Great Basin National Park

I had a hard time getting this crew up this morning.  We dragged into breakfast at nine.  Breakfast was all homemade – pancakes, bacon, eggs. 

After breakfast, we showered up and enjoyed the sun outside our room.  We watched a mommy and daddy cliff swallow feed their three baby birds in a nest right outside our door.  I don’t think they liked us hanging around too much. 

We took it easy most of the morning.  The girls played while I worked on the blog.  I have been having a lot of technical difficulties and the super slow internet speeds are not helping much at all. 

We ate lunch in the room and then headed out for the National Park.  

SE was asleep before we were off the dirt road.

The girls got their Junior Ranger badges.

We attended a ranger program on bird calls.  

We knew we wanted to do a cave tour and we were considering several different hikes.  Lily started getting worried about the cave.  We told her we would check it out and she didn’t have to do it if she didn’t want to ( I wasn’t really looking forward to hanging out in a cold, wet place with a bunch of bats anyway).  She wanted to try, but as soon as she saw the big wooden door that was the entrance, that would have to be closed, she couldn’t do it.  She felt really disappointed in herself and was sad that she couldn’t go.  I told her to not get down on herself.  She has accomplished so many things this summer and beaten so many fears already.  We shrugged this one off and went to get ice cream!  We spread a blanket out on the grass under a tree, ate our ice cream, and read our books. 

When Sarah Ellen and James were done with the tour, they joined us on the blanket and told us all about it. 

The cave stays a cool 50 degrees, and for the most part, we were about 100' under ground.

Some of the passages were pretty narrow.

We decided we were all much too tired for any hikes, so we opted for dinner.  We ate at the Lectrolux Café.  This was an ecletic café/bar/inn/store and the food was great.  We overdid it a little with THREE desserts.  

When we made it back, I had a bit of a tummy ache so James took the girls out to explore some more.  They came home with a handful of baby apples and pears.  They saw sheep, cows, baby turkeys, a horse, and the dogs.