Tuacahn 2011 - The Little Mermaid

Rod and I decided to take the girls to one of our favorite places to start off the summer . . . Tuacahn Theatre! As soon as we saw that Little Mermaid was playing, we knew it would be worth every dime it took to get down there . . . and it was . . . even though our trip started off a little rocky.

We arrived in St. George on Thursday afternoon - and had tickets for the opening night on Thursday. The girls couldn't wait! When we checked into our hotel, Rod noticed a sign on the front desk that said that the Thursday night performance of Little Mermaid had been cancelled. WHAT???
We were super disappointed and decided to check things out for ourselves. We drove over to Tuacahn, and sure enough - the play had been cancelled for that night due to intense special effects and technical difficulties. That meant that over 1900 people from all over the state had no play to go to. We begged the lady in the ticket office to find us tickets somehow for the same weekend - SOLD OUT. What a bummer!
Rod must not have slept at all that night as he schemed various ways to get tickets. He got on KSL at the hotel computer and begged those selling their tickets to let us have them - SOLD OUT!
We decided that we wanted to see it bad enough that we would take single seats all over the theater if that's what it took and drove to Tuacahn one more time. The lady at the box office agreed that we could most likely find seats for each of us all over the place - but none would be very close to the other . . .
Mom of the Year Award right here . . .
I was really going to let my 6 year old sit all by herself in a giant sold out theater just to see a play!?!?
Just as I officially lost any common sense, a kind lady reminded our ticket seller that there was always the overflow section on Saturday night. SOLD! We jumped on it!

This is a view of most of the theater from the top - if you enlarge the picture, you can see where we sat. No photographs were allowed during the actual play, so I have no evidence of how amazing this play really was. Our seating wasn't ideal - but far better than not seeing the play at all! The special effects in the play were nothing short of amazing, and the actors and actresses did a phenomenal job to say the least! The girls loved every minute of it . . . and if we could take them again this summer, we'd do it in a heartbeat!

The girls loved the place we stayed in (thank you Sal and Jer) - for several reasons, but the top three were to be able to eat breakfast out on the balcony . . .

swimming their guts out . . .

And the palm trees.

Their least favorite part of the trip was when I got a brilliant idea to drive them for over an hour in the car to see a ghost town that Rod and I had visited while we were dating.

It's a tiny little area called Grafton right outside of Springdale and Zion's. If you blink, you literally miss the sign to turn off to it.
My favorite part of the town is the cemetery (Morbid, I know, but I love history).
There are about 74 graves in it, and many of them read the same as the one below -
"Killed by Indians."

You'll have to enlarge the picture to read this - but the highlight of the drive was the sign in the picture. It says "PLEASE SLOW DOWN: HIPPIES SUCKING YOUR DUST." Classic!

What a great way to start off summer!