Since we have not been traveling in the RV, we decided to combine June and July and give you a synopsis of our road trips by toad.  We have been to Capitol Reef NP, the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Pipe Springs National Monument, Zion National Park, Red Canyon and of course many trips into Bryce Canyon National Park.

We have traveled many back roads in the Dixie National Forest which surrounds both the National Park and National Monument that are so close to the KOA.  Last week, we drove Hell's Backbone in the Dixie NF, leaving the paved road at Escalante, UT and coming back to Highway 12 just outside of Boulder, UT.  Hell's Backbone is a narrow road, accessible by car, but we are glad we were in the Tracker as we traversed the Box Death Hollow area of the forest.  The road was constructed by the CCC in the 1930s and is a really cool road to travel if you like getting out in the boonies. 

After traversing Hell's Backbone, we dropped down the Burr Trail out of Boulder, UT and entered the south west side of Capitol Reef NP.  This road turns to dirt at the park boundary, but the paved portion through "the Wash" is just incredible.  Lots of red rock and slick rock to look at.  After the road turns to dirt, it drops quite quickly from into the Waterpocket Fold. This is a fault line running from the Colorado River to about U.S. 24 in Utah.  It goes for about a hundred miles and has a unique cockscomb feature running right down the center.  The road into the fold is pretty exciting, narrow, steep and winding. I figure we dropped about a thousand feet in maybe a half mile of linear movement.  Of course, we drove farther than that coming down many switch backs.

After coming down from the western rim of the fold, we turned north and drove about 40 miles on dirt roads to Notom, UT and then picked up US 24 back through Capitol Reef NP and then on to Utah 12 for the ride over Boulder Mountain and back to the KOA in Cannonville.

One day in mid June, we drove up to Cedar Breaks National Monument.  This monument sits on top of Cedar Mountain just south of Brian Head, a big ski resort.  The visitor center at the monument is at 10,300 feet in elevation and the day before we went there, the temperature was 25 degrees F and it snowed all day.  Cedar Breaks has freezing temperatures 250 nights a year.

We also did a day trip into the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  This monument basically surrounds Cannonville and the cliffs right out our window are part of it. It goes all the way to the Colorado River and covers 1.7 million acres.  One of our trips into the monument was down the Hole in the Rock road out of Escalante.  This road goes to a point above the river that the Mormons used to reach a new settlement back in the 1800s. They lowered their wagons 1200 feet to the river bank from some high cliffs.  The story is they were trying to keep the Colorado cattle ranchers from encroaching into Utah, so they started a settlement down there someplace.  It is a rough dirt road.  We went about 15 miles to the Devil's Garden which was just too cool. 

After Devil's Garden, we searched for some dinosaur tracks off of a remote canyon road.  We never found them and turned around when a sign appeared saying deep sand was in front of us.  It was pretty obvious that we were the only folks to use this road for quite some time, so we decided to not temp fate and have to walk out if we got stuck.  The monument is so vast that folks get lost out there often.  Just last winter a couple got stuck in a snow storm and while the guy walked out for help,  his female partner froze to death.  It is a beautiful place, but one needs to remember how remote some of it is and be prepared for heat and storms in the summer and cold and storms in the winter!

In Bryce Canyon NP, we hiked the Navajo Trail/Queens trail hike and really enjoyed our third hike in the park.  We have also hiked in Red Canyon and the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  One of the highlights of our trips to Bryce is attending the Ranger talks in the evening.  We have gone to talks about Mountain Lions and Natural or not natural Disasters in the park.

We often drive up there in the morning to go to one of the overlooks or to just see the animals and people!

We have also driven to Tropic Reservoir a couple of times which is just west of Bryce Canyon NP.  One time, our trip to the reservoir was to find our first GeoCache.  If you don't know what GeoCaching is, go to www.geochaching.com and find out.  We have now found three GeoCaches. One was in the east valley of Bryce Valley. It is way back in the boonies and near an old abandoned mine.   The third one we found this last week was near the Tropic ditch, up by the rim at Bryce Canyon NP and just outside the park boundary.

