Monday September 4th 2017

The holiday weekend is over. Life at the campground has returned to the slow mid-week pace. The smell of campfires and sounds of kids playing have gone away. The weekend campers started leaving last night after dark. A couple of RVs from California packed up after the sun went down last night and departed for home during the cool overnight hours. Interstate 15 west of Las Vegas heading for the LA area is notorious for backups on holiday weekends so that may be another consideration. This morning many others from Utah, Nevada and Arizona packed up and left.

It was another above normal day in the low 100s. We are getting some relief this evening. It has clouded over and is threatening a thunderstorm. Monsoon moisture is returning to the area so the temperatures will be lower, but afternoon thunderstorms will become the norm. The probability of storms increases each day this week.

Northeast bound on Interstate 15 in the Virgin River Gorge of Arizona.

Northeast bound on Interstate 15 in the Virgin River Gorge of Arizona. Taken through the dirty windshield.

Northeast bound on Interstate 15 in the Virgin River Gorge of Arizona.

After spending yesterday at home, I had to get out today. I went south on Interstate 15 toward St. George with the intent of stopping at an outlet mall. When I got into the area of the mall, I lost my interest in shopping so I continued on down the road. I drove out of Utah, through Arizona and into Mesquite Nevada. The southwest bound traffic I was part of was quite heavy through the long down hill trek through the Virgin River Gorge. This is another section of creative highway engineering. The road crosses the river several times and at in one section is built right over the river bed.

In Mesquite I walked through a couple of casinos and played a few slot machines. I never made enough money to leave with a profit, but I got a good period of play for twenty bucks. Traffic on the return trip wasn’t as bad. Once again I drove by the shopping ares of St. George.

Sunday September 3rd 2017

It was another hot day in Hurricane Utah. It topped out just north of one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It’s not bad for the first two thirds of the daylight hours, but the last few are something else. From about 4:30 to 7:30 the sun angle bakes in on the side of the RV. The inside walls are hot to the touch, the outside wall comes close to burning the skin. I close all the blinds and turn on both AC units to keep the inside in the eighties.

I got sidetracked on a computer geek task today. I’ve been trying to find an easier way to deal with pictures in my blog. The last couple of posts with Zion National Park pictures have included full size pictures rather than scaled down images. I hoped that this would save processing time when I prepare the blog. It takes a couple of minutes per image after I choose the ones I want to share. Unfortunately, the approach I tried doesn’t save any time. It also doesn’t work very well with a marginal internet connection like I have here. Today I worked on a way to automate the process of scaling the images to a blog friendly size.

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The pictures I’ve included in tonight’s blog are from yesterday’s trip to the Kolob Canyons section of Zion National Park. They were all re-sized using a slightly more automated approach than I was using. I’ve also included a watermark on all the images. I’m going to continue to research and experiment with better ways to handle photos and possibly a new look (theme) for the blog.

I’ve also been working on planning for the November through March time frame. I got up early for the fourth morning to try for a site in the Corp of Engineers campground in the Fort Meyers FL area during the beginning of March still without success. There are other possibilities that I will start to explore for that time frame, but I’m back in search of a plan for November through February. Texas from Interstate 35 east into Louisiana is going to be a good place to avoid for a few months. Many of the campgrounds near Houston were flooded and the others are likely to be used by people displaced from their homes. I don’t want to compete with their needs for a site.

I’m now looking at Southern California, Southern Nevada and Southern Arizona for month or two stay at the start of the winter. I don’t know anything about the California options. Nevada would be the Las Vegas or Laughlin areas and Arizona would be on the boarder with California or Nevada. I don’t really want to stay in the Phoenix area. The small amount of research I’ve done so far indicates that California is expensive if you get near a population center. I need a population center for entertainment. The research continues.

Saturday September 2nd 2017

Today started hazy in the low 70s. The temperature rose rapidly to a peak in the low 100s, but the haze remained all day. After a slow breakfast with some Saturday morning TV I headed up the interstate to the Kolob Canyons unit of Zion National Park.

The Kolob Canyons are on the northwest side of Zion National Park. It is not connected with any of the other areas of the park by road. There are a series of trails that connect the areas, but they are many miles long. The Kolob Canyons area is a single scenic drive along the high ground with views of the canyons. This contrasts with the Zion canyon area which is along the floor of the canyon with views of the walls towering above.

