Friday we spent the whole day in Utah. The plan had been to first tour Timpanogos Cave. I scheduled our tour for 7:45 because I thought the kids would want to have more time at Snowbird. Paul didn't sleep with a pillow on Wednesday night, and he wasn't feeling well on Thursday. Because of this and the fact that I can't drive, I cancelled our cave tour. There weren't tickets available to switch the time. So we had a very leisurely morning as we didn't leave the hotel until 10am. It was a grab and go breakfast so I just ate some oatmeal that I had brought from home. The only thing I was able to ride was the tram to the top of the mountain as I could ride that via wheelchair. I spent the rest of the day sitting in a wheelchair watching Paul and the kids do various things like a mountain coaster, a slide that reminded Paul and I of one we rode down the Great Wall when we were in China in 2006, a ropes course, bungee trampoline, etc. Paul didn't participate in everything, but he did most of the activities. Oliver was very proud of the fact he climbed a little higher than Paul did on the tree climbing apparatus. Ian was the only one of our three who did flips on the bungee trampoline. All four of them also rode a Peruvian chairlift to the top of the mountain which was a 40 minute round trip ride. After we left Snowbird we first tried to have dinner at a Cheesecake Factory, but their was a very long wait for a table (up to 1.75 hours). We had dinner at a Longhorn Steakhouse instead and will try to go to Cheesecake Factory in Albuquerque instead. This was the first time in our vacation that we were told we'd have to wait for a table at a restaurant. The last time the kids and I were with my brother, we ate dinner with him at a Texas Roadhouse near his apartment in Philadelphia in November 2018. After dinner we drove to a hotel closer to Bryce Canyon. The employee at the registration desk switched my room to one one on the first floor after he saw me come in with crutches and a boot. He gave me a hard time that I hadn't noted that in the comments section when I made the reservation. I tried to explain that I made the reservation a long time before I broke my ankle. We drove a total of 263 miles that day and didn't visit any National Parks.
We also spent the whole day in Utah on Saturday. We had a hot breakfast at the hotel and then drove to Kodachrome State Park. Paul and the kids rode horses through the park for 2 hours while I sat in the van. Their horses names were Comanche (Oliver's), Oreo (Nadia's), Zeke (Ian's), and Annie May (Paul's). I love horseback riding, and the last time I went was in August 2001 in St. Lucia on our honeymoon. Yesterday was Paul's second time horseback riding in his life because our ride in 2001 was his first time. The kids hadn't gone horseback riding since 2019. Aside from a little bit of rain when we were at Effigy Mounds in Iowa, we have had sunny weather our whole trip until yesterday. The weather forecast for most of the morning and afternoon was showing around 50% chance or rain. Thankfully, it didn't rain while we were in Kodachrome. It was a bit warmer than they forecasted. I was rather toasty sitting in the van in a long sleeve shirt and pants. However, I was thankful for the long sleeves at our second stop, Bryce Canyon. When I was a child, Bryce Canyon was one of my favorite places we visited out west. We watched the movie in the Visitor Center and the kids worked on their Junior Ranger booklets while it was raining. We took a shuttle to the Visitor Center. We stayed there a bit to wait for it to stop raining. We rode the shuttle through the park. However we didn't get off at all the stops I had planned in light of the fact that getting off and on the bus was challenging for me as it involved going up and down several stairs. It also started raining while Paul and the kids were exploring the second stop a bit. We then returned to the Visitor Center so the kids could turn in their booklets for badges. By the time we left, it was sunny again. We stopped at Mossy Cave on the way out of the park. I stayed in the van and Paul and the kids hiked to a waterfall. We had dinner at a non chain restaurant, which meant we didn't use a gift card. We ate at The Pizza Place, and the kids and Paul really, really liked the pizza! Then we drove about 30 minutes to a little hole in what we are wall motel, and the sad thing is that it cost more than what we paid almost every other night of the trip. We had one room, but it had three beds. We got to the hotel earlier than usual. They didn't have a pool so the kids watched some tv before we went to bed. We drove a total of 174 miles that day, which is definitely less than usual on this trip. We haven't made any progress on our license plate game lately. We're still looking for Rhode Island!
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