Vacation Day 2

Day 2 Saturday: Let me begin by finishing day 1...we ended up eating at The Three Bears instead of Escobar's in Kanab. The reason being that we had eaten Mexican food the night before. Ann ate healthier than I did. She had an oriental salad. I had linguine alfredo and garlic bread. The linguine was my third choice because they were out of the other two choices I had selected ahead of it.

We went back later and got some shakes. They were fairly good, but not enough hot fudge in my hot fudge shake. I had a hard time sleeping because I forgot to bring my own pillow and the ones the motel provided were uncomfortable to say the least.

So on to day two. We left Kanab at around 8:20 after eating a fairly decent breakfast at the motel. As I'd been loading the 4runner, I'd seen the early morning sun just touching the nearby red mesa tops. Beautiful. I figured that on the way home I could keep this in mind and get up early to take some pictures.

We headed down the road. In Page, Arizona, we took the temporary diversion road 89T down to Gap. We had been on the old highway 89 a couple of years ago, just a day or two before a sinkhole/landslide had appeared in the road and it had been demolished by the slide and had to be closed. It hasn't yet reopened. The new road, 89T, goes mostly across the "Res", and the top speed is 55. This seems so slow when crossing this vast desert landscape and needing to travel hundreds of miles. It was nice when we finally got to Gap where the replacement road met up once again with the old road. I found myself wishing I'd have waited to get gas at Gap because it was 25 cents cheaper per gallon than the gas I'd bought in Page (thinking that the gas at Gap would be more expensive). We made it to Flagstaff at around lunch time and looked for a good place to eat. I knew about the Dog Haus where I'd eaten some of their good hot dogs in previous years, so that's where I wanted to go. Ann wanted something different so I picked up my food from the Dog Haus--it was good, by the way, though not good for me. Ann had something from McDonald's.

We got on the road again and made it down to Mesa. We are staying with Ann's brother, Tom in a house owned by their mother. This house doesn't have any kind of internet connection, so I'm having to wait until I'm at a place with wifi in order to post. We will be at Debi and Morris' house (Ann's sister and her husband) on Sunday. So I will be posting from there, if all goes according to plan. I think I'm going to be in withdrawal on this trip, but what the heck, life's an adventure, right?
 Dinner...we ate at Jack in the Box, but we went to the grocery store to buy some things so that we can make some more nutritious meals.

Traveling is interesting and you have some things happen that you'd never expect. It's best to be prepared, but you can't prepare for every possible contingency--so you have to be able to roll with whatever happens. That's a mental thing.

  I'm tired. I'll be going to bed soon.

Our vacation: Day 1

Our estimated time to leave for our trip was 8 am, and we ended up hitting the road at about 8:23. Our destination for the day would be Kanab, Utah, roughly half way between the Salt Lake Valley and the Phoenix, Arizona area. The driving was fairly uneventful and we found ourselves in Panguitch at around 12:30 where we stopped for lunch at the Flying M Coffee Shop. This place has a small gift shop near the entrance and then further back in was the eating area. There was an oldies station playing on speakers from an old compact stereo system, complete with 8-track tape--state of the art, I know.

I ordered the special, which was a garlic/mushroom stuffed burger and fries. Ann ordered the club sandwich with bacon. I thought the burger wasn't bad, but not great. Ann's club was fantastic, she said. The fries were good, but there were too many--and generally that's a compliment. However, I left a few on the plate that I just couldn't finish.

After lunch we continued on to Kanab, winding our way through some amazing country with red rock peaks dusted with snow. We arrived in Kanab at about 2:30, drove around assessing the town because the info we got said check-in time for our motel was 3 pm, and then about ten to, we stopped at the motel--the Victorian Inn--and were able to check in.

We will be going out for dinner later--probably at a place called Escobar's--provided it isn't closed. One thing we're finding in these smaller southern Utah towns is that a lot of the businesses, including restaurants, are seasonal and winter isn't their peak season. For example, in Panguitch, there were only three choices for lunch, Subway, a convenience store pizza place, and the Flying M where we ended up. Just like when we went through Moab in the winter a few years ago.