We made our way back to the bus and went to The Grotto stop. I’m not sure why it is called the Grotto. We were already running up against the last bus back to the visitor centre. Truthfully, bus rides are one of the kids’ favourite parts. We had over an hour before the last bus, and we decided to try the 2.3-km hike to Lower Emerald Pools.
We took a bridge over the river, switch backs up an embankment and started along a trail following the river. John was slow; Gen and the girls raced ahead. John had to poo on the trail, so we had to find a flat enough spot for him to go and then to bury the evidence (I packed out the wipes we used to clean up). We kept hiking until we met the girls coming the other direction and then I carried John back to the bus. The emerald pools weren’t very emerald anymore due to the lack of rainfall.
The final stop of the day was the Court of the Patriarchs shuttle stop. It had a 200 m long trail to a viewpoint of three peaks that had biblical names – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was a quick walk up, some very nice scenery and a quick walk down to catch the second last bus of the day. We returned to the visitor centre with the intention of doing one more hike; we ate some dinner and by that time it was getting dark. We went back to the visitor centre for a final set of washroom breaks and left Zion.
Our next big stop was Las Vegas. I wanted to drive right to Vegas so we were there in the morning. Gen had found out that a town called St. George had swim facilities, free camping and a Golden Corral (she had yet to have her birthday dinner at her favourite buffet). She wanted to make a stop.
We started to narrow down where we wanted to stay and we had just passed some good spots right off the highway. Gen settled on a place that was a little out of the way but a pleasant little spot beside a river. We turned down the road to the spot and it started out paved, turned into a well-maintained dirt road, and then started becoming sandy. I was hesitant to go further but then we saw a little Prius coming the other way and figured if it can make it, we should be able to. We then saw a rutted, intensely sandy spot where someone had obviously become stuck, and I started becoming worried. We had been going down a slight grade and there was nowhere for a trailer to turn around. We made it through and kept going. We came to a fork in the road, and we should have set-up shop but the map said we needed to go further to the Recreation area for a spot. At this point the road didn’t look that bad so we figured we would keep going. Ten metres later we were stuck in sand. We tried to get out with no luck.
We set-up the trailer and put the kids to bed. We then started to phone CAA to try to get a tow. A bit of advice, CAA does not go down dirt roads for a tow. Next step, we phoned a local tow company. We sent him screen shots of our location and pictures of the Santa Fe and trailer stuck in the sand. He came back with a quote of $1400. He wanted to quote the worst-case scenario. If his tow truck got stuck, then we would have to pay to get him towed.
This was not good. We decided to sleep on it and deal with it in the morning. Gen dreamt that she was going to single handedly dig the trailer out of the sand to avoid paying $1400.
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