We woke up and left early with the hopes of having time to make a few stops along the way and still get Cole's rental car back by 6pm.
On the road...
(just ignore the bug splotches on the winshield of my car :) )
Cole and the boys in the rental car ahead of Talia and me. They had a book on CD they were going to listen to, leaving Talia free to watch movies to her heart's content, and me the freedom of paying closer attention to the road.
While we were stopped at a construction zone, I took advantage and took some pictures...
We drove for a few hours, getting back into southern Utah. We were excited to stop at Moqui Cave...
Rocks and Minerals, found in the cave during excavation.
They also had a very nice collection of petrified dinosaur tracks.
Talia has been fascinated with Cacti this entire trip...so I had to get a picture of her with a couple of different types...
The cave extends back into the mountain a little over 200 feet. In the late 1800's/early 1900's, it was actually made into a saloon, and then kind of a community center when things got more settled in the area. The family that currently owns and operates it has owned it since that time, and still excavates on the property for artifacts and such. It was pretty neat, although a little expensive for what you got.
Our family...
The proprietor took this picture, which shows the scope of the entrance, but not our family well. So, I did a little editing...
We had a good time, and it was nice to get out of the car for an hour.
The next stop on our journey was a rock shop near the mines at Orderville. Alec is collecting rocks, Kyle is still fascinated by rocks (although he's given up his "childish" collection, for now :)), Talia loves rocks, Cole loves rocks, and I love natural stone beads...okay, I love rocks too. We all have a fascination. It was a really neat shop...
I bought some beautiful blue quartz beads that I can't wait to make into some fun jewelry, Both the boys bought some rocks for their collections, we let Talia pick a small bag of tumbled stones (of course, she mostly picked pink and purple ones :) ), and Cole got a neat spook stone and a small skull carved and polished out of Blue agate (I think). It was a short stop, but we all got what we wanted.
After that, we still had a long drive ahead of us. We thought we would make it to the rental car place in time...until we got stuck in traffic right before Provo. As it was, we were only about a 1/2 an hour late to drop off the car. Then, we had to cram the rest of the luggage and all 5 of us into my car for the remainder of the trip home. It's a good thing it was only about 40 minutes, the poor kids were packed in the backseat, I was sharing footspace with one of the coolers, and the back was piled all the way to the ceiling. We made it home safely, however, and we were really glad to be home.
