DOWN HILL FROM HERE

Today we drove from Cedar City to Las Vegas.  I guess we really are on the way home now.  As we drove downhill through the Paiute Wilderness Pass in Arizona.  I tried to take a couple of pictures to show you how steep the walls of the canyon were, but it's so hard to take a picture of these massive rocks with a cell phone while leaning on the dashboard.

We are staying tonight at the Las Vegas Motorcoach Resort, it's a beautiful resort with palm trees and three pools.  A far cry from the place we stayed last night.  There is just one little problem.  It's 112 degrees outside.  Too hot for my little paws. Kathe had to carry me to the grass and carry me home this afternoon.  I''d really like to stay here again when it's not so hot.

All three of us are a little sad to be going home.  I know it won't be long before we set out on another adventure, Kathe and Jim are always going somewhere.  I'm just happy that I get to come along and share the fun.

I know I shouldn't be sad.  It's been a great trip. We've been gone over 50 days and traveled almost 3000 miles. We've been in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. We've stayed overnight in 25 different campsites. In our travels, we've visited six National Parks, six National Monuments, five State Parks, and one State Landmark, it's been a great ride.

Thanks for coming along!

A BREAK IN CEDAR CITY

It's official.  We really are on the way home. Tonight we are staying in Cedar City and tomorrow we will head for Nevada and then back into California. I'm sad to be leaving the cooler temperatures we had in Bryce. It's over ninety here tonight and it's 109 in Las Vegas.

We had an easy drive from Bryce to Cedar City because we took the Interstate most of the way. Jim could have driven the scenic way, but that would have meant driving up and down two mountain passes.  We only had one pass on the un-scenic way and even it was almost 8000 feet high.

Our RV Park here might be the worst one of the whole trip.  I'm glad we will only be here over night. Someone at Trip-Adviser is on the take.  The dog park has a hole in the fence big enough to drive a truck through and there are a dozen chickens running around loose making it very hard for me to concentrate on the business at hand.  I wish Kathe would let me catch one, I 'm very fond of chicken tenders.

Kathe and Jim took a drive this afternoon to Cedar Breaks National Monument. The rocks there are shaped like a huge coliseum which is over 2000 feet deep and over three miles in diameter.  This picture doesn't begin to show the size and the beautiful colors and rock formations.

An interesting fact: Cedar Breaks got it's name from the settlers who misidentified the trees. What they thought were cedars were actually junipers.  So we are really staying in Juniper City tonight!

I'M SO COOL

Jim went for a nice bike ride this morning from the campground all the way to Inspiration Point. They just finished a paved bike trail in Bryce that runs all through the park and connects to the Dixie National Forrest bike trail to Red Canyon. He could ride for miles and miles, but he only rode for about 12 miles because of the altitude and the heat.  He still had a lot of fun.

I took a little field trip this afternoon.  Jim and Kathe sneaked me into the park and I went for a little hike into the National Park Entrance to snap this picture. I'm so cool!

Kathe and Jim decided to take a drive out highway 12 into Red Canyon and then on to Panguitch Lake this afternoon.   We were supposed to stay in Panguitch tomorrow night but we have been thinking about changing our plans and driving straight to Cedar City instead. The drive today was really fun through the Dixie National Forest.  There were lots of pine and cedar trees along the road, but Panguitch wasn't as we remembered.  After cruising through the campgrounds at the Lake we headed back to Bryce. The drive through Red Canyon was a bonus,.  We saw some really cool formations that looked like they were about to collapse onto the road.


Tomorrow we turn the coach west and then south to start back home where all the rocks are brown.

HOODOO WE DO

Kathe woke me up this morning.  Now that's a change.  I'm the one that's supposed to get everyone up at dawn. Well, not so this morning.  They were booked on a Park tour and had to be up and out waiting for the bus at 9 AM.

Ruby's Campground offers a free 3 1/2 hour bus tour to all of the campers and hotel guests.  Not very many people take advantage of it but it was great. They went all the way up to Rainbow Point and then after a short nature hike stopped at Yovimpa Point, Agua Canyon, Natural Bridge, and Farview Point.  All of these stops and vistas are at the southern end of the canyon and are less popular with tourists. They had a great guide who talked about how the spires and hoodoos are formed. He also pointed out a lot of native trees and plants along the hike making it very interesting and informative. He knew the names of some of the more popular hoodoo formations and had the group guess that they were which was really fun.

