Half a post

I wasn't sure if I would be working today, and as it turned out, I did, which meant I only had time to continue talking about my vacation. I should have time for a real post tomorrow. Ah, what the heck; I'll write a poem too. It can double as my observation. And I'll pretend my writing prompt is to write a story as though you had just gotten back from your ideal vacation.

A Shower

I am never so grateful to be unincarcerted
As when I drop the soap in the shower.
It happens frequently enough
That I'm sure I would be popular
For all the wrong reasons

My clumsy hands no cage for slippery things
But today, as I endeavor to clean my ears
My fingers form a seal
And I am left in my own world
An isolation box filled with the echoes
Of drumming drops.

Me:
Picking up where I left off, we drove toward Zion and camped west of the park. We found camping at a state park, which was fifteen dollars night, but the fact that it was on a beach was a major redeeming factor. We woke up and weren't in much of a hurry. Well, I wasn't in much of a hurry. See, we knew we were going to be hiking the Narrows, which is an upriver jaunt through icy waters, but I knew the earlier we got there the colder it would be. As much as I tried to convey this fact, Rebecca's excitement remained undaunted. So we packed leisurely and ate some breakfast, and still somehow made it into the water before 10:00. And, as predicted, it was COLD. My feet numbed pretty quickly, and my legs are pretty used to the temperature, but the first section of any difficulty had us up to our chests. And then I took a step in the wrong direction and found myself afloat. So I drifted downstream a ways, and gradually made my way back up to the deep section, confident that if Rebecca had not still had an unwavering smile on her face I would have waited for another occasion to try this hike. We made it through, of course, and kept going for a number of miles, stopping to warm up every so often on convenient sandbars.
Unbeknownst to me, these stops were not enough. We made it to a convenient point and took an extended break in an attempt to stop the full-body shaking that had taken over Rebecca during a particularly long section of waist-high (or deeper) water. A bit of lunch was consumed, and it must have been half an hour before we decided it was decision time. There was a fork in the river, and the tentative plan was to explore the side canyon for a bit and make another decision in a while. However, upon taking a few steps up the shallower canyon, we saw that no more than twenty meters up the way it included a quite-large, quite deep pool, so we turned around. Rebecca, still shivering, said we could keep going, but I was having none of that. She looked to be on the verge of hypothermia, and I don't regret the decision at all. Besides, we had a lot of fun on the way downstream. The sun had started to make its way to the bottom of most of the canyon, so we were quite a bit warmer as we started moving again. So much warmer, in fact, that Rebecca's regained enthusiasm resulted in some floating in the current. While unable to do this for a very prolonged period of time (due both to terrain and the threat of pneumonia), it was quite amusing.
By the time we reached that initial deep section, the cold had set in again, so we called it quits at the trailhead and caught the shuttle back down to the visitor's center. We bought some postcards and a small image calendar as souvenirs, and started driving back east. Luckily, east of Zion is not only home, but also Mesa Verde (and Great Sand Dunes, come to think of it). We pulled into a campground rather late, and I will pick up the story soon.