Greatest Snow on Earth

St. George...hmm...

We've only made St. George a destination vacation three times (that I can remember) and every single time it has snowed!  No joke!

We decided sometime in March that we would go to this really neat camping resort outside of Zion National Park mid-April.  As you remember, the weather this spring in Utah was GORGEOUS!  We assumed the trend would continue for a quick weekend trip to southern Utah.  Wrong.  We woke up to it snowing Saturday morning just outside of St. George.  We should be used to it by now, but S and I kind of scratched our heads trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. 

I should back up a little bit.

Bean has been eyeing our trailer parked alongside our home for the past little while and begging (as much as a 2 year old can) for us to take her camping.  So, even though the weather was not ideal, we still tried to make it as much of a camping trip as we could.  We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows in the [thankfully light] rain the night we arrived.  Bean had her very own bed and sleeping bag set up with all of her stuffed animal friends.  She quickly got to work getting all of her toys out, too.  So I don't think she realized that the bad weather was actually a damper.  She was just excited to be camping in her trailer.

Anyway.  In trying to find the address of the Johnson Farm Dinosaur Track site, we ended up at this wildlife museum.  They gave Bean her own set of binoculars.  Every 20 minutes or so it would "thunder and rain" inside the building.  She thought it was pretty great.  (I took some fantastic pictures with my phone, but it was a new phone and I didn't realize you had to click "save" in order to save the pictures.  So I don't have any of those pictures  :(  )

Afterwards we headed to the dinosaur site.  It was pretty interesting!  Hard to believe that all of this was discovered during some excavation for contruction.  It's pretty lucky that the guy saw the dinosaur tracks or it would probably just be under another parking lot for a Walmart or something.

Here is a set of tracks.  (This time I had my real camera.)

They had a set that they allowed visitors to touch.  Bean had a hard time understanding why she could touch this one but none of the others.

Another thing we kept promising the Bean was that we would go swimming at the campground.  We even had a spot that backed right up on the pool.  The pool was heated so, even though it was still chilly (the snow had turned to rain at this point,) we decided to head over and fulfill a promise.  Bean had second thoughts, though, and screamed the moment we got there.  Needless to say our swimming expedition was only a few minutes long.

The next morning we packed up to head home.  S took care of all of the cleanup.  Naturally the weather was back to GORGEOUS.  We headed over to the playground and walked around the campground.  She was fascinated while watching a couple parking their enormous RV.  I took the chance to take some pictures.  I may be biased but I think she is such a pretty girl! 

The rest of the story:

I should back up a bit again.

The day before we were supposed to leave, I was at a recognition luncheon and Bean was my guest.  She kind of poked at her food and then said that she wanted to sit on my lap.  She immediately cuddled up and fell asleep which has happened never so I immediately suspected something was up.  Our pathologist kept commenting, "Oh that is so sweet!"  I replied that yes, it was sweet, but totally uncharacteristic.  The longer she slept the more I felt like my arms were burning up.  I started feeling on her head and neck and realized that SHE was burning up. 

I let her sleep awhile longer and then excused ourselves.  We were close to my parents' house so I headed over and took her temperature and it was 101+ which is the highest temperature she's ever had in her short life.  I gave her some Tylenol and immediately got her in to see the doctor.  Her fever had climbed by the time she got to her appointment.  She had a red throat so they ran a battery of tests and couldn't find anything to explain the fever and suggested the standard acetaminophen/ibuprofen/rest treatment and sent us home. 

At this point our trip was on hold, but sometime during the night her fever broke and she woke up pretty much normal.  We decided to still go on our trip and, other than her still not eating a whole lot, everything seemed like it was okay.

When she still didn't have much of an appetite, S looked in her mouth and saw a some sores and immediately thought she had cankers. Poor girl!  What a bad week...She slept great the first night we were camping but during the second night she woke up screaming and she was inconsolable.  It was probably the worst parenting moment I've had in a long time.  My patience was so thin and I couldn't understand why she just wouldn't go to sleep.  S thought maybe the cankers were bothering her, so I asked if he'd run into St. George (about a 20 minute drive--poor guy) and buy some orajel.  In doing so he almost got ran off the road by someone in the wrong lane.  I'm so glad he was okay.  This night was just getting better and better.

He got back with the medicine and she was still sobbing.  It was a lot more difficult to get the orajel in her mouth but I finally managed to and she calmed down and went to sleep.  Two hours later the same thing happened all over again.  This time I studied her and realized that she was still asleep!  So we just didn't do anything or say anything and she fell back to sleep on her own rather quickly.  Two hours later--again, same thing.  By then it was getting light outside so this is when we decided to head home.

That night S was looking in Bean's mouth and noticed that the sores had multiplied and quickly.  Definately not just cankers.  I don't normally believe in self-diagnosis via WebMD but in this case, every single symptom matched Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease.  We suspected that this is what she had.

A few hours into her sleep the same "wake up screaming" thing started happening again.  This time we gave her orajel and pain relief medicine and I patiently explained that she had a bug that was making her mouth hurt.  I told her that if she went back to sleep, she would feel better.  I let her snuggle with me until she was ready to go back to bed and just prepared myself to be up every 4 hours.  The next night was the same thing.

At this point S had returned to work at the fire station where he learned that there was a huge outbreak of Hand, Foot, and Mouth going around.  We never took her back to the doctor, but at this point we considered our suspicions validated. 

We got pretty lucky in the fact that no one who interacts with Bean acquired the virus.  (I hope the other guests at the luncheon fared as well.)  I do feel like a rotten parent for dragging her out camping--let alone to the swimming pool in a rainstorm--while she was probably feeling pretty miserable.  What a little trooper!  And as you can tell from the pictures, she actually seemed to be enjoying herself!  So even though it was definately a week I will remember, I guess it could have been worse. 

We talked about going back down to St. George again sometime later this spring but I honestly think that we are bad luck at this point and perhaps the residents of St. George might appreciate us making our vacation destinations elsewhere.