Category: Trips

Into the Hurricane

We packed up, unhooked and were soon on our way down Scenic Utah Highway 12 from Escalante toward our next stop in Hurricane, Utah.

Since we couldn’t take the trailer through Zion, we made a roundabout trip across the northern tip of northern Arizona and back into Utah through the polygamous havens of Short Creek, Arizona, and Hilldale, Utah. Short Creek (now named Colorado City) was the former home of Warren Jeffs, the convicted child sex offender and president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous cult based in Arizona.

With only the one wife I came with, we left Short Creek and continued north to the KOA in Hurricane, Utah.

I’m not a big fan of commercial RV parks where rigs are packed together tighter than sardines in a can, and this was one of them.

We were assigned a site at the end of a row, which looked ideal on the map, but it had a bad slant to it.

Even with three or four blocks under the low-side wheels, the trailer was still not level.

Wife was not happy, and as all of us married guys know

unhappy wife = unhappy life.

We talked to a park honcho and the next morning we got to move to a far better site.

Wife is now happy. I’m happy.

Even the penguin is happy.

Candy Cliffs

It’s Sunday, our second full day in Hurricane, and we set out to explore the Candy Cliffs area of Yant Flat. For directions to the trailhead, I had previously downloaded an online write-up. They proved to be reasonably accurate.

From the trailhead, we hiked up an old Jeep road now closed to motorized traffic. Along the way, we passed numerous prickly pear cacti in bloom…

…yucca getting ready to bloom…

…and some claret cup hedgehog cacti beginning to display a spiny bouquet of intense scarlet blossoms.

We only hiked as far as the Yant Flats overlook.

We could have descended down into this colorful country, but one member of our party elected not to do it.

Getting old is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Instead of venturing downward, we headed back to the truck through this beautiful but sandy country.

Rain and Wine

It rained during the night and into the morning. Yes, it’s nice to be camping in a trailer and not in a tent!

We spent the morning doing nothing, and we did it well. Come afternoon, after a few hours at the public library where the cell coverage was better than camp, we proceeded on to Zion Vineyards winery…

… for a a bit of a pricy wine tasting.

After our tastings, we chose a couple of pricy bottles to purchase…

…one for tonight’s steak dinner and one to enjoy at home.

I’m sure that this Zion Vineyards wine will be an improvement over our Spanish box wine for tonight’s dinner.

But such was not to be. The wife decided she didn’t want good wine for our City Market (Kroger) bacon-wrapped steaks, so the bottles will go into trailer storage, perhaps not to be consumed until we get back to Colorado.

Yes, we had our bacon-wrapped fillets with boxed Spanish wine.

Kolob

It rained all night and we awoke to puddles on the KOA roads and a ground rife with mud. Our planned hike was put on hold. Instead, we headed off to take a peek at nearby Sand Hollow State Park, which has full-hookup RV sites available for a future trip.

It’s just a big pond, but probably no worse camping than our KOA. Maybe next time, we’ll book a spot here.

While hiking on muddy trails was out, we decided to at least make a drive through the Kolob Canyons section of Zion National Park.

Compared with the valley, there are few people out here and the towering, redrock cenery is spectacular.

Next time we’re out this way, we’ll hope for better (dryer) weather and more hiking.

Las Vegas

A typical getaway morning for us. After a delicious breakfast of Nabisco’s finest shredded wheat, Dianne got the inside of the trailer ready to go while I drained holding tanks, unhooked water, sewer and electric and put chairs, tables, grill and all the other outside crap away. Finally, we hooked up the trailer, said goodbye to the snow-dusted hills and hit the road.

With a little bit of effort, we found the KOA at Sam’s Town in Las Vegas.

We paid our fees (this place is not cheap), drove to our site, got our electric, water and sewer hooked up and finally sat back and downed an imported beer (from Colorado).

We have an end site with actual, real grass, a leaning table and four Adirondack chairs — all this for only one arm and a leg.

For dinner, we walked through the neighboring Sam’s Club Casino and discovered a glass-roofed atrium complete with foliage and a towering waterfall.

