Nov 1 - Vanessa Visit and Zion Part 3

Nov 1
 Yay! We're into November now. We have been having so much fun we are behind on blog posts big time. I guess there are worse problems ;)
Back to Zion Park. We are a little sore from all the hiking yesterday for both of us. Lots of hills up and down plus it's just lots of miles for us. Today is chore day (can't play everyday) so Leslie loaded the laundry in the truck and drove to the laundromat. I pulled out the vac and got busy on the floors while she was gone. We stayed busy for a couple hours doing some maintenance stuff and then got cleaned up ourselves. We took Margaret for a good walk around the RV Park and then relaxed a bit until 4pm. The Park is having a Snowbird Appreciation day today at the clubhouse. They provided snacks for a BYOB gathering so we got to meet more people from Canada and the US. It's interesting hearing how other folks plan their trips or not. We met a couple from New Jersey that had their whole trip to Yuma planned and pre-booked! We kinda know where we are going after Zion but that might change. We have been in touch with Steve and Dianne from Living the Dream (link here) blog and it looks like we will meet up in Carlsbad, New Mexico in a couple weeks. 

Around 4:30 I got a text from Vanessa that they are out front ! I walked out and Rene was the only one by the car. I've never met Rene in person but we worked at the same place for about 5 years so I only know his voice over a field radio lol. Not that we're snobby but we had different jobs that didn't involve face to face interaction.

John, Vanessa, Rene and Dave

They can only have a short visit as they are driving another 100 miles to Bryce Canyon for the night. They're down south for a long weekend really so they are jamming in lots of sights. Bryce and then Grand Canyon, then back to Vegas. Beauty sights they will see.

We talked non-stop for about an hour and they had to get going. They are going east from Zion through the big tunnel and then north to Bryce. It will be dark by 7ish so they won't get to see all the sights on the way up. Leslie and I are so glad we got to see them! Thanks guys for stopping in to see us. So great to meet Rene and get a hug from Vanessa. Great to see John too, saved the best for last right??

Gotta go ! Thanks for stopping guys!

After they left we pretty much just had supper and watched a little TV before bed. Great day though.

Nov 2

We slept in a little today and had a nice slow start to the day. I have entered another half marathon in Phoenix for January 20 thanks to our athlete friends Barry and Ailsa. She gave me the inspiration. Well she suggested it would be a good one to try anyway. It's a Rock & Roll Marathon event so they have live bands playing along the course and it's a little more party atmosphere. Should be fun! Well other than busting out another half marathon. We booked a month at a 55+ park in Cave Creek Arizona. Just on the north side of Phoenix and close to where Barry & Ailsa will be staying too. We are doing a driving tour today to Kolob Reservoir above the Canyon. It's a 29 mile one way drive and we'll see a couple different eco systems. Supposed to be amazing views from up in high elevation.

Sorry about reflection but shows area detail.

Back in National Park but climbing steady.

The sign reads Sunset Canyon Ranch, would love to own this!

Looking down to the ranch house and buildings.

The more we drove the more elevation we gained of course. The landscape soon changed to more mountains.

These rock formation are literally minutes apart as you drive up.

A few twists and turns and a little more elevation and we see this:

Amazing place ! We love Utah ! Looks like a heart sort of.

Notice the slow change to pine trees in the higher climate.

Our destination! Hmm a little dry right?

There was a small paper sign stapled to a board explaining that they drained the reservoir to do some maintenance and kill some non native fish species that had been introduced. It said not to eat the fish from the bottom. Yeah, no problem there. We'll leave that job to the eagles flying overhead lol. We turned around and headed back to an overlook that we had passed on the way up.

A short dirt road trip to here.

An explanation of where we are.

They had a better zoom!

We have run out of words to describe everything we are seeing. We have access to amazing parts of this planet and it's exactly what we hoped for in our retirement travels. So fortunate to be healthy enough to get out and experience all this! Retirement is great so far :).

The other side of being healthy is being hungry and I am ready to eat. We saw a barbecue place down in the town of Hurricane and that is the other thing that I am looking for in the states. Barbecue meat and lots of it. Leslie wants a salad !! Yeah that's what my lunch ate lol. We drove back down the mountain with a few more picture stops, looks different from the other side. Soon I found my happy place. Lonny Boy's Barbecue.

Cool bike too but hard to park.

They have a smoker out by the street and it caught my eye a couple days ago.

Caution! I brake for barbecue. 

Pretty happy guy with a mixture of pulled pork and brisket. My sides.... mashed potatoes and baked beans mixed! Heaven!

Meat, beans, potatoes and beer. Retirement dream.

Leslie's choice... brisket and collard greens, acceptable lol.

It was late enough in the day that our late lunch is actually supper so we decided on another short drive up highway 59 to the dirt road that the GPS wanted us to take on the way to Zion Resort. It's a really good thing we didn't drag the trailer across that road. I would have stomped that GPS into powder at the other end. The road was so heavily washboarded that I could only do 8mph with the truck! 12 mph felt like we would be out of control. Then add in 2 washouts where I'm positive we would have dragged the back end to get through. Yeah we made the right decision to go back around. Took us almost a full hour to go 9 miles across to the other highway and back to the resort. 

