Day 2 - Dino Discovery and Zion NP

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With a big day ahead of us, we wanted to get up and going right away. We were checking out of our room by 7:30 am so we could meet our friend, Dawn Kiss, for a breakfast buffet at a hotel restaurant by 8:00 am. Dawn had worked in our church nursery when Paul was little, so it was very fun to reconnect with her. Afterwards we walked outside to quickly look out at the strip one more time before getting in the car for our two hour drive to St. George, Utah. Our drive took us out of Nevada, through a corner of Arizona, and into Utah. In St. George, we visited the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm. In 2000 a bunch of dinosaur tracks were discovered here and they built this museum around the tracks. Not only are the tracks great in number but they are very unique in that there are long stretches of straight tracks by the same dinosaur. Paul most enjoyed using the dinosaur rubbings at the coloring table and Levi liked running! It was becoming more and more apparent to us that Paul wasn't feeling well. By the time we left, he had a low fever. Poor kid! He wanted so badly to be having fun. On our way out of St. George we made a special stop at an In-and-Out Burger so Todd could get a Utah t-shirt! Paul and Levi both slept on our drive into Zion National Park. The drive was beautiful and so was the park. Turns out they were doing a controlled burn along the river right next to the Zion Lodge (in the National Park) where we were staying, so everything smelled a little smoky. After checking in we took a short hike to the Lower Emerald Pool. This totally wore Paul out. He went straight back to the hotel for bed. Todd went and got takeout dinner from the Dining Room (where we had dinner reservations) so we could eat in the room while Paul slept. Paul did wake up and was interested in going to see the beginning of the Ranger Talk at the Zion Lodge with Todd. They enjoyed learning about the park's animals while Sarah tried everything to get Levi to sleep. Although she thought she had him to sleep twice, he didn't stay asleep in the crib until Todd took him for a long walk around the lodge. With both boys finally down, we hung out in the bathroom (I'm sensing a theme here) to look at photos. Another long and exciting day. Hopefully we'll all sleep well and Paul will be feeling better in the morning.

Day 2 Stats

• 575 total miles driven
• 23.1 total gallons of gasoline consumed
• Average 24.8 MPG
• 10 hours, 45 minutes in the car
• 16 additional state licenses plates and 3 Canadian plates

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