Bryce Canyon City, Utah

“All Bert, no Ernie” is Nole’s way of reminding us how to make sure the camper locks are all set correctly before we leave. There are many locks…all the beds have two locks plus the door and the storage hatches. All have to be set to “Bert” before we go!

We woke up bright and early to get to Beeman which was a heavy equipment repair shop to get our camper patched up. We dropped it off with Dick at about 7am and filled the gas tank so we would be ready to hit the road when it was done. We stopped for some snacks and drinks for breakfast and tried coffee and chai latte from Wicked Brew, a coffee shop in town. We took everything back to our campsite and found a shady spot to rest until the trailer was finished.

I read my book, Nole, the girls and I worked on scratch art kits I bought yesterday at Walker Drug and the boys played games together on Cal’s laptop. Just as I finished the last page of my book, a text came from Dick that our trailer was ready.

After picking it up, we stopped for snacks and drinks from a gas station to substitute for lunch and hit the road towards Bryce Canyon. Originally we were going to stay two nights a few hours north of Bryce to visit a fossil dig place and some lava tubes. Then we decided to skip that (fossil hunting was expensive and it added hours to the drive) and go to Zion National Park. THEN the trailer drama happened and we spent last night in Moab. When we were able to head out today, we decided to go to Bryce a day early and hope to nab a first-come first-serve site. Our official reservation starts tomorrow night.

About 20 minutes into the drive I remembered that I didn’t lock the back hatch door. Nole pulled over and I went back and locked it. Luckily the drill hadn’t fallen out or anything and we were good to go!

Driving was uneventful. We stopped three times for gas and stopped at Walmart for groceries for the next 3 days. We normally keep our dishes in a plastic basket but with all the sand and dust, the dishes were needing to be washed twice. Once before we used them and once after we used them. So we also bought a tote with a lid to keep them in.

We got to Kodachrome Basin State Park at about 7pm and we got a first-come first-serve site. Lucky for us, it is the same site we had reserved for Thursday and Friday so we don’t have to move! I made steak stir fry for dinner.

Even though this is a state park, they have their own Junior Ranger Program! What a nice surprise! They also have some ranger led programs we can check out. They have nice hiking trails and bike trails here. There are gnats which kind of sucks unless you like having them fly into your eyes and ears anytime you go outside. Better than mosquitos? Hard to say… We tried vanilla against them but it didn’t work. We will try bug spray tomorrow.

There is no cell data here at all so we all drove down to the visitor center to use theirs for a while before bed. We also bought some DVDs at Walmart that we can watch on an old laptop we brought along for that purpose.

Total miles today: 285 miles