What an incredibly rich day! We pulled in yesterday, and once the kids saw the creek, there was no decision to be made. Bears and rafts (we’d purchased tiny rafts from the river running store in Moab) were found and off they headed to the creek. They didn’t have to go far; the creek is easily seen from the inside of the trailer. We have a lovely spot, but it took some doing and a divot of rubber from one of the trailer tires to get it, but we are in a lovely spot. Arches National Park definitely takes the cake for affordable and lovely campground; $10 a night for water and bathroom (flush), nice level campsites, incredible scenery. Great Basin is $12 a night and $5 to dump, the sites can barely accomodate a trailer our size and you can tell that little money is spent here. The trails could use a good amount of maintenance but there is no entrance fee here. A moot point for us, as we purchased a Park Pass.
Immediately after crossing into Nevada we changed to Pacific time but the sun is most definitely
on Mountain time. Today we had eaten breakfast (oatmeal and bacon, coffee and milk), done all the dishes and packed for the day by 9am. We headed to the Visitor Center to inquire about the Leahman Cave tour. We easily purchased tickets for the 11am tour and barely were able to engage the kids for the hour of kill time we needed before the tour started.
The tour was really very very good. A LOT of history, at which point I took Ellen away for a bit (we hadn’t yet entered the cave) and once inside the cave much more history and geology. The kids (other than Ellen) were all very involved, answering questions and asking them and the ranger was personable, able to talk to the kids without talking “down” to them and keep the adults interested all at the same time. I was amazed at how much geology Jesse knew. Where did he pick all that up? Just before exiting the cave, the ranger showed us the “heartbeat” of the cave. She turned out the lights and quickly opened and closed the exit door. The vibrations and sound of the door closing echoed and reverberated along the corridor and sounded like an actual heartbeat. It was amazing. Somehow, Ellen fell asleep during this point after crying and crying for food. The ranger had described many of the formations as food items; there was “bacon”, “popcorn”, “lasagne”, “oreos”, etc. Everyone was quite hungry after the tour.
Luckilly, there was a cafe adjacent to the Visitor Center and we had a wonderful lunch (soy milk for coffee!!!, unbleached, recycled, napkins, sun chips) and we all had a wonderful lunch. With bellies full, we then headed to the Baker Archeological site to enjoy the Nevada Native American 
Full Moon Festival. It wasn’t like any festival I’ve ever been to; weren’t even sure we were at the site of the “festival”. It was most definitely VERY low key. We toured the archeological site, got an insight to Fremont Culture (First Nations) and Anasazi Culture. The kids, although they had only 30 minutes previously been full, ate a full plate of “indian tacos” and elderberry pie. I can’t belive how much the kids (minus Ellen) are eating these days; they must all be going through amazing growth spurts. They eat almost all day long, rarely managing to fill up. We watched an arrowhead making demonstration (from obisidian) and toured the archeological site. What an amazing difference from Mayan and Aztec sites; everything has been backfilled and there is little to see. As there were no human remains found, what has been “discovered” on this site is largely due to conjecture. We were advised to visit Chaco Valley in the Four Corners area for another very interesting site. The archeologists believe that much of the building construction in this site was designed to incorporate a horizon calendar (sunlight would highlight different areas of a structure depending on the time of year/solstice). The Fremonts were farmers, so they would need this information for planting.