The distant views of the canyon were not very clear today.  The smoke from the large fire in California has effected visibility. Normally you would be able to see mountains as far away as Colorado, but not this morning.

After the tour was over Jim and Kathe took a hike along the rim of the canyon from Sunset Point to Inspiration Point.  No guard rails, and right along the edge of the canyon for about about a mile. Glad I couldn't make it!

BRYCE IS NICE

I know Kathe and Jim think that the spires and sandstone formations are beautiful, but I want you to know that this place is crawling with chipmunks.  I've never seen so many in my whole life.  This place is the best ever! Chipmunks are running all over the campground, back and forth and up and down the street, it's hard for me to concentrate on anything else. I made Kathe take me out 4 times and all I could do was chase little furry rodents.  She wasn't too happy about that!

But I digress, we arrived here at Ruby's Campground at exactly noon.  We have a great site with lots of room to roam as the sites are spaced about 25 feet apart. The campground is a small city with a hotel, grocery store, and several restaurants.  And the best part it's just outside the entrance to Bryce National Park.

After lunch Jim and Kathe went to the Visitors Center to see the film and learn about the formation of the Park.  They spent some time with the Ranger trying to find a hike that isn't too strenuous.  I'm not sure there was one. The entrance fee to the Park was $30.00 per car!  My humans have the "geezer pass" so they didn't have to pay anything.  They've  been able to get into every National Park on this trip for free, just because they are old, that's pretty cool.

They took the car and went up to Sunset Point and Sunrise Point to take these pictures.

Tomorrow they are going on a guided tour of the park.  The tour starts at 9 AM so we are all going to bed early tonight.  We will spend three days here.
Plenty of time to chase chipmunks.

SAGEBRUSH AND LIZARDS

Another hot day in Utah.  On my walks around the park there is an occasional robin, but the best thing to chase here are the lizards.  They move kinda fast so I actually haven't caught one yet, but one can always hope.  They look sort of ugly and dry, so they blend into the scenery here.

Kathe and I spent most of our day indoors. Jim wasn't satisfied without some sort of activity so he decided to take a hike all by himself.  The Petrified Forest Trail takes off from the visitors center and climbs above the park about 200 feet straight up.  Once at the top, Jim could see lots of petrified logs and had a good view of the Lake below.  By the time he returned to the motor home it was over 100 degrees outside. Kathe and I were still very comfy inside!

The Internet has been on and off both days we have been here.  Some of our pictures never arrived to our email address and Verizon only works part of the time here. The park's hot spot only works if you sit on the ground in front of the restroom.  All the kids are there using their tablets and phones. It's been difficult to keep up the blog, but I'm using my cell phone's hot spot to get this out tonight.


After lunch today Kathe and Jim went down the highway to the Grand Staircase-Escalante Visitors Center. Grand Staircase is the only National Monument that is maintained by the Bureau of Land Management instead of the Park Service.  Jim and Kathe watched a film about all of the research that is being done in this vast 1,880,461 acres of wilderness.
While watching the film, the power went out in the entire town. They rushed home to make sure that I was okay without the air conditioning.  I was just fine!  It took about two hours before the power was restored. Ah, wilderness!

PETRIFIED

The road between Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon is the scenic byway #12 which goes right through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The Escalante and the Paria rivers run through this area creating two canyons.  We drove this narrow highway between these two massive canyons with no guardrails up to an altitude 9000 feet and then back down a 14% grade.  A very nerve racking but beautiful drive.  I tried to take a picture looking down into the canyon to show how rugged and remote the area is.  One wrong turn and we would be over the edge.  And it was a really long way down!

If that wasn't enough of a challenge for Jim, the GPS took us off the highway and onto a dead end dirt road.  We stopped in the middle of a horse farm. The residents came out and told us how to get back on the correct road to our destination. We had to un-hook the car and make a u-turn but eventually found the Escalante-Petrified Wood State Park. Another adventure!

Once we found the State Park and got into our site along the Wide Hollow Reservoir we could finally breathe a sigh of relief. We have a great view of the water from our living room window.
This park is known for the many examples of petrified wood that can be found here.

Jim was ready to hike up the mountain and start exploring as soon as we arrived.  Kathe and I are still recovering from the drive so, after a short walk around the park we are content to sit inside and watch the sunset.

