Utah & Zion National Park

On Thursday we moved the MoHo up to St. George Resort, a Western Horizon location. We plan to stay here a week and see the National Parks in the area. The resort is an older park, with tight roads and small sites for our size motorhome. But we got a nice spot with no one next to us so it was very nice. There was some nice grass areas that Pearl enjoyed after the sand & rock in Las Vegas. When we got there the weather was in the 80s, but soon moved into the low 90s. One of the nice features of the park was 50 amp service which allowed us to run both of our air conditioners. That kept the coach nice and cool during the day, which allowed us to leave Pearl with comfort.

Our first park was Zion National Park, which was only a short drive from our RV park. We didn't realize how popular Zion is. Last year it received 2.7 million visitors. During the summer they don't allow cars in the canyon, they use a shuttle similar to what they do in Yosemite valley. The shuttle works great in that it drops you off at the major spots, then later you can pick up another shuttle and move on to another stop. The shuttle runs every 5-8 minutes, so its real convenient.

One of the plans we have for this summer is to get more exercise, so we've planned to go hiking every other day when possible. So we jumped on the shuttle and stopped at the first interesting hike, the Weeping Rock.

It's only about a 1/2 mile, but it would give us a good start. It's called weeping rock because the water comes right out of the rocks and forms a stream that runs into the Virgin river. Because of the moisture, plants grow right out the rocks and form hanging gardens. After the hike up to the rocks, we followed a path up the stream, hoping from rock to rock.

We jumped back on the shuttle and stopped at the grotto for a picnic we had packed in our backpack. We discovered that it's better to pack a lunch than buy one at the parks. But we also discovered that it's better to go to a picnic area in the car so we don't have to haul the backpack everywhere on the hikes. It's really refreshing to sit at a picnic table under the cottonwood trees and enjoy good food.

Next we rode the shuttle to the end of the canyon to hike the Riverside trail. This is where the Virgin river enters the canyon at the Temple of Sinawava. It's an easy walk along the river as the canyon gets narrower. Here's a picture of us at the little falls near the beginning of the trail.

Further up the canyon we found a bend in the river which had a lot of round rocks near the bank. Many people had stacked the rocks into mini sculptures, which we found very interesting.

Of course, we couldn't leave without contributing our own stack. Here's Linda making our mark in Zion. Of course, they probably fell over in a couple of days, but it was fun.

The total length of the hike was about 21/2 miles round trip, but it was pretty level along the river, and nice and cool.

Our last stop was at Zion Lodge stop, where we crossed the river and hiked up to the Emerald Pool. It's named after the green color of the pool. And it has one of the few waterfalls in the park. It was a pretty setting, but the falls were nothing like a waterfall in Yosemite. It more like a leak. The hike was about 2 miles, up and down hill, and we were getting worn out. When we got back to the lodge, John found an ice cream stand and we refreshed ourselves.

Then it was back to the visitor center and our car. We really enjoyed the day, but we were pretty tired. It shows we're not in really good shape, but at least we're working on it. To see all of our pictures, please click on this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/jchuber1/ZionNationalPark02

Best Friends-A Revisit

We had a special treat when Jeni decided to spend her spring break with us in AZ. Of course the real reason for her trip was to visit the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, UT, with her Mom. This was Linda's second visit. The details can be found here: http://jchuber.blogspot.com/2007/09/best-friends-animal-sanctuary.html
I decided to stay back at the motorhome with Pearl.

When they got to the sanctuary they took the tour of the entire facilities. During the tour, Jeni got to meet something in addition to the regular animals.

Linda & Jeni dug right in with the volunteer work, starting with the dogs. In fact Linda enjoyed working with the dogs so much, the only other area she worked in was the bird area. I'm sure that surprises everyone! Jeni divided her other time with the cats (another surprise), bunnies, horses, and birds. It was like an animal smorgasbord.

Here's one of the friends Jeni made besides all of the dogs and cats.

One of the unique experiences Best Friends allows is the chance to take an animal back to your room at night. Of course Linda & Jeni took advantage of this option. Here's one of the dogs that they helped socialize during their visit.

And you wonder why I stayed back at the motorhome! I didn't think there would be space left for me to sleep.

