Tuesday July 17, 2012

Another chilly morning!  We had breakfast and then rode the shuttle up to the Human History Museum, where we looked at the exhibits and watched a film on Zion.  We got back to the Visitor’s Center and then walked through to catch the town bus.  We stopped at the post office to buy more post card stamps and then walked up to the market for more ice and cold drinks.  Back at camp, we made lunch and then after lunch the kids wanted to go swimming in the Virgin River.  We followed a path through the campground and found a dirt path to the river behind the amphitheatre.  The boys had a blast!  There were several rapids and a small waterfall, which they could float down.  There were a few rocks along the way, but the boys thought banging into them was worth the price of the “ride”.  We stayed for more than an hour until they were ready to come back to camp.  We walked over the footbridge to a small market.  The boys had ice cream while Dave and I sat and used their wifi to post a couple of blog dates.  We came back to camp and wrote in our journals until it was time to start dinner: pork chops, rice, carrots, and applesauce.  The boys did the dishes since I had done the cooking.  We went back down to the river and the boys took a few turns down the rapids again.  Back at camp, we read a few chapters of our book until it was time for the ranger program.  The topic tonight was on water and the life forms that use it here in Zion.  One of the most interesting things we learned was that the beaver here don’t make log dam houses as the frequent flash floods would just wipe them out.  They dig burrows into the side of the river and build their homes into the mud banks.  There is also a small songbird here called the dipper who can dive up to 15 feet into the water to catch prey.  We came back to camp and hopped into our sleeping bags.  I didn’t hear much taking from the boys’ tent – they must have been tired.