Everett is on spring break this week so we decided to make a road trip to Bryce Canyon during the second half of the week. We left Wednesday night around 8pm. Our readers may recall that the Odyssey is a “movie car”, and Everett is allowed to watch movies during long trips. Both babies are facing forward now in their car seats, and during this trip we were surprised to learn that they like watching movies as well.

They were glued to the screen during the Princess Bride, and who wouldn’t be? We were hooked from the audio alone. They stayed awake far longer than we would have expected otherwise. We also heard lots of chatter between them. Gwen would tell us periodically that she pooped, and Teddy would announce “Poopy baby!”. Teddy would go crazy anytime there was a movie scene with water (“Wawa! Wawa!”) We only stopped twice: once to change diapers (no poop, despite the frequent announcements) and once to get gas and help Everett recline his seat so he could sleep.

We arrived around 12:30am and tried to get everyone settled down. The only wrinkle in this plan was that all of the children became extremely bouncy when we got to the hotel room. The three of them were rolling, bouncing and running around both beds. We tried to get them quiet but this didn’t go smoothly – there was lots of crying and direct appeals to each individual parent. Gwen in particular was crying and moaning “Oh Dada…oh Dada…oh Dada!” every time Chris was in sight. We finally got them settled down around 2am, at which point Everett was too afraid of possible spiders in his bed, so he and Melissa switched beds. Our experience with all of our children has been that no matter how late they stay up, they always get up around the same time. However, the next morning we were able to sleep in a little bit (8am).

There are unusually few places to eat in Bryce considering how many people visit the canyon. We went to breakfast at the hotel across the street, which was one of the only options unless we drove a half hour to Panguitch. Then we drove through the park until we reached the end of the road at Rainbow Point. On the ride back to the hotel for lunch and nap we heard Gwen saying “Where is he?”. We turned around and saw that Teddy had her elephant snuggled into his neck. Melissa told him to give it back to her, to which he replied “No.” Melissa then explained that she was going to count to three and take it away. “One…”. Teddy held up one finger. “Two…” Teddy held up two fingers. Chris and Melissa were laughing so hard that we had to look away. “Three.” Melissa took it and gave it to Gwen, after which she fell asleep almost instantly. Teddy has taken an interest in elephant lately. We have tried to give him a snuggly, but he doesn’t seem to want anything else.

We managed to go on several family hikes during this trip. We had a short hike around Rainbow Point and longer hikes around Sunrise Point, Mossy Cave Trail and Queen’s Garden Trail.

We also went on two hikes in Kodachrome Basin: the Angel’s Palace Loop and the nature trail.



As we were driving the babies kept asking Everett to sing. And as soon as he finished a song they would say “More? More sing?”, and he would give them a few songs to choose from. This went on for a while until he said “Babies! You are wearing me out.” Wow – who said that?!?

Japanese people seem to be fascinated by twins! Well, at least the the ones we saw in central Utah do. On Thursday evening when we were hiking around Sunrise Point we passed a couple large groups of Japanese tourists who literally swarmed the stroller as soon as they saw Gwen and Teddy. Chris snapped a couple pictures but we didn’t even put them on the website because they are too hard to understand.

On Saturday morning we went for a wagon ride to the rim of Bryce Canyon, followed by a hike on the Queen’s Garden Trail. It’s one of the easier trails in Bryce Canyon but it is still very steep and rocky. On the way up we saw a man going downhill with a baby in an umbrella stroller (?!?).

We got home on Saturday evening. Everett’s curiosity was back in gear as soon as we got inside the house.
“Dada, do you have your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Can you look up curvilinear triangles?”
“Um, ok. What’s a curvilinear triangle?”
It turns out that an example of a curvilinear triangle is a guitar pick. Chris never knew this, even after tutoring geometry in high school (like Everett, he loves geometry) and spending most of his adult life studying equations and curvy things.

Soon afterward the babies took a bath while Chris and Melissa sat on the bathroom floor and ate dinner. Livin’ the dream baby, livin’ the dream.

Here is a link to the photo gallery.