After an early wakeup we had two options for camping today, in the park they had availability in the dry campground, right outside of the park there is a commercial campground, after discussing the bathroom situation we opted for the commercial park as the park service is closing all of the bathrooms today for the winter.
We decided to head into the park before checking in at the campground. We took the bus to the Temple of Sinawatra to start the day. About half way down the trail Noi was a couple hundred yards ahead of everyone else when we came upon her talking to four people. It turns out it was two Thai couples from Hawaii and California. Everyone joined in the conversation. Ron and Dr. Dragon (that is the English translation of his name) were talking as they had both recently retired from the military, (Ron’s official retirement date was his 60th birthday). Dr. Dragon had been a Captain in the US Navy, at some point Ron mentioned that Dang had also retired from the Thai Navy. Captain Dragon then pointed at the wife in the other couple and said she had also been a Doctor in the Thai Navy. Dang and Doctor Jin began talking and it turned out they had attended the Thai equivalent of Officers Candidate School together. It is a small world when two people from Thailand can renew an acquaintance from 40 years ago in the middle of a canyon in Utah! A walk that should of taken an hour turned into three hours as a lot of catching up had to be done. At the end we agreed to meet for dinner in the evening.
Ron’s stealth run to the brewery was busted when one of his credit cards turned up missing in the morning. Everyone was worried and turning the truck upside down looking for it. After dropping Dang and Noi off for shopping at the visitors center, and another run into the park Ron was forced to confess that he had left it at the pub, and he and Ton went to retrieve it.
While Noi and Dang were making a second run into the park, Ron and Ton took care of getting Elephant settled for the day, and took a little breather. In the evening we had a very nice Mexican dinner with our new (old) friends from Thailand!