As always, I woke up around 6am Eastern Time, so 4am Mountain.  Everyone else was still at least a couple hours from being awake, so I typed up day one notes for the blog and walked around the hotel a bit, enjoying a few minutes by the warm fire in the lobby.  It was nice to have a fire considering it was 17 degrees outside.

Upon returning to the room around 630am or so, I found the oldest, our early riser, to be awake.  I asked her if she wanted to go into the park with me to watch the sunrise, and she did!  I got her bundled up, threw her in the car, and drove just a few minutes away to the park and chose Bryce Point as a spot to get out, walk up a short path, and watch the sunrise over the canyon with about a dozen other people, mostly photographers.  As it was still in the high teens, she was cold, so we only stayed a few minutes.  We returned to the room to find that everyone else was awake and ready to start moving.

As it was so chilly outside, we decided it’d be a good morning to make use of the indoor pool, and head in the park after lunchtime, as the forecast showed temps in the mid-40s by then.  The difficult part of this was that the hotel consisted of about half a dozen separate buildings, and we were a several minute walk from the main building which housed the pool.  In order to make it work, we dressed them in their swimsuits with their clothes for the day on top.  We had the pool to ourselves most of the time, and the girls had fun swimming.  The logistics of getting everyone dried off and into clothes for the day were interesting, but eventually, we were all ready to go.  The hotel has a very large general store that has clothing, souvenirs, and a grocery store. Prices are a bit high, given high demand and low supply in the area, but it’s better than nothing. The girls wanted hot dogs for lunch, so we grabbed one for each, stopped at Subway (again) for lunch for ourselves, and headed into the park for the afternoon.

I’d read online about the Navajo Loop Trail, which starts right inside the park near where we’d parked the night before.  It has slot canyons that don’t require any canyoneering equipment, so I thought it would be fun for the girls.  The trail starts with fairly steep switchbacks, though the girls were having fun going down them.  We got some good pictures on the way down, but only got about halfway down to the canyon floor when the ground became quite muddy from previous snowfall.  Because it would have been difficult for the girls to continue, we made our way back up the trail to the top.  It was still fun, and a beautiful area of the park.  We’ll have to do the rest when we return in later years.

As there aren’t a ton of easy trails for kids in that area of the park, we drove back through town and into a separate part of the park off of State Road 12, to the Mossy Cave Trail.  All three girls were pretty energetic, and led the way along the trail.  It was less than a mile, and with only a few areas of hills to climb.  The trail split at one point, leading to Mossy Cave in one direction, and to a small waterfall in the other.  We went to the cave first, which was more of a large overhang with no visible cave entrance.  The waterfall was small, and we walked along the creek, hopping over it a few times to continue along the bed. We came to an icy area pretty soon, and headed back to the car.

We made our way a few minutes south into the town of Cannonville to try out IDK Barbeque, a food truck that had good reviews on Yelp.  We found that it was closed for the season, and as there are only two restaurants that looked lackluster in Bryce where our hotel was, we drove about 25 minutes to the Panguitch, where we ate at Big Fish Family Restaurant.  While basic fare, it was hearty and tasty.  Afterward, we made the drive back to the hotel, and had a fun time singing along to music and dancing.  Another highlight was when Laura thought it’d be a good idea to let the girls play with the makeup before bedtime.