We have made the trip to St. George three times, once going through Zion NP and then another time by going to Cedar City and down I 15.  The last trip was to buy a video camera.  We donated our previous one to the kids when our grandtwins were born 5 years ago and decided it was time to get a new, modern videocam.  Ours is digital and used the very small tapes. It also has a memory stick so we can take about 1500 medium res still pictures with it.  We also purchased a new digital still camera during this time to replace our Sony Mavica FD 91.  The Sony is the camera we have used for all of our pictures on the website up until a couple of months ago. It is a great camera, but a little large to haul around while hiking.  Our new Kodak EasyShare is much smaller and uses memory sticks for storage instead of floppy disks.  We can take 3000 medium res pictures with it or about 300 2mpxl high res pics.  It sure makes it easier to haul around and you can just snap pictures without worrying about storage.

Pipe Springs NM is west of Fredonia Arizona.  The Arizona border is about 65 air miles south of us and about 100 miles by paved road from us.  (by dirt road it is a lot closer!)  The monument is a small one with the main building straddling a spring that flows year round. It was the first place in Arizona to have telegraph service.  You can still see part of the original telegraph wire going out into the desert toward St. George, UT.

Another highlight was our trail ride up at Bryce.  The best part, was it didn't cost us anything. They comped our trail ride since we send lots of campers up there for horseback riding.  Here is a picture of Libby along the rim of Brcye Canyon NP. 

One of our favorite places to visit is Kolob Canyon on the north west side of Zion NP. This is a very seldom visited section of Zion.  The road goes in about 5 miles and then you have to turn around and go back.  However, this is some of the most spectacular scenery around.  This part of Utah is called Color Country and this part of Zion is a great example of why. 

Workamping

This summer has been quite different than last summer.  Of course, the climate here is much different than Green Bay, WI and the campers are quite different too.  Last summer's folks were mostly urban people who were trying to get away for a weekend.  The campers this summer are from all over, but about half of our campers are from Europe.  About half of those are from the Netherlands.  We have had campers from Israel, the UK, Wales, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria and of course the Netherlands.  We had a guy in from Alaska and lots of folks from California and Arizona along with hoards of east coast residents.

The weather has been generally warm and dry.  We hit a high of 101 F a few weeks ago and have not been close to that since. The humidity is low, often in the 12 to 15 percent range.  At night it cools off quite nicely, usually into the low 60s or high 50s.  We have used our air conditioner once at night and that was the night that we hit 101 during the day.  Night temps that day were about 75.   Last week, it finally started to rain.  We have had two brief rain showers and one nice thunderstorm.  We have been under a flash flood watch three times and under a flash flood warning once.  No big deal. We did have a road in the National Monument wash out last week and it is now closed.

Our work schedule is generally from 3 pm to 9 pm Friday through Tuesday.  Some times we work in the morning if someone needs a day off or goes to a meeting, but mostly we are the night crew.  This gives us lots of time to go out in the morning to see and do things and of course, we have two and half days in the middle of the week to do things.

While it can get hectic with just two of us here, it is nothing like the crazy times we experiences last summer.  If get three campers at a time in the office to register here, its a crowd.  Last summer we could have six or seven at a time show up.

This is a wonderful park. It is just four years old, the rest rooms are spotless and the grounds are in pretty good shape too.  I mow the limited grass once a week and we keep the office, pool, laundry, game room and rest rooms clean.  It is just the right distance from the hustle and bustle of Bryce Canyon NP and is right on the edge of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  While Cannonville has no place to eat, there are three nice restaurants in Tropic, just five miles away.
It takes about 15 minutes to get to the National Park from here and there are no stop lights in the entire county, which is huge.

Another neat occasion for me was the Utah State Hamfest at Ruby's Inn near Bryce Canyon NP.  It is only 12 miles up there from the KOA, so of course, we attended this event.  I ran a booth for Elecraft, the  maker of the transceiver kit I built over the last year or so. 

One of the more interesting things to happen to us this summer was meeting up with some old aquaintences.  We were in the grocery store in Panguitch, the county seat and a fellow came up to me and asked if I was KE4D.  I said yes and turned around. It was Dr. Tim Cotton.  Tim and I knew each other from Florida Atlantic University where he worked in the computer department when I was teaching at the lab school on campus.  He and I are both ham radio guys and we used to see each other  quite often in south Florida.  I haven't run into him for probably 25 years.  He and his wife were in Panguitch to see a dentist during their vaction out west.  Tim lives in the Florida Keys and for you hams, his call is N4UM. 

Once again, we have hundreds of pictures, so the few we picked for these two months are just representative of the area.

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Camping for June/July    $0
Fuel for June/July            $0
LP for June/July              $0