Both of my girls had a great experience in their volunteer work. They're looking forward to doing it again soon. If you want to learn more about Best Friends and the work they do worldwide, here's the link:

http://www.bestfriends.org/

It's a great organization. In fact they now have a TV show called Dogtown on National Geographic Channel. Watch it and you can learn a lot more about it.

Zion National Park

While Linda is working with Best Friends, John is exploring the area surrounding Kanab, UT. This area of Southern UT is known as the Golden Circle, because of all of the National Parks in the area. These include Zion, Bryce, Grand Staircase/Escalante, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Today John decided to go to Zion. He came into the park from the East side of the park, off Hwy. 89. Once into the park, the first main stop is before the big tunnel where there's a trail that leads to the canyon overlook.

This trail climbs up the side of the canyon using the rocks as a trail. At some points it gets a little narrow. But the view at the end of the trail is spectacular!

Then, it's through the 1.1 mile tunnel that doesn't have any lights other that the headlights of the cars. The height at the center of the tunnel 13.3 feet, but at the edges of the tunnel is only 11 feet. When a tour bus or RV needs to go through the tunnel, cars are stopped at each end and the bus goes through the middle of the tunnel. Did I mention that the tunnel curves? At the end of the tunnel a series of switchbacks leads you down into the canyon and to the visitor center. From the there you can catch a shuttle to go through Zion Canyon. The views in the canyon are fantastic.

If you want to see all of the pictures John took of the park, please click on the following link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jchuber1/ZionNationalPark

If you have any questions or comments, please email us.

Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

One of our goals during our adventure was to visit Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, UT. We've been members for a few years and really admire this organization. The Sanctuary is about 3800 acres adjacent to another 30,000 leased acres of BLM land. At any given time the sanctuary has 1500 dogs, cats, & other animals. Once they're at the sanctuary, nothing bad will happen to them. Hopefully they'll be adopted by a family, but if not they have a home for a lifetime. This is the welcome center. Each year about 20,000 people visit the sanctuary and take a tour.

During the tour, we visited the many different areas devoted to the different animals that are currently at the facility. That includes Dogtown, and the new dog area, Dogtown Heights.

The buildings are designed specifically for the dogs and include exercise areas, and agility areas for training dogs for stairs, cars and other everyday obstacles. The areas that contain the dogs include an inside area with a bed and warm floors. There also an outside area that the dogs can access at any time through a doggy door. Each dog is evaluated and given a collar that defines their sociability. Green collars for very social dogs, purple collars for dogs that are sociable with adults, with other dogs at different levels.

There are other similar facilities for cats, birds, bunnies, horses, and wild animals that are being rehabilitated for release to the wild. They also have rescue operations during emergencies such as Katrina. Every weekend they have adoption events in nearby areas like Las Vegas & Phoenix. This is a large non profit organization with over 400 employees and many volunteers, which this week includes Linda! She plans to work for the week we're here to learn more about the Best Friends, and their mission.

If you would like to see all of the photos of Best Friends, please click on the following link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jchuber1/BestFriendsAnimalSanctuary

Thanks for reading our adventures!

We Arrive in Kanab, UT

We left Hart's Ranch on Sunday for the long drive to Southern UT. On the first day we made as far as Rawlins, WY. It was a stressful day, because we had 30-40 MPH winds mostly from the side, but some head on. We didn't make as much progress as we wanted to because of the winds. We overnighted at a Flying J truck stop, a first for us, but we didn't have many choices in WY.

The next morning was cold, and as we drove west on I-80 it got colder. In Rock Springs it started to snow, which broke one of John's rules about never having snow on the roof of the motorhome! It didn't stick to the freeway, but it stuck to the windshield. It continued to snow on and off until we reach the UT border when it stopped. It's a long down grade into Salt Lake City, where we merged onto I-15 south. We overnighted in a Wal-Mart in Cedar City UT where it was sunny, but cold enough overnight to put a coat of ice on the motorhome and pilot. When we tried to start the pilot, the battery was dead. Luckily, since we were at Wal-Mart it was easy to purchase a new one and we were on our way. By mid day we found our campground in Kanab, parked the rig, and headed on to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary for a visitor tour. Linda's going to volunteer for a week at the sanctuary while John going to explore the area and catch up on some chores.

More on Best Friends in our next post. Stay tuned, it'll be interesting.