Here, we had steaks and wine with Therese, one of Dianne’s fellow LifeVantage peddlers, and her husband, Rick, who are also camping here at the KOA. With all of the actual real plants surrounding us, it was like dining al fresco with neither wind nor bugs.

On Thursday, Dianne and Therese ventured down to Sphere…

…where they spent $104 each to watch a 1939 vintage movie.

While they were doing that, I tidied up the trailer and walked some half-mile laps around the RV park. There seems to be an Ekko rally going on now in the park. They’re cute, but for out style of camping, a trailer works better.

My goal was to complete 20 laps, which would make it a ten-mile walk, but Dianne got back to the trailer on lap four, so I quit. I needed to get ready for tonight’s Mexican dinner at Juan’s Flaming Fajitas restaurant in nearby Henderson.

Yes, we ordered fajitas, and yes, they came flaming.

Heading for Home

Dianne’s meetings finally ended and I finished the latest Craig Childs book. We had a final Las Vegas dinner with our LifeVantage friends, Rick and Therese, at Smokey Joe’s in the Sam’s Town Casino atrium. [Dianne said the ribs were better at Duke’s in Hanksville.]

Sunday morning, we got up hideously early, drained the trailer, loaded up everything and were eventually ready to depart. A mere three hours after crawling out of bed, we were on the road. Leaving Las Vegas was the absolute highlight of the trip.

We motored from Nevada into Arizona (Virgin River Gorge) and up into Utah. Our destination for the evening was the KOA in Richfield, Utah.

There, we were given a really nice site complete with trees, picnic table and a fire ring, which we will use later tonight.

This KOA is almost like real camping. What we did at the KOA in Las Vegas was definitely NOT camping!

A glass of wine. A flaming campfire. This is camping.

After a no rush Monday morning, we hooked Whitey up to Tighty and drove the familiar I-70 route toward home.

Along the way, we made a scenic pottty stop at the Ghost Rock Overlook…

…and, of course, a bacon-cheesburger lunch stop at Ray’s Tavern in Green River.

Ninety miles later, we arrived home and began unloading – the unfun part of every camping trip.

In three weeks, we’ll be loading up again for yet another camping trip.

Off to Zion

 

And we’re off again, this time taking the Subaru on our annual winter pilgrimage to Zion National Park. 

The nice thing about winter in Zion is that we can drive where we want and not have to take these damn shuttle busses around.

 First stop on the drive was for lunch at Mom’s Café in Salina, Utah.

 We first stopped here years ago and were unimpressed with the menu at the time.  This year, we opted for conventional road food.  I enjoyed a double bacon cheeseburger that was pretty damn good.

 We turned down U.S. 89 and entered the park on the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway.  A herd of bighorn sheep greeted us at a roadside potty stop.

 It was late afternoon by the time we approached the Virgin River Canyon with the nearby cliffs blushing in the late afternoon sunlight.

We turned up the canyon to the lodge where we got keys to our cabin where we would bunk for the next four nights.

We had two full-size beds, a gas fireplace, a small desk and unlike a few years ago, the cabins now have decent Wi-Fi coverage.   

Best of all, the view from our cabin was delightful.

Hike to Emerald Pools

Our first hike on this trip was one we’ve done on previous winter visits to Zion. We would walk to the three Emerald Pools. The trailhead lies across the river from the lodge.

It’s a relatively easy hike with most of the route on a paved trail.

There are three pools. We began with Lower Emerald Pool, which had a bit of snow and ice around it.

Next came Middle Emerald Pool, it’s surface mirroring the cliffs across the river.

And finally, we reached Upper Emerald Pool.

That night at dinner, I kept hoping that Jesus would stop by and turn this into wine, but that didn’t happen.

The Watchman

Our final day in Zion, we decided to do something new and hike the Watchman Trail, which begins at the visitor center.

It offers a scenic route up the cliffs behind the visitor center…

…with nice views of the cliffs across the valley.

The trail was well maintained, complete with steps…

And retaining walls.

The trail topped out, offering view of the Watchman.