WSOP Road Trip 2014 Day 6

Objectives: Spend the day in Zion National Park! Complete an appropriately challenging family-friendly hike, swim in the Virgin River, and get back to the campground before the gate closes at 9PM.

The Emerald Pools

After five days of heavy driving, we’d covered enough ground that we could afford a full day of idle fun. It began with a hike to the Emerald Pools, a series of three pools about half a mile apart. This gave us the flexibility to choose a round trip as short as one mile or as long as three miles.

The first pool, formed by water that seeps through limestone cliffs and carves a sort of cave as it makes its way to the Virgin River, was a hit. The kids enjoyed climbing around the cave and weren’t too enthusiastic about hiking further along the trail, even though Oliver in particular had spent much of the past day whining about how he wanted to go hiking.

We’d told the kids we could turn around at the second pool, but when we got there, it was so underwhelming that Jerica told them we weren’t quite there yet. Distance-wise, there really wasn’t much further to go, only 4/10 of a mile. What we didn’t know is that this last leg of the trail involved by far the most elevation gain and exposure to the sun.

The kids, already fussy, were soon downright rebellious (even the one riding in a sling on his mother’s back). I kept trying to give themwater, but they insisted thirst wasn’t their problem. As Henry barked at me, “I’m not dehydrated, my head hurts!”, which is in fact one of the chief symptoms of dehydration.

Thankfully the third pool was shady and surrounded by rocks for the kids to climb, so once we arrived we cooled off and and had a snack and some more water, at which point they were ready to forgive our earlier deception. The pool was full of tadpoles that they could catch in their hands and then gently release back into the water, and they made friends with some other kids that way.

The Virgin River

Oliver was wearing his Little Mole backpack that my friend Miklos brought for him from Hungary. I’d secretly hoped that some Eastern European tourist would recognize it and wonder how this little American boy ended up wearing a Czech cartoon character on his back, and to my delight that’s exactly what happened. A young man passed us on our way down the trail and stopped to point at the backpack. “Do you know the cereal?” he asked in heavily accented English (though now that I think about it he might have meant “serial”).

“I don’t think we know the cereal,” Jerica told him.

He continued to shake his head in bewilderment. “This is Czech character…. I am Czech!” he told us. I tried to explain how the backpack came into Oliver’s possession, but his English was good enough to follow the story in detail.

By the time we got back to the trailhead everyone was tired and hungry, so we had a leisurely lunch at the cafe at Zion Lodge. Mostly the boys were too tired to act up, though Oliver had a bit of a meltdown when Walter, out of nowhere, snatched up a sheet of paper he (Oliver) had been drawing on and crumped it into a ball.

“Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!” Oliver shrieked, throwing back his chair and collapsing onto the floor. “He ruined it!”

Jerica handled this really well. “Oliver,” she said firmly but without raising her voice or losing her cool. “Get off the ground and look around you. Look at how everyone is staring at you. They don’t want to listen to you scream right now.” He met her halfway, remaining on the ground but looking around and then seemingly feeling chagrined. He quieted down, and a minute or two later got up and sat back down at the table. Tears now streaming silently down his face, he unfolded the otherwise-fine paper and got back to drawing.

As far as I know, Jerica has always had this philosophy of parenting that she wants her kids to understand that her expectations aren’t just arbitrary rules that she makes up but are shared by society at large. Even before Emily and I knew the kids well, she encouraged us to correct their behavior if we didn’t like anything they were doing. “I want them to hear it from as many people as possible,” she explained.

After lunch, we took the park shuttle as deep as it goes into the canyon, disembarking at a spot called the Temple of Sinawava and then trekking even further in on foot. The boys were sick of walking, and we’d told them they could swim in the river. Jerica and I wanted to get as far as we could into the canyon before stopping, though, because the deeper we got the more the canyon narrowed so that you could really feel the cliffs rising steeply on either side of you. This required convincing the boys to forego the first obvious swimming hole, which worked out well for them anyway because it was overrun with people and we eventually found a great spot that they could have all to themselves.

As soon as we reached the bank of the river, Oliver declared that he had to poop. Panic swept across Jerica’s face, and I offered to walk with him the ¾ of a mile back to the shuttle stop, where there was a bathroom, but she told me, “He’s not going to make it.” She thought for about twenty seconds and then realized she was carrying diapers for Walter, so she and Oliver disappeared behind a rocky outcropping and took care of that.

The older boys had a blast swimming and playing in the sand and on the rocks. Walter found a stick and amused himself by tossing it into the current and then shrieking until one of his brothers retrieved it for him. They were far more patient with this game than I would have been.

Cutting It Close

I was conscious of our 9PM deadline for getting back to the campsite, but we ended up leaving the swimming hole nearly an hour earlier than I’d conservatively estimated we should. We poked around the Visitors Center for a few minutes until that closed, and then I suggested that the picnic tables there would make a better spot for dinner than our campsite, which had virtually no shelter from the sun.

We were eating a leisurely dinner when Jerica suddenly asked me, “Is it 8:00?”

“Naw,” I told her dismissively, then checked my phone, which read 8:13. “It’s after 8.” With about a 40-minute drive between the Visitors Center and our campground, we hastily packed up the car and tore out of the parking lot. Several of our fellow drivers had the gall to take their time and enjoy the setting sun on their drive out of the park, so I amused and horrified Jerica by passing them on a two-lane road (as you might imagine, I’m generally a very conservative driver, and that had been a running joke between us over the course of the trip).

“Don’t worry about it, Andrew. We’ll probably just have to park on the road outside of the campground and carry our things in. If they even close the gate when they say they will. This kind of thing happens to me all the time.”

“Not to me it doesn’t,” I told her, leaning on the gas. “And we’re not late yet.”

“We’re not going to make it, Andrew.”

“The hell we aren’t.”

We made it to the entrance of the state park at 8:55, but we still had to reach the campground entrance, which actually required driving down a road that looked out over the campground. As we did, Henry suddenly giggled. “I see Andrew’s tent, and it got blown over!”

“No you don’t see my tent!” I insisted, but I instantly knew that he did. He’s not clever enough to time a gag like that so perfectly.

We pulled into the campground at 9 on the dot. I wish I could tell you that the tires were squealing and the gate closing, but in truth we probably had at least a few minutes to spare.

Sure enough, we pulled up to our site to find my tent upside down in a nearby gully. I hadn’t staked it down, as the tent pad was rocky and sandy, but I had put some big rocks inside. Apparently they didn’t do the trick. Henry was lauging hysterically, but he was legitimately helpful in pulling the tent out of the gully.

His brothers had fallen asleep in the back of the car, so he and I had a little time to ourselves to toss around the Aerobie and play Crazy 8s. It was nice to have some one-on-one time with him, because he’s capable of being really mature for his age (he just turned 8) when in the company of adults. Because of his little brothers and the stress of the trip, I’d mostly seen his childish side in the last few days, and I’d lost my patience with him more than once. I ended up getting a much-needed reminder of what a good kid he really is. Also he schooled me at Crazy 8s.