Monday afternoon we decided to go to town for a little while, enjoying milkshakes at the local shake shack and taking in the beautiful Manti temple, which has personal family history significance for us.
Back at the park, we had tin foil dinners and s'mores for dessert, and enjoyed some more time on the lake before it was time to head out for the Pioneer Day fireworks.
We knew there would be Pioneer Day fireworks in nearby Sterling that night. While we were out in the afternoon we asked around, trying to find out where to go to watch the show, and finally someone told us to go to the city park by turning at the gas station. We thought those directions were incredibly unclear until we drove around for a few minutes and realized there really was just one gas station, and there were lots of cars parked on the surrounding streets. But tiny Sterling, (population 302 in 2016 according to Wikipedia) put on a great fireworks show, complete with Luke-approved dancing music. When the fireworks were over, Jack and Eliza joined in the country swing dance and tried to learn some line dances before boogieing down with free-style dance moves and tumbling tricks to songs that ranged from "Redneck Girl" to "Watch Me."
The kids slept in the next morning, especially Luke, who was exhausted after missing out on his nap and staying up late on Monday. We made breakfast, cleaned up, and loaded up the car, then decided to enjoy the lake some more before driving home. This time we rented a canoe and a paddle board, which Cat is much better at operating than I am, and the two vessels raced each other a couple of times. Cat was always such a good sport to take a younger kid on the paddle board with her. She started doing this meditation pose, and it cracked me up that when Luke got on the paddle board afterward, he did it too. Also, we let Jack and Eliza take the canoe out alone for a bit and were a little nervous that they wouldn't make it back to the dock, but they figured it out and got back just fine. The kids had a blast just being outside on the water, and even though it was a little overcast and started to sprinkle on us, nobody cared. We ate lunch at The Malt Shop in Ephraim on our way out of town and discovered that children should not be allowed near the drive-through line, or they might yell into the mic and upset the workers in the restaurant. (Also, The Malt Shop might want to consider moving their restrooms somewhere other than the rear of the building.)
Really, it was a great little trip. I think next time we might even stay longer than two days!
