Beth and I pulled out of Great Basin National Park on our way to Utah and our dates with Capitol Reef and Canyonlands National Parks. During our stop at Idaho Falls for an overnight, I had made a reservation for a private campground near Glendale, Utah, which is situated about equal distance from Zion and Bryce Canyon parks. Since we had a total of six days to fill in our itinerary due to the cancellation of our visit to Glacier, we decided to stay the entire six days at the one campground and make day trips to both Zion and Bryce from there. While we had seen both parks 20 years ago with our family, we knew it would be a good way to make up for the loss of Glacier.
Bryce Zion Campground is the name of the place at which we were going to spend the next six days and nights. That sounded great, as we had not been at any one place for more than four days in about a month. We decided that our first full day we would just take it easy and drive nowhere. We needed a day off from traveling.
As we approached Glendale and our destination, the area began to look familiar to us. As we reached the turn to the campground, I said to Beth, “This is the same place we stayed at 20 years ago when we came here with our family. There was no mistake about it. I distinctly remembered the sharp turn into the property, and as we pulled up to the office, we could see the “mini-Bryce” red rock mountain top feature behind the campground. Beth and I were amazed. Talk about a blast from the past! Beth said that after I shared with her the website for the campground, she thought the pictures looked familiar. She was right.
We walked into the office to register and we told the clerk that we had been here 20 years ago. She said, “I was here too,” and we all laughed at her comment. It was surreal being back after all of these years. It was also a bit emotional for us, as the last time we visited we had our four children and Beth’s Mom, Carolyn, with us. In the blink of an eye, 20 years had flown by, the kids had grown up and moved out, and Carolyn had passed, leaving just Beth and I for this go around. Our melancholic moment over, we left the office to set up our tent.
To the right of the office is a fenced-in horse pasture. Sure enough, there were a number of horses grazing peacefully in the large grassy area. The blast from the past hit even harder.
When we were here last, the seven of us all took a guided horseback ride in the mountains behind the campground. It was a great and memorable ride that we really enjoyed. Matt was maybe 7 years old at the time and he called one of the horses we rode “Little Tibby White When.” When asked for an explanation for the name, he said, “he’s little, he looks like a tibby, he’s white, and he goes ‘wheeeennnn’. None of us knew what a “tibby” was, but it was coming from a seven year old boy, so we accepted his explanation. Rarely a year goes by when someone in the family doesn’t bring up that name.
As Beth and I stood there looking at the horses, we noticed that the horse closest to the fence wasn’t so little, but he was white, he looked like a “tibby” and he went “wheeeennnn.” Lo and behold, it was Little Tibby White When all grown up. He wasn’t little anymore, and he was showing his age (but who doesn’t after 20 years). There was no mistake about it, it was Little Tibby. Beth took some pictures and we sent them to the kids, explaining where we were. They were all as equally amazed.
How ironic that out of all of the campgrounds in the area, and believe me there are dozens, we would have chosen the same one as we did two decades ago!
With nostalgia pulling on our heart strings, we set up our tent (it was a camper on our previous visit), and the two of us settled in for 6 days at a location that will always have a special place in our hearts. While it was just the two of us now, Little Tibby was here, and so were the memories of four wonderful children and a great Mom, mother-in-law and Grammy. We wish we could all be here together again with all the wonderful additions to our growing family.