St. George Sojourn

Lee's Pass Trail

This Wednesday marks the third week since the Collision. During that time we've been living mostly at the St. George Inn and Suites, sorting out details with GEICO, travel trailer shopping and getting outdoors whenever we have a spare moment.

Somewhere in Snow Canyon

St. George is a pretty nice town. Considering that it's the winter destination for Utah, the climate for October and November is pretty mild. There are even palm trees outside the door of our hotel room. Further down the street, and two blocks west we discovered the Hawaiian Poke Bowl, a Poke restaurant run by a native Hawaiian. Poke is marinated fish served over rice and it is good! It's funny but we've eaten more fish the two weeks we've been in St. George, UT than we did the entire month we were on the Pacific Coast.

Taylor Creek Trail

 GEICO, our insurance company has also been pretty great. Although it seemed like forever to patient folks like S.D. and I, it only took one week for them to approve repairs to the truck and get it in the shop and two weeks for them to settle on the R-POD. During that two weeks we'd been busy researching our next travel trailer so that when they issued the check S.D. and I drove down to Las Vegas to pick it up and the next day drove up to Salt Lake City to put down the deposit on our new home, a Creekside 20FQ. It's a small travel trailer, but it has everything we'd ever want in a home...and it's easily trailerable. Now we're just waiting for the truck to get out of the shop so we can turn in the rental car, check out of the hotel, get our stuff out of storage, drive up to Salt Lake City, pick up the Trailer and head back outside.

Looking down into a slot canyon on the tail to
Observation Point

After six months of living mostly outdoors in wilderness it's been strange to be living inside, and in a town. Luckily it's a town that is surrounded by awesome hikes. Twelve miles west of town in Snow Canyon State Park,a canyon carved from the red and white Navajo sandstone. Trails run along lava flows, up petrified red dunes, and into slot canyons. Thirty miles west is Zion National Park, the park is a busy place but once we were a mile up and into the eight mile hike to Observation Point no less amazing. I last visted Zion in 2006, BD (before Dave) and have apparently been annoying him with its effusive praise ever since. A little bit into the hike S.D. understood, and agreed.

More Snow Canyon awesomeness

But more Zion surprises awaited us both. The North entrance of the Zion National Park leads to Kolob Canyon. Here we hike two other awesome trails. Taylor Creek and Lee's Pass. Taylor Creek is a lovely four mile hike along the creek between canyon walls so red that the light itself has a redish tinge. If that isn't amazing enough, the canyon ends at a huge cave/arch. Lee's Pass is a very long trail of which we only hiked about six miles. This trail also follows a creek but is very different from the Taylor Creek Trail. The creek bed is much wider, the canyon walls neither close nor as steep. But still amazingly beautiful. I never tire of the variations and intricacies of the various microclimates around here.

Word has it that the truck will be out of the shop 'this week'. Hopefully next week we'll be off and exploring new places in Eastern Utah.