Thanksgiving in Escalante, UT

Thanksgiving is my Mom’s favorite holiday. Ever since I moved to Las Vegas, I have spent Thanksgiving with my parents. They would either come to Las Vegas or I would travel to Las Cruces. This year, however, with two little kids, we hadn’t planned on traveling. After learning that my parent’s were going to be on a cruise (which they ended up having to cancel) and feeling pretty confident after we drove to Fresno, CA and back in two days to buy our new (to us) pop-up trailer, we decided that we ought to spend part of our week off from work breaking in the new trailer somewhere beautiful! With Duane, we decided on Escalante National Monument, one of the lesser traveled areas in Southern Utah.

Watchman Campground in Zion National Park

In order to break up the five hour drive to Escalante, we left one day early and stopped in Zion. We were able to get the last campsite at Watchman campground and set out to spend our first night in the new pop-up. Although it wasn’t the smoothest night I would have imagined (Miles waking up Ella, leading to Ella standing up in her pack n’ play ready to hang out at 2am), it could’ve been much worse. We were looking forward to driving ourselves up the canyon, as we assumed this time of year the shuttles would be down, but to our disappoint, that was not the case. Because there were so many visitors, the park was still running the shuttles, so we weren’t able to take ourselves up the canyon. I guess we’ll have to wait til Christmas break.

We spent the next two nights with Duane in Escalante (at a campground we had all to ourselves), where we had one day to explore the area before the rain came through. The landscape is so beautiful and I would love to go back in the Fall sometime. Despite the rain, Duane and Scott deep fried the turkey and we had a somewhat traditional Thanksgiving dinner with Costco pre-made mashed potatoes and stuffing as sides.

Even though the outside temperatures were below freezing, with three heaters running, we were able to keep the trailer quite warm. So warm in fact, that I slept outside of my sleeping back most of the night. We woke Friday morning to a winter wonderland. Because we weren’t going to be able see the beautiful scenery, we decided to leave a day early. While packing up the trailer, we turned the truck on and put Topo and the kids in the truck to keep warm. I put a sleeping Miles in his carseat in the back and I put a happy Ella in the front seat with a game to play. I went back to help Scott close up the trailer. After a few minutes of productivity, I went to check on the kids. I didn’t see Ella in the front seat anymore, so I grabbed the door handle to open the door. This is when I realized that the door is not opening. It’s not opening because it’s locked. I check all the doors. They’re all locked. My two kids are locked in a truck, the day after Thanksgiving, in a town of 700 people. Damn!

After Scott and Duane tried to opening the door with bailing wire, after trying to get Ella to push the ‘unlock’ button, after watching Ella’s tiny body climb from the back, where she was sitting with her brother, to the driver seat, to the passenger, we had to do something else. Google told us there were no locksmiths in Escalante, so we called 911. They were going to send a local to help. Scott told a ‘starting to get worried’ Ella to just lie down in the passenger seat. Thank God she is a really good listener. She did just that. After about 30 minutes, two local, very, very kind locksmiths came and saved this Mom from further anxiety. I have never hugged Ella so hard. Miles was still sleeping in the backseat. Topo jumped out to run happily through the snow. Lesson learned: Always bring the second set of truck keys, always. (By the way, Topo most likely hit the lock button as she looked excitedly out the windows).

With that adrenaline rush over, we hung out in Duane’s motorhome waiting for the falling snow to subside. After a couple hours, we decided we should get going. Although we drove through some pretty intense snowfall and encountered plenty of car tracks going off the road, we saw some beautiful scenery; the stuff we don’t ever see in Las Vegas. After a much less eventful afternoon, we made it home safely! ‘Til net time Escalante! We will be back!