State Park Adventures: Part 1

A few weeks ago, I got a cool little State Parks Passport in the mail.  I don't know why.  I haven't found anyone else who received one.  But it had information on all the state parks, and had a place where you could get a stamp at each park.  I just happened to receive it right around the same time that we got our CNG van.  I must have been feeling very ambitions, because I said, "Hey! We should visit all the state parks!"  Everyone thought that was a great idea, and so it began.
There are 43 State Parks.  We want to visit them all before the end of the year, which at the time gave us 41 weeks in which to do it.
Our first park was Snow Canyon State Park.  (Where it's warm.)  So on March 20th we set off for sunny St. George.  The first two hours were great.
Lydia is good as gold in the car when traveling anywhere.  As long as you're not going more than two hours.  Because at exactly two hours into the trip, she will lose it.  She will scream continuously until she is let out of the car.  Since St. George is three hours away, that means the last hour wasn't very fun.
But we finally made it to Snow Canyon, and everyone thought the sand dunes were great.

 Everyone loved the sunshine, and got very very sandy.

Jef said he saw a snake, and left me up on the hill while he and Ben went to "take care of" the snake. 

 

I was pretty sure it was just a stick, but Jef and Ben put on a good show of attacking the "snake."

They're so brave.

So after playing in the sand for a couple of hours, we headed back to the van.  Yes, we have everyone shake the sand off, and empty their shoes, but that doesn't really take care of it all.  So there was a lot of sand in the van.  Also, as soon as everyone was in, Emily threw up.  All over the place.  Now why couldn't she have done that while she was out on the sand dunes?  No idea.  So then the van was sandy and smelly. Good times. 

We still wanted to go on a hike, so those of us who weren't feeling queasy went on an extremely short hike.

We finally headed home in our sandy, smelly van, having one stamp in our passport, and 42 to go. 

As you can imagine, our enthusiasm had diminished somewhat.  

We spent the next week and a half passing around the stomach flu and I wondered if the Great State Park Project was over after one outing.  I hoped not, but we certainly didn't visit one the next week!