Last Grover Day

How far behind am I? Let’s see. Our last day in Grover was June 30, so I’m only eleven days behind. A lot can happen in eleven days, but I may as well start at the very beginning—the end of our Grover trip.

We woke up early-ish to hike through Sulphur Creek. We brought our hiking backpack with us but in the end decided not to take Rachel with us and left her and Miriam behind with Grandma. We also didn’t take our camera because we had remembered the hike being rather wet.

This year, however, the water was rather low. The hike seemed so much easier than we remembered it being, probably due to the fact that the water was running clear instead of chocolate red and that it was only ankle deep instead of knee deep. We were so looking forward to getting to the third and final waterfall—when the water is high enough you can slide down the waterfall and swim to shore. That’s what we did last year. But when we got to the waterfall we saw that the pool at the bottom was only knee-deep, so instead of sliding we just climbed down.

We arrived at the visitor’s center mostly dry and hardly even exhausted, but that was alright because we still had to pack up camp. By the time we had finished loading up the vehicles we were all worn out.

It’s only a three hour drive and we stopped three times, mostly to deal with some little girls (and to switch up drivers). We stopped in the middle of no where to get Miriam settled down and while I did that Grandpa took Rachel to visit some sheep he spotted in a pasture. Then we stopped at a gas station to use the restrooms and switch drivers.

It was decided that Grandpa would drive the van and Daddy would drive the car, so Grandma and Grandpa got in the van and started driving away and Daddy hopped into the driver’s seat and went to get the keys out of his pocket but found his pocket to be empty.

He got out of the car and started chasing down the van. He caught up with it shortly before it turned out of the gas station lot and started banging on the side, but Grandpa didn’t stop. Andrew kept chasing the van all the way to the entrance of the freeway before he got Grandpa to stop so that he could get the keys.

That was rather comical and we thought that the rest of the trip would go off without a hitch. We were wrong.

When we were about an hour away from home Rachel started complaining that she had to go to the bathroom.

“We just stopped like twenty minutes ago and you went then,” I told her.

“But I only went pee pee, and now I need to do poo-poos!” she wailed. “My tummy hurts so bad!”

“Can you hold it until we get to the next town? There is no where to stop here.”

“I have to go right now! Please!”

By now she is crying and carrying on but we make her wait until we make it to Nephi and then we pull off and Andrew rushes her into a restaurant to use the restroom.

There she perches on the toilet and a wicked grin spreads across her face. “I didn’t really have to go,” she giggled, “I just wanted to get out of the car!”

Andrew told her that she was in big trouble and that he was going to put her back in the car and that he didn’t want to hear a peep out of her until we got home. She was very remorseful and when he put her in the car her head was hanging in shame. She reached over and grabbed her favourite blanket from my lap and pulled it over her head and sat like that for the entire hour ride home.

Granted, she fell asleep, otherwise I don’t think she would have been able to maintain her silence, but still.

It was a good camping trip, we’ve been home for nearly two weeks now and have been battling constant colds the whole time, which probably explains some of the lack of blog posts.