Today we went to Zions National Park. Had a late start this morning after getting in pretty late last night from Salt Lake. Wooden pull into the campaign until 10:30 and then it took us an hour to set up camp and get the kids to bed. We stayed at Leeds RV camp and because we were hoping to go hiking to Kanarraville Falls. When we looked at the weather forecast this morning it's not and if I was going to be 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Kanarraville Falls I reached by hiking through a Slot Canyon and through ankle-deep water. We thought I might be too cold for the kids so instead opted to go to Zion's National Park. We have no big plans we have been to Zions several times over the past few years so we took it pretty easy. Part of the reason why we chose to go camping this week and to take advantage of 4th grade pass that Emilia gets this year.
We didn't expect the park to be so busy, but the lines to enter the park were pretty long. we had an electronic copy of the pass we had received by email. When we got to the gate the park ranger asked that we provide a printed copy. So after wearing in the queue to get in we had to drive to the Springville library a few miles away.By that time it was getting close to lunch time, so we opted to let the kids play in the playground next to the library and eat lunch.
As with our last few trips, we looked for some geocaches nearby. We found two of them walking distant from where we had lunch. We had no luck on our first attempt, but we found the second one without much trouble.
We then decided to head back into Zion NP. The kids got the junior park ranger work books from the visitor center. each age has different age requirements. Stella had to complete two pages, Carson had to do seven, and Emilia twelve.
It took several hours to get it all done, for the kids were very proud of their badges and rightly so. I think the parents should get badges too any time to help their kids get theirs.
We stopped at the visitor center to watch an overview video of the park, hiked the weeping wall and walked around looking for answers to various questions found in the kids' ranger workbooks.
At the end of our visit the kids were sworn in as Jr. Rangers and received their badges.