THUNDER, RAIN, AND HAIL

Yesterday I told you that there were lots of bunnies in this campground. That was true, yesterday! I couldn't find one single bunny today.  Maybe the word got out that I was on the prowl, or maybe it was the change in the weather.  I had to make due with my stuffed bunny, he's easier to catch anyway.

This morning Kathe and Jim decided to go for a hike on the Hickman Bridge Trail.  It was rated as a moderate hike with an elevation of 400 feet.  No hike is moderate in this desert, and this one was uphill for the first 3/4 of a mile. The only thing good about climbing up and over rocks and sand in this heat was the promise that the second half of the hike would be all downhill.  They were almost to the top when the skies got dark and it started to thunder.  They were warned about flash flooding and since it hadn't started raining they continued on to the bridge.  One picture here is taken looking straight at the bridge and the other was taken under it.  The bridge is 133 feet long and 125 feet wide and was formed over many years of erosion. They said it was really worth the hike up the mountain to see it. Click on the picture and you can enlarge it.

It stared to rain when they were almost back to the campground, big blobs of rain that soon turned into hail that made a racket on the top of our coach.  More thunder and lightning, then just as fast, it was over. Of course Jim wanted to dry off and clean the motor home, even though Kathe and I told him it was going to rain again. He never listens to us, and guess what? It stared to rain a few hours later.  It's starting to rain again tonight too.

Tomorrow we are off to Escalante Petrified Forest State Park for 2 nights.

I will post from there if the Internet can find me. It's a pretty remote location.

REEF NOT BEEF

When I thought we were going to be camping at Capitol Beef, I got really excited.  Turns out we are at Capitol Reef, not Beef and to make maters worse, it's nothing more than another pile of red rocks.

Oh, Kathe and Jim think it's wonderful, and have been taking pictures since we set out this morning on the Scenic Byway #24 from Green River to Torrey, Utah. Lots of beautiful and unusual rock formations along the way and the sites kept getting better and better as we approached the National Park boundary.

They took way to many pictures to post today, but here are a few. There is a campground in the National Park called Fruita that was once an orchard when the Mormons settled in this area in the 1800's. The fruit trees were abundant with apples and apricots today.  Jim and Kathe had fun picking a bag full of each fruit.  There were so many apricots on the ground that it smelled like apricot wine.  The ranger said that the deer will come and eat all of the fallen fruit.

Later this afternoon they went for a long hike in the Capitol Gorge, a deep canyon with petroglyphs along the canyon walls.  It was hot, but they really enjoyed the great beauty above and around them.

We are camped a few miles outside Capitol Reef in a really nice place called 1000 Lakes RV Resort. I think it should be renamed to 1000 bunnies campground, but more on the tomorrow.

FIZZY WATER

I told you here wasn't much to do here in Green River.  I don't really mind because it means that Jim and Kathe sit around on lounge chairs in the shade and I get to be outside watching the birds and the bunnies. Not a bad way to spend a day, but those guys are always looking for a new adventure.

Trip Adviser lists lots of things you are supposed to be able to do in Green River, only most of them are 50 -75 miles away, like all the way back to in Moab.  On the bottom of the page was an attraction called the Crystal Geyser, a rare cold water geyser located about 12 miles away from our RV Park. They traveled the distance out of town on this gravel and dirt road until they came upon a rusty pipe sticking out of the rocks which was the Crystal Geyser. It seems because the sight was so remote, people kept throwing rocks into the geyser so the State built a pipe around it to preserve it.

The eruptions are unpredictable, but are supposed to happen twice a day and reach a height of 100 feet.


Kathe and Jim waited for about an hour and saw some water rising and bubbling out a fair amount. Cold water filled a pool around the geyser and flowed down into the river.  The area all around the geyser was orange and the minerals had made a very weird pattern on the rocks.

It fizzled like that several times but they never saw water shoot out the pipe as they expected. They named it "Old Unfaithful," and came back home to the lounge chairs.

EXPLORING GREEN RIVER

We are pretty lazy here at Green River State Park.  The big entertainment is watching the campers coming in and going out. This seems to be a place where you stop one night on your way to somewhere else. It's not exactly a destination! It's not that it isn't a nice campground, it's really beautiful. It's just that the town is so small that there really isn't anything to do here.  Arches and Moab are so close that Green River is a stop-over for campers traveling up to those places or on the way down to Zion and Bryce Canyons.

