Vernal Trip: Sunday is a special day

It's always tricky to know how to keep Sunday a special day when you're on vacation.  Today turned out just lovely. 

Matt usually has early meetings on Sunday, and we have 9 o'clock sacrament meeting, so it was nice that we could sleep in a little because just a few blocks down from our hotel was the Naples second board meeting at 11am.  We were asked several times if we were visiting family or friends. When we responded that we were visiting because we hadn't ever been here before everyone responded with something similar to, "Why would you choose to come here?"  We thought that was a funny response.  We decided to stay for all the block meetings. Kate and Daniel did great in nursery. Matt and I had conversations throughout the rest of the day based on interesting comments made in sunday school and a combined meeting.

We put together lunch with the leftovers from the previous day and snacks from the car. Then we attempted nap time by turning off all the lights tucking in Kate and Daniel and turning on the cartoon 'Prince of Egypt.' It did not work.  When either one of them started to slow down and look like they might drift off the other one would do something like jump on top of them or stick their foot in the other's face. After about an hour of this we decided to take a little drive to see the temple and then follow a driving tour through parts of Dinosaur land National Park. 

We made a quick stop at the famous pink dinosaur that welcomes everyone to Vernal.  As a side note, they had these amazing flower baskets all throughout Vernal and the surrounding towns. They were this big everywhere and they lined the streets.  Someone in the Uintah basin has some mad gardening skills!

Then we were off to the temple. The Vernal temple was originally the Uintah tabernacle built in 1907. The temple was completed in 1997. It really was a pretty little temple with a very pioneer feel to it. It has very small grounds that were fun to walk around with Kate and Daniel. They both ran from flower to tree to temple and back again, very excited to be at the temple. Kate kept saying she wanted to go in.  We explained to her that it was closed on Sundays.  When we got home the first thing she told Amy was that we went to the temple but she couldn't go in because it's closed on Sundays and none of us were getting married.  We tried to take a picture in front with Kate Daniel and Oliver. Kate got distracted by all the cute little pine cones. She gathered them together in her dress and brought them over to where we were waiting. Here are how those pictures turned out.  I don't think we'll be hanging on our walls ;).

 

When we started to leave she was distraught at the thought of leaving all of her pine cones. We told her she could bring one. She said "Okay, I'll just bring one for me, and one for Daniel Oden, and one for Oliver, and one for Mama and one for Daddy..."  She ended up bringing them all. However, transporting them to the car was a little bit more difficult than she expected so they were all abandoned in the parking lot.

 

We were not surprised when both Kate and Daniel fell asleep within a few minutes of us getting in the car after we saw the temple. That ended up working out fine since it was a little ways before the driving tour began.  Once we started the driving tour, we saw some petroglyphs that were made by the Fremont Indians approximately 1000 years ago. Kate and Oliver were asleep when we got to the first set (that were a little less impressive), so Matt and Daniel ran up to take a look. 

There were some other really cool ones (they had pictures of them in our booklet) that we would have liked to have seen closer but you had to hike up a pretty steep very rocky hike before you could get close enough to see them well. There were also geologic formations such as Elephant Toes...

 

and Turtle Rock...

...that were fun to point out to Kate and Daniel. We stopped at a little picnic area by the river to have dinner. There were a lot of little cottontail rabbits hopping around that made for an extra exciting meal. We took a brief walk down to the river's edge before getting back in the car. Kate and Daniel or both sad that they couldn't sit down and play in the sand. I'd really like to get a sandbox and our house. They just love it.

The end of the tour is at the old homestead in ranch of a woman named Josie. She died in the 1960s after living there for over 50 years. Her little cabin is still there.

By the time we got home we were all quite tired Kate and Daniel or verging on grouchy at this point. So we brushed teeth, got in pajamas, had prayer, and turned off all the lights. Everyone was ready to go to bed except for Oliver. I stayed up with him for a while. I dozed off with him by my side, then woke and put him to bed. What a pleasant day.