a couple more weeks.
2. Ate French toast and possibly fried SPAM for breakfast.  Really liked it.  Everything tastes better when you’re eating in a remote canyon with no other food around for miles.
3. Packed.  Again.  For the eleventy-billionth time.
4. Drove (or rather, Josh drove and I sat, pseudo-blogged, and slept) eleventy-billion miles across country with so little civilization that we got really excited about tiny places like Milford, Utah, just because they had things like a two-pump gas station and a place called Penny’s Diner that no one wanted to eat at besides me.  I was overruled.
5. Got really, really excited about a town called Cedar City, Utah, where we drove up and down Main Street several times thinking we were in heaven just because they had an Indian restaurant and an artisan ice cream shop.
6. Ate Indian food cooked by a Pakistani guy who forgot to lock the front door of his restaurant so he decided he had to make something for us even though he really meant to be closed at 2:00 on a Wednesday.  And his chicken tikka masala and his chicken curry may have been different colors but they tasted remarkably similar.
7. Shared a double scoop of Tim Tam Slam and Black Currant Blueberry artisan ice cream with Josh and the kids.

   

   This place was delish!  And, to be fair, this picture is actually from our second visit a few days later.  Like I said, it's the best I can do today.

8. Briefly considered checking out the Renaissance Festival that was taking place across the street before remembering that A) it was 99 degrees and B) a Renaissance Festival that is mostly blow-up bounce houses and booths selling fairy wings and Samurai swords is probably not worth the sweat we’d no-doubt find ourselves soaked in after a look around.

   

   Those bounce house makers were real Renaissance men.

9. Let Josh drive some more and recorded a couple of podcasts.
10. Worked really hard not to pull the car over and kick my offspring out on the side of Interstate 15, leaving them there to bicker and pick at each other endlessly so I could nap in peace.
11. Completed our 15^th national park sign photo shoot of the summer.
12. Did a happy dance when we realized that our historic cabin inside Zion National Park had A) air conditioning, B) wifi (sort of), C) both a fridge and a microwave.
    
    

    

    We loved our cabin at Zion!

    
    

    

    The interior was spacious and nicely appointed.

13. Hiked to the Lower, Middle, and Upper Emerald Pools.  Decided that the people who named this national park’s features must have been color blind because those pools were nothing but brown.  And calling them pools is a stretch, too.  Puddles is more apt.

    

    This trickle of a waterfall is what fills the lower pool.

    
    

    

    In this picture, you can actually see some color of green.  Believe me.  It was mostly brown.

14. Ate peanut butter sandwiches for dinner in our cabin.
15. Fell asleep three times waiting for our next podcast episode to upload because national parks aren't known for their fabulous wifi.
16. Resisted the urge to throw my computer across the room.
17. Set my alarm for 5:20 the next morning to get ready to hike The Narrows.  Slept all night without dreaming of school a single time.