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I drove the scenic drive stopping at many of the pull offs to take pictures and enjoy the view. At the end of the drive there is a trail out to a scenic overlook. The half mile trail is combination of easy path and scrambling over rocks climbing up and down some moderate hills. The view at the end is worth the effort. The expanse beyond the overlook is impressive.

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It only took a couple of hours to tour the Kolob Canyons area. Unlike the main unit, the crowds were not heavy. I only took around 100 pictures. The haziness made many of them look washed out. I’m only including ten of them here.

Once I got back to camp I pretty much hibernated in the air conditioned comfort of the RV. As you’d expect the campground is busy for the holiday weekend. Unlike during the week, I have neighbors on the sites beside me. They are closer than I’d like but on holiday weekends you take what you can get.

Friday September 1st 2017

I stayed at home today. After yesterday’s high level of activity associated with the hiking in Zion National Park and an interrupted night’s sleep, I wasn’t in the mood for much activity today. I had the alarm set for 5:45 this morning to attempt to get a reservation next March 1st in the Fort Meyers area of Florida. Knowing the alarm was going to go off early, I kept waking up to see if it was time to get up yet. I know that’s why I set the alarm, but … I didn’t get the one available site, just like I missed the available sites on the twenty fifth and twenty sixth of August. I’ll try again tomorrow morning. There are three sites available then.

The labor day weekend is here. I don’t know what happened to the summer. I’ve been in the Utah area since the end of June. My stay in West Wendover NV in early July was within yards of the Utah boarder. Next week I’ll move to the Lake Powell area. I’ll technically be in Arizona, but within yards of Utah. In West Wendover I had Salt Lake City TV channels. I’m not sure if I’ll have Salt Lake City or some Arizona based stations in the Lake Powell area. All of Utah seems to have the same Salt Lake City based stations. Unfortunately, this is important to the impression you get of an area. I’ve come to understand and know what to expect of the news broadcasts out of Salt Lake City.

I’m going to share more pictures of Zion National Park in this blog entry. The way I’m including these pictures is different from the previous method. These pictures are links to the full scale versions of the pictures. The way I’ve been including them involved extensive, time consuming, editing to reduce the size of the images before uploading them to the Word Press blog hosting site.

This weekend I plan to visit the Kolob Canyons Unit of Zion National Park. This area is north of here off of Interstate 15. It isn’t as heavily visited as the main unit. Hopefully, it won’t bee too crowded on the holiday weekend.

Thursday August 31st 2017

The day started cloudy with a promise of sun to come. I got underway for Zion National Park a little after 9AM. Thirty minutes later, as I was in line at the toll booth, the sun was starting to assert its presence.

I have been to Zion National Park before on day trips out of Las Vegas. These visits were in November and December when the park shuttle system wasn’t running and ground conditions didn’t allow hiking away from the park roads. Today the shuttles were the only way to tour the park and I had the opportunity to take five short hikes.

I found one of the last few parking places in the visitor center parking area. Once that is full you have to park in the town of Springdale and take the free shuttle into the park. Some of the parking in Springdale is free and some of it is in paid lots. Signs on the way into the area warn that parking in the park between 10AM and 3PM is usually not an option. In addition, there is a warning about the upcoming holiday weekend being a major visitor overload situation. The Zion National Park officials are very concerned with managing the high number of visitors to the park each year. They currently have a proposal out for public comment that would require people to make reservations to visit the park. It would have to be a lot worse than today for me to be in favor of requiring a reservation to visit the park.

I went a little overboard with picture taking this trip. I took around 450 pictures. As always I’ll be uploading the pictures to a Google Photos album when I get a good internet connection. The pictures I’m including in this blog entry are a few of the better ones.

Views from the Court of the Patriarchs

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At the end of the Canyon road the River Walk trail follows the Virgin River into a narrow canyon.

Virgin River

A little water fall on the Virgin River

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At the end of the defined trail you can continue on in the water of the Virgin River. I didn’t.

View from the area of the Zion Lodge

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Under the water fall at the Lower Emerald Pool

At a wetter time of year this would be even more impressive.

I got to see a few animals (other than people) today. The ground is covered with squirrels that aren’t in the least bit afraid of people. A deer was content to feed ten feet from the trail while people took pictures and walked by. She was still there when I came back by forty five minutes later. The turkeys I saw were a little more cautious. The were further from the trail and more alert.

These ground squirrels were everywhere.