Kathe and Jim went to the John Wesley Powell River History Museum for a few hours this morning. They learned about the exploration of the Green and Colorado Rivers and the Powell expedition. First, they watched an award winning film that was based on the journals of Powell and the other explorers. The museum features artifacts, models, displays, and maps that describe both rivers and the formation of the gorges and mountains.

Later today they went searching for Swaseys Beach and Mountain Biking Trail, the only other highlight of the town. Only it wasn't where it was supposed to be, or at least they couldn't find it. Google Maps doesn't work here except on Main Street so if you are looking for something, good luck.  Eventually they found a boat ramp with the name Swasey on it and a couple of people in the water who forgot their swim suits.

On the way back to town they saw some workers harvesting watermelons and took this picture. The vines were completely dried out and the watermelons were the only thing green in the field.

GREEN RIVER

We only drove about 70 miles this morning but we are in a totally different landscape here in Green River, Utah. After we were a few miles past Arches National Park the scenery changed to flat dry desert.  No more red rocks, no more mountains. We wondered what we would find when we reached our destination, Green River State Park.  Our paperwork said that we had reserved a "partial hook-up" site, but it didn't say which "partial" was missing.

Our reserved site was a large pull-through with water and 50 amp power and no sewer.  The only problem was that the hook-ups were on the wrong side of the coach.  We would have to have our slide outs open to the road, and the electric cord and water hose would have to be run under the coach.  Not the best situation, but the very nice maintenance man told us to go to the office and ask if we could move to the unoccupied camp host site.  Beautiful! We even have a secret sewer hook-up hidden under a pile of leaves. Lucked out this time.

Green River is a very small town with a population of 952.  There is nothing here except gas stations and truck stops.  There is a very small market, so it's a good thing that Kathe and Jim shopped before they left Moab.
On the bright side there are lots of beautiful Cottonwood trees, and we are camped right on the Green River.  Lots of nature here, birds, rabbits, and squirrels  so it should be a fun three days. It's much cooler here and we are able to sit outside tonight. Jim even barbecued a steak tonight.

The town was settled as mail relay station in 1879 on the site where it was easiest to ford the river. Today it is known as the center of a melon growing region.  I wonder if I like honeydew?

LAST DAY AT SPANISH TRAIL RESORT

Today was our last day in Moab.  We've been busy trying to see everything in our four days here. We toured the back country BLM Lands in a Jeep, hiked in Moab and Arches National Parks, and saw the famous canyon at Dead Horse State Park. We decided we needed a relaxing day.  It was over 100 degrees this morning after breakfast so no one felt like doing anything strenuous.

Kathe and Jim drove back to Arches National Park to check out the Visitors Center and to see a very interesting film on how the arches were formed and how they continue to change over time.  This is a picture through the window of the Visitors Center showing the road up and into the park.

Then it was time to search the town for the ultimate Moab/Arches T-shirt. They went into almost every single shop and saw some really funny ones, but nothing worth buying. So they had lunch and read the AAA guide book to make sure they didn't forget anything important.

What they found was the Moab Museum of Film and Western Heritage back out on Highway 128 along the Colorado River.

There were hundreds of films made here in Moab since the 1940's. Many of the residents worked on the films and are very proud of their town's movie history. Some of the movies filmed here were Rio Grande, Wagon Master, The Comancheros, Thelma and Louise, City Slickers, Back to the Future and hundreds of music videos and TV commercials. There was a very well done movie with clips from movies shot here.

The drive out to the museum was so beautiful, we took a few more pictures of the red rocks and the river.
Tomorrow we are off to Green River State Park. I hope it's cooler, there are absolutely no animals to chase or even any other doggies walking around in this park.  It's just too darn hot!

HOT ROCKS

When I took Kathe out this morning at 6 AM it was already 90 degrees and rising.  We actually slept with the air conditioning on most of last night.  It was 95 outside and 92 inside at bedtime.  That's just too darn hot for me!  I go out and there is no fooling around, I get my important stuff done and run right back to the air conditioning.  Today the temperature was 107 at lunch time, and the rocks were hot all day.

Jim went for a bike ride early this morning to try to beat the heat, but trust me there is no way to beat this heat except to stay inside and lay on the cool tile floor.

After Jim came home, he and Kathe went exploring in Arches National Park. It was too hot to take any long hikes, so they mostly explored the park from the car.  A couple of short excursions enabled them to take some photographs of the arches.










