Utah Utopia

Today (May 21 afternoon) I need to write a bunch of stuff just because I am so grumpy. I didn’t sleep well at all last night with the camper closed up because of the wind and the wind gusting occasionally rocking the camper a little bit. And I was trapped in the back of the camper. The only way out was to crawl over Don and disturb him which I didn’t want to do. No need for both of us to be awake. I’m whining, homesick…. What are you sick for when the only home you have is the one you drive around in. I’m home here in frigging Utah. There is nothing wrong with Utah. It is an amazingly beautiful state with incredible land to see and we have been to see much of it. It’s just that we have been on the move so much never staying for longer than 4 days in any one place. This is what I said that I didn’t want to do. But the other side of this is that we were parked in Wal Mart last night for the wind storm. And it was very comfortable. We walked over to Applebees for dinner and since we were right by Walgreens we took advantage and got our prescriptions filled.  We found that sitting on our bed to watch television is quite comfortable when the camper is closed up.  

So here’s where we’ve been since my last post.

Up where the snow is.

May 10-11 Beaver Canyon RV Park, Beaver, UT

Took a day to drive around and explore the area – drove over a high mountain top past a ski resort from Beaver to Parowan and across the mountains on Hwy. 123 to Panguitch and back to Beaver. We checked out routes to bring the camper across the mountains. That wasn’t it.

                                                                                                 

Our view in Red Canyon Campground

May 12-15 Red Canyon Campground in Dixie National Forest near Bryce NP.

Moved camper to Red Canyon Campround.

Getting back up out of the canyon

A day at Bryce – Hiked from Sunset point to Sunrise point down into the canyon around the hoodoos.

Hoodoos - the trail to the bottom

A kind hiker offered to take our picture
by this scenic hoodoo.

Driving down the wash in Capital Reef

A drive down Scenic Hwy. 12 to Capitol Reef National Park – drive down a wash into Capitol Gorge until the canyon walls were so close together towering over us we chickened out and turned around. Many times here in Utah we could use a good 4-wheel drive vehicle.

The Grand Staircase Escalante-National Monument and Kodachrome Basin State Park where we hiked up to Panorama point so we could take a panoramic picture.

Panorama - just like the sign said (Thank you google for creating this panorama from my photos.

Don with his favorite hoodoo.

It's called the Ballerina. I see an Orthodox Priest.

May 16-18, Zion Gate RV Park, Hurricane, UT

A day to do 2 weeks worth of laundry (almost had to buy more underwear) and clean the camper.

A day hiking and exploring Zion Canyon – Riverside walk up to the narrows

Zion 

Watchman Trail to overlook

A drive up Kolab Terrace Road for a different view of Zion.








May 19 Wal-Mart – Hurricane, UT

Shopping

May 20 Wal-Mart – Cedar City, UT

Kolob Canyon on the north end of Zion – Short hike up Timber Creek Overlook Trail

May 21-22 – Jones High Country RV Park, Nephi, UT

Sit on the couch and complain – try to wash diesel fuel out of sweatshirt. Make granola.

Normal life in the slow lane 

I had made reservations at Red Ledge RV Park in Kannaraville, UT for last week but when they called and said I couldn’t have a 50 amp site I changed my mind. I needed to get laundry done and wanted to run my own dryer. That was probably better because Kannaraville is a long way to the main entrance to Zion National Park. The thing was that I had our mail forwarded to us at Red Ledge and also had my brother send me my NOOK that I forgot at his house in Minneapolis along with some mail that was sent to him by accident. It’s complicated. Fortunately the lady at Red Ledge held our mail and we drove through there yesterday on our way north and picked it up. We would have spent the night there instead of Wal-Mart if she had any openings. As it turned out with the high winds we were just as well at Wal-Mart because we needed to keep the slides in on the camper and we were in a convenient place to eat out.

No wonder I’m tired of moving around. This is not the right way to do this but I’m not sure what would work better. We had good reasons for all of the moves. But here we are nearing the big city in anticipation of seeing Kelly and Jason on Friday. 

Newspaper Deprivation, Cell Hell and no God TV

Don has been suffering from Newspaper Deprivation for the most part since we came to Utah. We have our routines. One of Don’s is to head out first thing in the morning and buy a local newspaper, bring it home, drink coffee and read the paper. Even today in Nephi which is just down the road from Salt Lake City, the gas station had not received their newspaper at 7:00 AM. At least they are expecting a paper. For the most part there have been no newspapers, no television signal and no cell phone signal where we were staying. Not even God TV which we can almost always get in English and Spanish. When we were way South by St. George which is a sizable city or here near Salt Lake City, we at least get television on our antenna and can normally get a cell phone signal when we are along Interstate 15. Over by Bryce, we were the couple sitting over breakfast, our devices clutched in our hands, intently reading the small screen, getting what information we could from the outside world on the restaurant’s precious wi-fi signal. You know you would be judging us. Many of the small towns have a weekly paper that comes out on Wednesday in which you can find wedding announcements in which an invitation is extended to anyone who might not have been invited formally and down by St. George Don was able to find USA Today.