This deer was busy eating.

One of a group of six turkeys.

Here are some pictures of the interesting plants I saw today.

A reminder that this area is a desert.

There are many of these Desert Morning Glory bushes.

Closeup of a Dessert Morning Glory.

End of Zion National Park blog post.

Wednesday August 30th 2017

It made it up to 101 degrees before a storm front passed through the area. Around 5:30 this afternoon the wind blew hard and clouds moved across the sky. It didn’t rain and I didn’t hear thunder or see lightning. Checking the weather radar on my phone showed a storm a little distance to the west. By 7PM the sun was back.

Tomorrow is forecast to be the coolest day of the week. I plan to take advantage of the few degrees and visit Zion National Park. Today became an odds and ends day. I did a few chores around the RV and completed a couple of tasks.

Canyon wall to the west of the campground. Who says you need to go to National Parks to see interesting cliffs. In a few hundred years this “hole” may be an arch.

One task that I haven’t completed is reservations for the winter months. I’m reconsidering my intent to spend November through mid February in Texas. Some of the areas heavily impacted by Harvey contain things that I want to see. Clearly I have to adjust my travel to allow the hardest hit areas time to recover. San Antonio is still a safe place to visit, but the areas south and east of there are suspect. I’m not sure there’s enough in San Antonio, north and west to support more than a month or so stop.

The simplest solution is to continue as planned to San Antonio, but spend less time there. From San Antonio, I’d need to head straight east through East Texas and Louisiana. I don’t really know what’s in southern Mississippi and Alabama. The other consideration in this scenario is either fully embracing or avoiding Mardi Gras in the middle of February.

A more drastic option is to stay in Arizona through the end of the year or mid January. I’d then need to come back across Texas and Louisiana without a lot of stops. This is basically a reverse of my trip west last winter. If I stayed in Arizona, I’d probably look into Quartzite or Yuma for a longer stay. I’ve been moving every week or two since the beginning of April. A month or two in one location will allow me to catch up on a few things.

The third option is to really start looking out of the box for a travel plan. Should I go west to Southern California? What’s in New Mexico and West Texas? Should I go to the Rio Grande valley in extreme South Texas? About the only option I haven’t put on the table is heading east to Florida this fall. There is so much other country to see in the winter. Florida is a quasi home, but I’d rather keep it as an every other year winter stop.

What all of this comes down to is I have more research to do. Writing this blog entry has helped clarify some of the thoughts and dilemmas I’ve been dealing with while watching the Weather Channel coverage of the flooding. Now I just have to commit to a plan.

Tuesday August 29th 2017

It was another hot day. The temperature topped out around 104 degrees about 5:30 this afternoon. Even with both AC units running full time, the side of the RV toward the sun was uncomfortably hot. The overnight low is forecast to be 75 degrees so one of the AC units will need to be on all night. I much prefer having the windows open.

This morning I went out on my usual first day in a new location exploration drive. It turned into a fifty mile trip into Arizona to visit the Pipe Spring National Monument. It is located in an area known as the Arizona Strip. This section of Arizona north of the Grand Canyon is a section of high desert that is suitable for cattle ranching. The water source at the Pipe Spring was significant to the Native Americans, the Spanish as a stop on the Spanish trail from Santa Fe to California and the Mormon settlers.

One of the springs that drew people to the area.

The fort dubbed Winsor castle by explorer John Wesley Powell for the Mormon leader responsible for its construction.

View of the Inside of the wall in the previous picture.

Opposite side of the fort.

The fort is filled with period furniture. I don’t think the two mouse traps on the far left of the picture are period.

Two chairs with an unusual canned seat.

A ranch wagon.

Two Longhorn cattle that live on site to set the historic mood.

A example of a covered wagon used by travelers that often stopped at the ranch.

The part of the site’s history that is celebrated by the National Monument is the Mormon settlers period. The fort building on the site was ordered built by Brigham Young to protect the church’s cattle ranch at the site from displaced native Americans and to protect Mormon families from the authorities attempting to end polygamy.

The fort is really a ranch house turned inside out. The solid stone walls have gun ports but there is no history that they were actually used. The ranch provided the Mormon community in St. George with butter cheese and cattle until over grazing and drought reduced the viability of the area. It continued to serve as a refuge for plural wives in Mormon families. The fact that Pipe Spring was in Arizona Territory and not Utah Territory or later the state of Utah complicated proving polygamy.

