Day 9

This morning was rough waking up early because Brett didn't sleep very well last night after 2 nights in his comfy pack n' play. Tired and stressed from losing our camera, we ate another pancake breakfast hosted by the KOA. Brett hadn't gotten a bath in 2 days so he was desperate for a good cleaning. He doesn't like showers to begin with and this time certainly wasn't going to make him change his mind. It started out warm but within 15 seconds of it getting hot, was immediately cold again. Outsiders probably could have assumed we were trying to kill the poor little guy from the way he was screaming. I quickly soaped him up, rinsed him off and handed him to Lance holding a dry towel. Next up, Sophia. She held her footing as I tried to get her in the water but as I was doing so it miraculously started warming up. Sophia didn't care. She was screaming as loud as Brett at this point even though she was standing under a warm stream. She wanted out!! Kicking and screaming, I managed to get her bathed and handed her to Lance as I took Brett back into the warm shower, thinking he would then calm down. He didn't. Renee must have heard all the screaming because Lance was going to take Sophia back to the motor home to get her changed but she offered too from outside the door. So Renee took Sophia and Lance dressed Brett while I got my shower.

We did another hunt through all of our things again in the daylight for our camera. Still nothing. Our last hope was that we had left it at Casey and Jay's house. But we were thinking it got stolen out of the car when we had the oil changed. I gave Casey a call but she wasn't home so was going to get back with us as soon as she checked around the house.

We headed back towards the pancake tent where we met another Coast Guard family who we met just a few weeks ago when Lance was at his Safety course in Washington DC. What a small world. They were moving from Arizona out to DC.

After packing up, we headed out to Arches National Park. At the entrance station, George flashed his Park Service badge at the woman and she knew George. They had worked together in Acadia National Park many years ago! What a small world!

The park was amazing. It was pretty hot so we didn't do as much hiking as we could have, but still got to see a bunch of arches. Lance and I went off by ourselves, while George and Renee watched the kids, for a hike up to see the Delicate Arch. The one plastered on everything “Utah,” license plates, billboards, and the like.

Casey called and left a message while we were in the park, she found the camera!!! It was under the blankets of the bed we slept on!! What a relief! We were so happy. If the camera had been gone, it wouldn't have been the end of the world, whats a few hundred bucks. It was the loss of all the pictures we had on that card that was making us sick. We usually load all of our pictures onto the computer as often as possible for that exact reason, if it ever gets lost. But because of the move and all of our stuff being everywhere, we just hadn't gotten around to it in several weeks. So when Casey said that she had our camera, we were so so happy. We had her overnight it to George's friends house, where we are going to be in a few days. We didn't want to have to stress about the weekend and whether or not the mail would arrive, again, so we spent the extra buck to just get it there, with tracking!

Exhausted from the heat and lack of sleep, we knew we weren't going to make it all the way to the grand canyon like we had originally planned. So we decided to take a slightly different route and head to Mesa Verde, back in Colorado. One of the best decisions we could have made. It was only about a 2 and a half hour drive so by the time we got there, the kids had time to swim in the pool and we all got to unwind a little before bed time. There was actually civilization in the town, by this I mean, there was a walmart, so when we were getting the kids to bed, we sent George and Renee off with a list to replenish our food supply.