July 2 (evening)

After the mule ride, we went back to Ruby's Best Western to rest and swim. We had a late dinner there, and took a really long time to be served. Then we went back into Bryce Canyon to the visitor's center. Because of the darkness of the area, they have night astronomy talks. We missed the talk about the constellations and the Native Americans' beliefs, but we made it to the observation of the constellations behind the visitor's center at 9:30. The telescopes were huge. We saw the moon. It was so bright through the telescope, your eyes had to adjust for a second before you could focus in on it. We saw Saturn and the rings around it, and two of it's moons. And we saw a nebulous, which is a burned out star, and we could see the matter around the burned out star that was still glowing. It was about a light year across, so you could just see this glowing round mass in the sky. It was really cool. The guides at the telescopes told us a lot of interesting information about the stars and the constellations. The girls just laid on a blanket and looked at the stars for a while. The moon was so bright, we couldn't see as many stars as we had hoped, but we had a good time.