Since it was snowing, we let Katie play outside the visitor's center, making a snowman.

She wanted to do nothing else the entire two days. Mark and I would take turns warming up in the visitor's center, or watching her. Here she is eating snow, next to her snowman:

Mark enjoyed the snow too:

A French-speaking family built this snowman/woman. I tried asking them if it was a Mademoiselle or a Moiseur (I have no idea how to spell or pronounce that--probably that didn't help). The youngest boy must have thought I understood their language and immediately started speaking very quickly, so I have to guess it's a girl.

Now that the summer season is over here, many many of the RV parks have closed. Restaurants, inns, even some gas stations too. It took awhile to find one open near Bryce, but the one we stayed at ended up being really neat. It was built on an old apple orchard, begun 100 years ago by polygamist Mormons (they know their apples, evidently). Here are some pictures:

The owner said to pick as many apples as we could eat--we'd be the last folks here in time to eat them. Because of the frost, they were extra-sweet: the frost had burst some of the cells inside, he said. We made very yummy applesauce from the tiny apples, but they are great to eat just plain. Very very sweet, and they taste like galas. Some day they will be all gone, due to fire blight. Most of his trees have it now, but the owner is clearly trying to save them.

In Cannonville (where we stayed at the KOA) we found this gas station. Too pooped to pump.

The best thing about Cannonville (besides the orchard), was the visitor's center. It had wooden pioneer toys for Katie and tape recorded oral histories for me to listen to and see.

Also we drove down to the Kodachrome state park, which had a beautiful campground with one RV spot with full hookups. If we're ever there again, it will be well worth the $20 to stay there. Lots of scraggly peaks like this to explore:

We left Cannondale for Escalonte, to see the petrified forest and an Anasazi village. We stayed at the worst RV park on this trip so far (probably not as bad as Shelter Cove RV park, but close). Again it was a 3-star in Woodalls, and it was the only park open anywhere nearby. There were trailors with tarps on them, an electrical substation next door, the dump was behind it, there were cigarette butts all over near the office, and two angry barking dogs behind the office, which was manned by Camaro boy. Here are pictures of the place:


The funny thing about this place, though, was it had the best, cleanest bathrooms we've seen the entire trip. This picture doesn't do it justice, but here goes:

Maybe the Woodalls reviewer never left the bathroom.

We didn't get to see the petrified forest, but we stopped at a rock shop nearby and bought a few pieces of petrified wood, including one that has knots in it. The owner was very nice and showed us dinosaur bones and other highlights of his collection. Here is his website: (I'll get it here soon).

The Anasazi village was tres cool. There was an exhibit of an archeologist and a native American both explaining the origins of the Hopi people in their different ways. There was a recreation of some buildings behind the museum, and then there was the excavation showing the actual building walls and foundations. You could see wood supports with black burn marks on them, and the wood looks like they've put it there to show what the original must have looked like, but it Is the original wood. 800 years old and looks brand new. The desert is something else.