Our Mini Vacation

A couple of weeks ago, I received an e-mail from my Tupperware account. An awesome girl named Ashley wanted to do a Tupperware party and she was wondering if I would like to help her out. I was so excited! These sorts of opportunities don't come by every day (at least not for me)...

Then I asked her where she lived. When she said Manila, Utah, I immediately hopped on Google and started looking at the map. My heart sank. It was a three-hour drive and that was the short way through Wyoming! I called my manager to ask her if she would take care of it, but she didn't answer her phone so I just left her a message.

In the meantime, I called my sweetie. During the course of our conversation, I happened to mention this party and my disappointment. "Why don't you see if she can do it over spring break?" he suggested. "Then we can take the kids and run away for the weekend." That's why I love this man!

Oh, I knew that I couldn't really make enough on the party to pay for the whole trip, but it would help and we could write off the gas and other expenses. I hopped back online and started looking for hotels. Manila is small, only about 800 people this time of year, but it is only about 40 miles away from Vernal and we hadn't taken the kids there in about 15 years. I had heard that their Quarry exhibit was brand new and amazing.

It looked like the hotels were going to be too expensive and we might have to give up the party anyway, but then I got on the Super 8 website. I could get a room there for $55/night and they had an indoor pool and free breakfast. You can't beat that! So I made the reservations. Sometime during the week, Bossy got wind of our plans and was so excited to come that I called and added another room.

We took off Thursday morning and stopped in Roosevelt for lunch. The kids enjoyed the park there and they made me go down the slide. It was so silly...

We rolled into Vernal about 3:00 and hunted down the Scout Shop. Our Cub Scouts wanted to earn the Quarry patch and the Flaming Gorge patch and it would be much easier to just get them while we were in town. After that we spent an hour or so at the Dinosaur Museum. The kids loved the outdoor dinosaur garden and they had to pose with every one of them. The Dog Walker was voted the most Jurassic-like. Is that a good thing???!

We checked into the motel and got settled, then we headed out to dinner. The lady at the scout shop had recommended the Seven Eleven Ranch. It was a little pricey for us, but the kids loved the food and everyone was stuffed by the time we left.

Back at the hotel we took a quick dip in the pool, but the heater was broken and it was SOO cold! After warming up in the hot tub, we found our rooms and settled in for the evening.
 
On Friday morning, we arrived at the Quarry just before 10:00. I don't really remember much about the old museum, but this one is so amazing! They have basically built a building around part of the mountain and the mountain has been chipped away to reveal hundreds of actual dinosaur bones and you can even touch some of them!

After we left the Quarry, we went on a driving tour to see some of the petroglyphs and other sights. My sweetie took hundreds of pictures but he is trying to win a contest at work so most of them don't have people in them. Our last stop of the day was the dam at Flaming Gorge. We missed the last tour by 20 minutes, but it was still beautiful and we were able to watch a video and look around the visitor's center. We drove across the dam and stopped at the overlook.


We got back to Vernal about 5:30 and stopped at Little Caesar's for pizza. I'm thinking it was hotel time, but Bossy had one more auto tour she wanted to do before it got dark. She had read about some petroglyphs at the McConkie ranch west of town...

When we got there, the kids all piled out of the van and took off with Bossy up the steep mountain trail. By the time I got Baby Doll out of the van and bundled up in her jacket, they were no where to be seen. So my sweetie and I and Baby Doll started up the path...and I use that term loosely...


Even in my younger days I don't remember going up a trail like that one. There were quite a few times I kept thinking maybe we should just turn around, but we didn't. I was hauling Baby Doll because there was no way she could climb it herself. My sweetie was carrying his expensive camera and no, I didn't want to trade.

We finally got to the top and started back down. The kids had finished the trail and come back up the other way to help us (although I'm pretty sure we could have managed without them...I'm not that old!) After we were finally all safely back in the van, we headed for the hotel. The heater in the pool had been fixed and we spent over an hour playing with the kids and causing chaos.

This post is getting so long, I guess I'll have to finish it up tomorrow...Don't forget to come back!