This evening Kathe and Jim took a Jet Boat dinner cruise up the Colorado River.  They were able to cool off a little on the river and enjoyed the views of the canyon from the boat and took some pictures. This arch  is called the Jug Handle..

JEEPERS CREEPERS

Wow, did we have fun today!  Jim and Kathe rented a Jeep for the day and decided to go 4-wheeling in Canyonlands National Park. The best part? I got to go with them! They just put my blanket on the back seat, packed a lunch with some water, Gatorade, and dog biscuits and off we went.

Jim got a few pointers on how to drive the Jeep and with a map they supplied us, Kathe was the navigator.  We left Moab at about 10:00 in the morning and drove out on Potash Road.  It was paved for about 16 miles, then the pavement ended and we drove on the rocky loose gravel to the point where we could see the cliff that Thelma and Louise made famous.  From there we drove the Schafer Road straight up on the edge of the 2000 ft. high cliff up to the rim of the canyon.  Unbelievable! Kathe and I weren't nervous but Jim was wiping his sweaty hands on his pants all the way up.  It must have been a religious experience, though because Kathe kept saying "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" while looking over the side of the cliff.

Then when we got to the top, we drove into Canyonlands National Park and later took a side trip to Dead Horse Point State Park before returning to Moab via Long Canyon Road. That was another steep and narrow road only this time we were going back down to the bottom of the canyon.  We even drove in between a fallen rock and the cliff which was just big enough for us to squeeze through. I took a bunch of pictures, but nothing can compare to the real experience.

That long thin line is the road we drove, looking back from the top of the canyon.

THE SCENIC ROUTE

This morning after Kathe had programmed the GPS for our next destination, Jim said, "how about we take the scenic route.''  It was going to take about 16 minutes longer, but we agreed to change our route and take Highway 182 to Moab, Utah.

Well, the first part of Highway 182 was very bumpy and we had to slow down to under 40 MPH.  It wasn't scenic at all. It looked like a bunch of old abandoned shacks with desert weeds on both sides of the road.  We almost turned around and went back to the I-70. Then all of a sudden--WOW--were were in the secret scenic spot behind Arches National Park. It was unreal, as beautiful as the Colorado National Monument, except that now we were on the road looking up the canyon instead above on the rim looking down.

So massive, we were a tiny spec on the road of giant red rock formations.  Kathe explained to me how these beautiful red rocks are formed.  She watched two films, so she should know all about it.  It seems a few million, or was it billions years ago there was a volcano.  Then magma, sandstone, dinosaurs, oceans, more sandstone, glaciers, and blah, blah, blah.  Whatever! It sure is beautiful.

MORE RED ROCKS

I told you yesterday that we are camped at the base of the Colorado National Monument just outside of Grand Junction in the town of Fruita, Colorado.  Colorado National Monument rises 2000 feet above the valley of the Colorado River.  Kathe and Jim drove the 23 mile rim road today, stopping many times to take pictures.  They took a couple of short hikes, but the heat proved too much for them and they were so tired when they got home we all had to take naps.

It's silly of me to write about this beautiful area. Just look at all the pictures Jim took.

JUICY SITE IN FRUITA

Here we are at Fruita Campground in the James M. Robb Colorado State Park.  We have a great campsite. There are two lakes here in the park and the Colorado River is right out our kitchen window. This picture is the view out of the front of the motor home.  We are facing the Colorado National Monument which we plan to visit tomorrow. We really lucked out on this one, it's fantastic!  We have a site that is 93 feet long with full hook ups, couldn't ask for anything better than that.

We drove along the I-70 through the towns of Silt, Rifle, West Rifle, and Parachute, Colorado.
No kidding! On one side of the highway were beautiful red rock desert formations and on the other side of the highway, where the Colorado River flows there were farms and lots of green trees.

We are having a couple of mechanical issues which Jim is working on.  We have an ongoing problem with ice forming on the bottom of our freezer. And now we have an issue with our water pump.  Jim and Kathe made a trip into Grand Junction for some parts this afternoon so we should be fixed up soon.

Kathe was looking for a fresh fruit stand and found several in the nearby town of Palisades, Colorado. They are famous for their peaches. It just so happens that they also have about 30 wineries in the same area. So guess what, they went wine tasting this afternoon too!

I'm loving this park, lots of grass and trees for me to explore.  Haven't seen any wildlife yet, but I'll report back tomorrow.