It’s Wednesday, I haven’t posted my journal since last Saturday, and a lot has happened since then. I write this from the little burg of Snowville, UT a few miles from the Idaho border just off I 84. (I confess I traveled the interstate from Provo, UT, through Salt Lake City and on to the Idaho border. We’ll probably stay on I 84 to Boise and then get back on two lane roads.)

Today, I had intended to visit Timpanogos Cave National Monument and Golden Spike National Historic Site, but, as usual, I had planned too many activities for one day. We spent the night just south of Provo, got a relatively late start and took advantage of the urban area to do some grocery shopping. This meant that we didn’t arrive at Timpanogos until almost noon. When we bought tickets for the caves, the earliest tour available was 2:00 p.m. We had a picnic lunch and then began the 1 ½ mile hike to the cave. Now a mile and a half is nothing for old hikers like us, but this mile and a half was straight up the side of a mountain. The trail rises 1,065 feet in this mile and a half. This seemed steeper than the corridor trails at Grand Canyon. Lois and I hiked the mile and a half in about an hour, and we were really ready for a cool stroll through a cave. It didn’t disappoint us. We toured through three connected caves which, though small by Carlsbad standards, were nonetheless beautiful.

We came back out into the light about 3:00 p.m., and hiked slowly back down the trail to the motor home in about 30 minutes. Lois was having trouble with one of her knees on the down-hill portion of the hike, but we went slowly, and she toughed it out.

Needless to say, we didn’t have time to drive all the way across Salt Lake City in rush hour traffic and reach Golden Spike before closing time. So we decided to save Golden Spike for another trip and push on toward the Idaho border. Niles, our GPS guy, helped us find a little Mom and Pop RV Park. (Although to think of it, I’ve seen Pop, but Mom doesn’t seen to be anywhere around. Maybe that why there’s a “For Sale” at the entrance.)

Now I’ll catch up on what we saw the earlier part of the week.

We left Larry and Shelly Thompson’s at Grand Canyon on Sunday morning after a huge waffle breakfast with Larry, Shelly, Jennifer and the kids. It’s always hard to leave good friends, but especially hard to leave the Thompsons. They feel more like family than friends, and we miss seeing them on a regular basis.

In my last installment I mentioned that we had not decided which of two routes to take through Utah. The eastern route would take us through Moab where we hoped to see our friends Ross Rice, Kate Cannon and their girls. The western route would allow us to revisit some of our favorite national parks and to see some new ones. After looking at the map, we decided the eastern route would probably add at least two more days to our itinerary, a prospect that we couldn’t afford if we are to make it to Seattle by 7/23. So we decided to save Moab for another day—perhaps the return trip from Seattle to Taos in late August.

We crossed the Colorado on the Navajo Bridge and drove across the Arizona strip, stopping at Jacobs Lake Inn and picking up a bag of the cookies for which they are famous. We got a variety, and are sharing one after lunch every day. They are delicious, and they make a nice light dessert.

Driving through the Kaibab NF, we were struck by the severity of the drought and the restrictions put in place. All the campgrounds, picnic areas and most, if not all, the forest roads were closed. Pray for rain. The forests in the Southwest are parched and sorely need it.

Our next stop was a delightful one--Pipe Spring National Historical Site, a small, little known site on the Arizona strip west of Fredonia. Pipe Spring is an old Mormon farming settlement and fort which is being preserved by the National Park Service and the Paiute Indian Tribe. We had a guided tour of the fort and strolled the grounds. The orchards that were planted by the Mormon pioneers are still yielding fruit today.

We drove west from Pipe Spring through the twin towns of Colorado City, AZ, and Hillsdale, UT, towns that you’ve heard a lot about on the news in the last few years. These towns contain large concentrations of Mormon fundamentalists who still practice polygamy and who have run afoul of the law. We looked for extra large houses and other signs of “large-than-normal” families, but aside from a few houses which appeared to be larger than one would expect, the towns seemed normal.

Sunday night we stayed in an RV Park on the Virgin River, not far from Zion NP. When checking my e-mail that night, I had a message from my good friend Bob Barksdale in Jackson, MS, who recommended that we stop at the Bumbleberry Café in Springdale, UT, at the entrance to Zion for a piece of Bumbleberry Pie. So Monday morning, on our way to Zion, we picked up a couple of pieces of Bumbleberry pie to go and had it for our dessert Monday night. It was delicious. Thanks for the tip, Bob.

Monday was probably our biggest scenery day of the trip. We rode the shuttle bus up Zion Canyon, got out at the end of the hike, and walked about a mile up the trail to where the pavement stops but the trail continues, if you don’t mind walking in the Virgin River. Almost twenty years ago, when we first visited Zion with Emily and Elizabeth, Emily and I hiked another mile or so in the river. The canyon narrows quickly and in some cases, it seems that you can almost touch the sides. Lois and I weren’t equipped for river hiking, so we deferred this experience for another time.

After we got back to the visitors' center, we drove through Zion on the main east-west highway. It’s truly a magnificent trip. In one spot, there is a mile-long tunnel for which we had to pay a $15 fee for an escort because of the size of our vehicle. The tunnel is so narrow that they restrict it to one-way traffic in the case of large vehicles like our motor home.

After we left Zion, we drove quickly to Bryce Canyon and took the shuttle to some of the main viewpoints in that magnificent park. Zion and Bryce are so different, but each so beautiful. The colors and formations in Bryce could delight a photographer for weeks and weeks. We had only a few hours. As Arnold said—I’ll be back!

We dry camped at a primitive campground in Bryce on Tuesday night and got an early start for another fabulous scenery day. We drove northwest out of Bryce on Utah Highway 12, which is billed as one of the most scenic highways in the West. It lives up to its billing. It seems there’s a photo opportunity around every curve. The route goes from slick rock canyons to alpine passes at around 9,600 ft. One could spend several days just following Route 12.

We turned off Route 12 to visit a national park which neither of us had visited before and neither had heard or read much about—Capitol Reef National Park. Capitol Reef is a strange, beautiful land of multi-hued rock layers. In most places, it is rugged, stark and dry. In those few places which have water, there is a oasis quality—green grass and fruit trees. Again, there is evidence of Mormon pioneers tin the area. By mid-afternoon, we left Capitol Reef and headed toward Salt Lake City. We drove late and arrived in the Provo area around 7:00 p.m.

That catches up with what we’ve been doing the last few days.

I've got more pictures, but apparently there's a limit of five photos per post. I'll put pictures from Bryce and Capitol Reef on a separate post.