WEEKEND VACATION
The Twin Falls temple was beautiful, of course! Jared liked wearing the white booties on his feet, but Zach did not. He managed to get the rubber bands off (they rubber banded kids booties on) a few times during the tour. When we left, he wouldn't let the volunteers take them off for him. He had to do it himself, but had some trouble. So a nice brother with a handlebar mustache said, "Come sit on Grandpa's lap and he'll help you." That was okay by Zach!
Another funny moment was when Zach saw a photo of the 12 oxen and said, "those pigs died." Then when we saw the actual font, he said the oxen were goats!
Most impressive was the gorgeous mural of the Shoshone water falls, in all their glory. The boys liked the pronghorn and deer, and all the kids liked finding the tiny lizard sunning on a rock in the mural.
When we came out of the temple, there was an amazing, horizon-to-horizon, super-bright double rainbow! Of course, we'd been asked to leave our cameras in the car, so I didn't get a photo of it. When we finished the tour, I ran to the car and grabbed my camera.
Then we took some pictures with the family, of course. Zach scraped his leg on the rock wall, about 3 inches long! Poor kid! (Click for Pics)
Then we had to hurry to check into our campground before they closed the gates. We drove into a beautiful sunset as we headed to somewhere between Hagerman and Buhl to camp. (See Camping Pics)
We got eaten by mosquitoes as we set up the tent in the dark. As we headed to the bathrooms to get ready for bed, Zach touched the very hot lantern and burned two fingers. They blistered, poor guy! He's very brave, but didn't understand. We ran his fingers under cold water, but when they'd feel better, he'd take them out and squeeze them with his other hand, then cry. I finally got them bandaged and feeling okay, and by then poor Zach was worn out. He asked to go to bed and tucked himself in. Injuries tend to drain a person! But to add insult to injury, he woke up with 15 more mosquito bites, on his head, arms, legs (he was wearing pants) and chest (also through his pj's!). It's just not fair for such a little sweet heart like him. Especially because Jared came hom

Next morning, the boys made friends with our next-tent-neighbors. I talked to the mom for a while and discovered she's a geologist from Finland. Pretty interesting! We headed to the Hagerman Fossil Beds visitor's center. It wasn't anything to write home about, unfortunately. It wasn't very big at all! But the boys had fun digging up bones in the sandbox, pretending to be paleontologist. We met up with our Finnish tent-neighbors there, too.
Then we headed to the nearby National Fish Hatchery. That was pretty interesting! The boys liked the baby fish, and Zach kept saying, "Here, fishy fishy fishy!" We hiked up to the spring that constantly provides all the water (they don't try to conserve water there) for the fishery, where Jared somehow managed to huck his Croc into the stream, and we got eaten again by mosquitoes. Then we hiked back down and got to pet white sturgeon! That was kind of cool. They're really big, about 100 pounds, and they have slimy skin. They're more closely related to sharks than the trout the fishery raises. (See pics of the Monument and Hatchery)
We were hot and tired by the time we finished at the hatchery, and decided to head toward home. I spotted a huge plume of smoke, then we heard the buzz of a large airplane. We saw a firefighting airplane fly overhead, then disappear into the smoke. As we continued toward home, we found the fire and a scenic overlook with a pullout. We stopped for about an hour and watched planes dump fire retardant on the edges of the fire, and helicopters scoop water directly from the Snake River and dump it on hot spots. It was really interesting! We also watched the fire eat up miles of grass in just minutes. And I nearly maxed out my camera's memory card taking pictures. Here's a series of photos I took, animated. Watch the plane, and the second time, watch the smoke. It's almost as good as a movie! (Click here to see more fire photos)