We have been texting my sister Margi with selfies since we left Penticton with the hope it would help put a smile on her face. She texts us back and comments about where we are. She hasn't been texting for a couple days and we found out she's not feeling very good. Damn cancer! We hate it and everything it's doing to her. It's hard to be out doing all these things while she fights this battle but it's what she wanted us to do after we visited in Penticton. We'll stop the selfies until we hear more.

Nov 3

Our last day to hike around Zion for this trip. We have to move tomorrow so we'll go back to the Nature Center and pick up the path to Watchman Trail. This one is rated "moderate" and is 4.3 km/ 3.3 miles round trip with 450 feet elevation gain. Nice ! 

Sun on the plexiglass, sorry.

The trail started out as just a sandy wide path and we stopped at this cool dead tree. It's been here a long time.

It didn't take long before the path narrowed and we started climbing. Of course the path is a little slanted to the outside and there is a drop off to a wash below. This is the stuff that Les hates and her fear of heights or as she says "a fear of falling from heights onto jagged pokey things" kicks in and she needs to turn around and go back. She hates that it beat her again and she is working at it but we need to go back before it gets weird. I don't want to know what happens if she goes too far. Likely won't be pretty.

See how it goes up and the wash gets deeper?

We discussed her fears on the way back down and she stood at the edge of a lower portion while breaking my hand.... I mean holding my hand for support. I can be very supportive, just more one handed after a while lol. I assured her my hands are tough enough by breaking a rock in half on the way down ;)

I used my ACME rock splitter hand. Older peeps will get that??

We had some great hikes here in Zion National Park but we are done hiking for this trip. We took a few more pics as we got closer to the truck. This place is so amazing! We spotted a little gecko on the trail so we had to take his picture.

Fast little critters.

A great shot looking up the Canyon.

Our last stop at Zion and probably should have been first was to go to the Human History Museum and watch the short film they have explaining Zion. Millions of years and lots of water flow leaves us this incredible place to see. If you get the chance go see it for yourself. You won't be disappointed.

We made our way through the crowds back to the truck. Busy place on the weekend, much worse than weekdays. We took a last walk with Margaret around Zion River Resort and went back to the rig for a frosty beverage. It's been a blast here and we will be back again. Now some food, a mug of tea and bed time. Happy happy!

Nov 4

We were up fairly early and started packing up around 9 am. We had most everything ready yesterday so it will be quick and we will be on the road. Our final destination today will be a free BLM (Bureau of Land Management) site just outside the south rim of the Grand Canyon. We have to go back through LaVerkin and Hurricane and up the hill on Highway 59 to 89A then 89 South to 64 West which will put us in view of the south side of the Grand Canyon. The drive started out cloudy as we drove east on 59 looking at the back side of Zion Mountains. It didn't take long and we are crossing into Arizona! I love travel days for all the sites you see and border crossings are cool too. Gotta have a picture.

A little blurry, moving shot.

Traveling east and south and we came to the boundary of the Kaibab National Forest. Lots of elevation changes and we are seeing more pine forest in higher elevation. 

A quick stop to check out the view.

Explains what we are looking at.

The haze and the distance messed with the quality.

A cool tree Leslie noticed at the overlook.

We stood for a while and took in the amazing view across the valley. There was a pretty good breeze blowing and being over 5000 feet it was a little cool so we continued up the hill. The highway continued to wind upward and flattened out across the top. I noticed a black Dodge pickup in the opposite lane from us suddenly pull off onto the narrow gravel shoulder and slide to a stop in a cloud of dust. I said to Les "WTH is up with that guy?" It's a narrow shoulder and it's still pretty windy road that's a crappy place to stop. I was looking in my mirror and saw a female passenger jump out but now I looked back in front of us, this takes just seconds. On the road in front of us is a little dog!! It looked like a Shi Tzu like our old dog Rico. It was limping and obviously hurt and right in the center of the road moving to our lane. There wasn't space or time to swerve around it and I couldn't stop in time even though I was pushing hard on the brakes. Leslie was saying "OMG, no!" and I did the only thing I could think of. I lined up as best as I could and drove over the little dog in the center of our truck and trailer trying to avoid the wheels!! We felt like absolute crap thinking we had just killed this poor dog on the road when I looked in my drivers mirror and saw that little dog limping and running to a frantic lady from that truck. Thank God we didn't kill him! I pulled over around a curve farther up the road but it wasn't safe to park there and run back. Another car passed as I was out on the road and waved at us sort of signalling it was okay. I got back in and we drove away in a bit of shock. As best we could tell the little dog had fallen out of the black truck and survived that only to be run over and missed by us. That little dog should buy a lottery ticket because that was his lucky day! We'll never know how injured he was but I saw him running so we hope he's okay. We continued on over the summit and down the other side of the hill, heart rate is high but we think the dog is okay.

As we started the descent to the next valley we looked to the east in front of us. This is why travel days are so great. We get our first look at Vermillion Cliffs!

Absolutely stunning! Love travel days.

Took advantage of this pullout.

Out my drivers window for quite a while. Not terrible!

We continued south on highway 89 across the Colorado River. Got a quick view from the bridge.

That's a deep gorge but we'll see bigger ones ;)

 The next turn will be at the junction of AZ 64 that travels west to the south rim of the Grand Canyon. We'll save that for the next post. The Grand Canyon is well.... pretty darn grand and deserves a new page.