The guided tour of the fort and the ranch conducted by a National Park Service ranger was very informative. The literature and signs alone don’t provide the depth of understanding that the ranger provided about the history. There is also a museum describing the life of the history and life of the Kaibab Indians. The Pipe Spring National Monument is in the middle of the Kaibab Indian Reservation.

I completed my area familiarization drive with a stop at Walmart back in Hurricane UT. Overall I traveled 100 miles and toured a National Monument all to get a few groceries at a Walmart five miles from my campsite.

Monday August 28th 2017

What a difference fifty miles and 2000 feet lower in elevation makes. I moved south on Interstate 15 to the town of Hurricane Utah. This town is northeast of St. George and a good jumping off place for visiting Zion National Park. It is also a lot hotter than Cedar City. It was 106 this afternoon and my campsite doesn’t have any real shade. The campground is located on the gravel hillside leading up to a narrow canyon wall. I’ve had both AC units cranking since I got here.

The campground was kind of empty when I arrived at 2PM. It filled up some in the evening, but there were plenty of empty sites. This gravel area is on a gently terraced hill side. Leveling was a bit of a challenge.

This area seems to be having a late summer heat wave. The last couple of weeks were normal to a little below normal for high temperatures. This week, with the exception of maybe one day, is going to be above normal in the temperature department. I’m here until the middle of next week. With the heat, it’s not going to be the best place, but this is a holiday weekend. The selection of available sites in this area for Labor Day weekend was not very plentiful.

Site 60 at the St. George/Hurricane KOA.

The narrow canyon the campground shares with interstate 15 also does a number on radio signals. I couldn’t get any over the air TV channels and cell phone service is poor. Surprisingly, the 4G cellular data service seems to be OK for internet. The campground also has WiFi, but I’m not sure how good it is. For the first time in a couple of weeks I have satellite TV. That’s one redeeming value for the lack of shade. I can now get caught up on the HBO Game of Thrones episodes I missed. The campground has cable TV for access to the local channels.

Sunday August 27th 2017

Today was another hot one. It got up to high 90s in the late afternoon. Like a car in the sun, a motorhome heats up quickly when the sun hits it. I am currently parked under trees that shade the rig for the first half of the day, but by mid afternoon the sun is coming straight at the font windshield. Even with the front blinds down and the windows open it will get very hot quickly. I need to close the windows and turn the air conditioners on. Luckily it gets down to around 60 overnight, so I can shut the AC off and open the windows back up.

I stayed at home today. There are still a few things in the area that I want to see, but I’ll be back in this area in two or three years. All of the national parks are a draw to the area and Interstate 15 is a main north south route. That’s one of the nice things about this life style. You don’t have to see everything in a hurry, you know you can always come back. Now that I know the terrain a little better and as I gain more experience with the RV in the mountains, I will be able to book campsites nearer some of the national parks. I’ve been very conservative, even skittish in where I’ve driven the motorhome so far.

Tomorrow I’m moving on. It will be a very short repositioning trip of about fifty miles to the St. George Utah area. From there I can explore Zion National Park and other areas of Southwestern Utah, Northwestern Arizona and Eastern Nevada. The short hop is do to the holiday weekend. I reserved the St. George Utah stop before I selected this location in Cedar City for my visit to Bryce Canyon.

Boneless Pork Chops on the grill.

My big accomplishment for the day was dinner. I grilled a couple of boneless pork chops. One was for dinner today and the other will be cut up with some fried rice for a meal during the week. Other than that I took a short walk around the campground and started preparation for traveling tomorrow.

Saturday August 26th 2017

After over a week of normal to below normal temperatures the weather reverted to hot and dry. It was in the low 90s today. I spent the day at home recovering from yesterdays hike in Bryce Canyon National Park. Other than sleeping late, I didn’t have much to recover. My calf muscels ached a little, but not enough to really be uncomfortable. Considering the climbing I did yesterday, I’m not complaining.

I’m including more pictures from Bryce Canyon in this blog post. Yesterday’s pictures were all taken with my cell phone. Today’s pictures came from my Canon PowerShot ELPH 360HS point and shot camera. The advantage of the Canon pictures is the camera zoom. Some of these pictures really bring the hoodoos and other features into close up view.

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The cracks in this formation don’t look like they will survive another winter.

End of Bryce Canyon Blog Post