Shopping

We had been warned by people who know these things to stock up on any alcoholic beverages before we got to Utah and I did that but who ever would think there might be a place where you can’t get Miller Lite. Well here in Utah, you can’t. We did find a liquor store in Panguitch and they had a small selection of beer so Don settled on drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in the green can for a short time. When we moved the camper over by Zion National Park (and that is another story), we had to take the long road which goes south into Arizona for a while and then comes back up into Utah. We notice both on entering and leaving Arizona that they had nice big liquor stores not far from the border. Well, we were driving the camper and it was never convenient to stop. When we got settled over in Hurricane we found a good size city, St. George just a few miles south and right on the Arizona border. We needed to do quite a bit of shopping so we set aside a day to do that. I said, “I bet we can just drive across the border and find a liquor store”. We decided to make that our first stop. It didn’t quite work out that way. Interstate 15 cuts across the northwest corner of Arizona for about 40 miles before entering Nevada. There was nothing out there. We drove long steep grades down through and up the Virgin River Canyon, with long sections of traffic reduced to one lane for construction. We finally stopped in Littlefield, Arizona where we asked someone. He said the nearest place to buy anything was 8 miles farther in Mesquite, Nevada. We had come that far. Eight miles was nothing. We headed down the road and crossed into Nevada. Everything changed. Mesquite is a thriving desert community with palm trees, a beautiful golf course, condominiums, casinos and the biggest most amazing liquor store I’ve ever seen. 

We found some Miller Lite and checked but they did not have Big Sky Summer Honey… I guess I’ll wait till we get to Montana for that. We passed another big liquor store on our way out of town. So we did make it to Nevada on this trip.

Traveling by RV
You would think we would learn…. When we left Red Canyon Campground over by Bryce to move the camper over by Zion, we took US89, a good two lane scenic highway as far as Mt. Carmel, UT. Don had done his research so he knew we needed to check before we went west on State Hwy 9 about the long tunnel in Zion NP where we found the height limit is 13’2” and if you’re that tall you need to pay a $15 fee in order to drive down the middle of the road. We are 13’4”. No way was that going to work. We didn’t try. But that meant that we drove an additional 100 miles down south through Arizona and back up north to Hurricane and then another 20 miles to the park. They have a first come first serve campground at Zion and for some reason we thought if we got there early enough, like before noon, we might be able to get a site. We took the camper up to Zion through the town of Springdale to the entrance. In Springdale, it was pouring down rain and cars were parked on both sides of the street for miles where visitors to the park left their car to take a shuttle. The streets were crowded with people and narrow. Needless to say when we arrived at the gate, the lady gave us a sticker for our camper that said, “No tunnel” and informed us that if we wanted the first come first serve campground we might be able to get in if we showed up at 7:00 AM. She also told us where we might be able to turn around in the park. So we ran the gauntlet through Springdale again and went to  Hurricane where we found Zion’s Gate, in time for our afternoon nap.

Zion

After we toured Zion's river valley we drove through the famous tunnel and that is where we saw the big horn sheep to finish off a really good day.

On every hike we take, there is at least 1 small lizard who crosses our path. We’ve decided this is probably the same lizard who is somehow finding a way to tag along with us, probably in the car somewhere. He is always with us. 

We’ve seen him in Texas at Palo Dura, in New Mexico in the Sandia Mountains, in Arizona at Petrified Forest NP, and of course in every place we’ve been in Utah.

Every park in Utah has it’s own unique land forms that define it’s character. In Arches it is of course the arches. In Bryce the road travels at the top of the canyon and you walk down to enjoy the thousands of hoodoos, these strange rock formations that jut up out of the landscape. In Zion, the road travels along the river valley with the canyon walls towering above you. My favorite trail was the one that continues where the road ends and follows the Virgin River up into the canyon until it reaches the narrows, the place where the canyon walls come together and encompass the river on both sides. In the high places, it is warm and dry. This is the desert. But down below on the canyon walls, it is cool and damp with little sunlight. Water seeps and runs out of the sides of the wall and plants that like that kind of environment have made this their home creating the hanging gardens of Zion...beautiful. At the bottom of the canyon, where it is always damp and cool, swamps have formed here in the desert. At the end of the easy trail where the narrows form is a more difficult trail that continues to follow the river with warnings about flash floods which have been known to suddenly raise the water by 12 feet and sweep away anybody in its path. Even though the danger was low that day, we weren’t ready to walk through cold water.

We've decided we prefer staying in lower elevations this time of year. It's cold up here.