Back to traveling!

Ann and I just got back from a three day adventure into southern Utah. Actually it truly was an experiment of sorts. Since Ann had gotten severely ill back in January of 2017, we had not been on any kind of overnight outing. Actually it had been more than a year and a half, since it was at least as far back as summer 2016 the last time we went on a trip together. We had planned one in October last fall, but she ended up nixing that one as she didn't feel capable of handling it. This time it was different.
I had researched the listings at Airbnb until I found one that had recliners, like she was used to at home. I finally found this one: clickety-click. We left on Tuesday morning.
The trip down went well. I helped Ann get in and out of restrooms at gas stations and McDonald's and we made good time going down. I had been in contact with the owners of the place we would be staying, Zion's Angel's Nest, linked above, and they had been very good at communicating. We found it easily by their directions and soon met Iann and Paul at the door to where we'd be staying for the next two nights. They showed us around and let us know what was available in the suite, made some recommendations for food and activities, and then left us to our own devices.

Nice and comfy accomodations.

Outside the entrance we used.

A lot of great slogans on the walls that I agree with entirely.

They had a map of the world and pushpins to show from where you came.

Ann found out pretty quickly that the reclining furniture wasn't what she was used to and she couldn't manage the reclining of it with her limited strength. It was very comfortable, but she just couldn't make it recline, nor could she fully unrecline it when I reclined it for her. She has been disabled since about 2010 and has become used to certain surroundings, so for her to adjust wasn't as easy as for the average person to adjust. She hadn't slept on a bed for many months either, but she decided to try that and again, it was a failure. Not because the bed was uncomfortable in any way, but because she had broken her arm in late winter of last year and not known it was broken, then it had healed crookedly, and now, when she was on the  bed, she didn't know how to manage it. The combination of failure to manage either the bed or the recliner caused her to get quite agitated. That brought us to dinner time and she wanted some cheap tacos. I didn't so I thought I could get me something else and I went to Alfredo's Mexican and got a shrimp burrito. Across the street was Taco Bell, so after I picked up my burrito at Alfredo's I headed across the street for Ann's cheap tacos. The parking lot had about twenty cars in it, so I decided to try the drive up, which had about ten cars in it, but since my experience has been that fast food places put a premium on waiting on drive-up people, it would be much quicker than going in. I couldn't have been more wrong. Forty-five minutes later, I picked up my tacos at the window. Had there been a route of escape out of that line, I would have been out of it long ago. However, on one side was the building and on the other was a curb with grass and trees. Even if I'd had my 4Runner I wouldn't have been able to get out of that drive-thru line. My burrito was long gone before I ever picked up Ann's food. With things going as they were, it looked like we might be going home after one night instead of two. When I got back to the rooms we were staying in, things got a little calmer. As time for bed approached, she finally tried lying on the couch and we both went to sleep.

The next few pics were taken right outside the house where we stayed.

In the morning I found out that she had slept rather well and was in a much better mood because of it. "So are we still going home today?" I asked.
"No, we can stay the second night." she said.
We ate breakfast, then decided to go for a ride.

Interesting rock formations near Sand Hollow.

We drove past Sand Hollow State Park, circled around and got on the road that heads over to Zion National Park. I was thinking we could go over by the ghost town of  Grafton, then catch a road I knew of that drove over the top of one of the mesas near there. We actually missed the turn-off to Grafton and nearly made it into Zion before I realized what had happened and we turned around, turned on the GPS and found the turn-off. We went on into Grafton as I thought they may have added some portable restrooms to the area in the years since we had been there, but no dice. Back on the road, I found an alcove where the passenger side of the van was at least partially hidden and Ann did her thing.
Heading back, we turned off on the road that went over the top of the mesa, but within just a hundred yards or so, found out that the van couldn't hack it. I ended up backing down 100 yards of dirt road. I'm glad it wasn't a mile. Sometimes the sign that says "High-clearance vehicles only" is actually true!
We headed back toward Hurricane and took the road that heads up to Kolob Reservoir. I really wanted to hie to Kolob, but Ann's endurance wasn't up to it, so when we got to the national park boundary, we turned around and headed back, but not before I went off on a foray onto the edges of a large canyon to try and find some interesting rocks. Ann always likes to take a large boulder or two home with us, and we often joke about tying on a car-sized behemoth to our roof. This time I didn't find anything large and interesting, but I found a few pieces of petrified wood, which I could take because it was outside the park boundaries on either National Forest or BLM land.

Beautiful farmland on our ride.

What looked like an ostrich farm on the road to Zion National Park

That night we had better food and faster service. Ann is counting calories and wanted a salad, and I wanted something great. I got mine at the Stagecoach Grille--shrimp linguine. Do you see a pattern here? Shrimp both days. They had some salads, but had no idea what the calories were in them, so I went to the Main Street Cafe for Ann's stuff. They had no idea on calories either, but I didn't want to go another place so I estimated based upon salads that I knew of, like Wendy's salad calories.
We slept well that night. I had intended to wake up in the middle of the night to see if any stars were out, because it had been partly cloudy for most of the time we were there, but I was sleeping too soundly and didn't wake up until 5:20 or so. I went outside then, but it was mostly cloudy and I only saw a few stars.
I read for a while, then fixed us both breakfast: scrambled eggs, toast, and fruit. I had a glass of goat milk with mine. After breakfast I hiked halfway up a nearby peak called, appropriately (or inappropriately depending upon how you view such things) "Molly's Nipple". Rain was coming though, and the trail was treacherous and steep even when it was dry, so I headed back. When I got back down and could see the peak from a distance, I saw that I was probably only a half hour from reaching the top. One thing I noticed during the hike is that hiking at lower elevation is much easier than climbing the peaks near Salt Lake.

Our final morning as I got ready for my hike.

When I got back, we packed up and left soon after that. I had a viewing I wanted to get back for as my aunt had died and I wasn't going to be able to make it to the funeral because of some other serious things that couldn't wait.

As we got in the van to leave, we took this selfie.

We stopped at Mel's Drive-In for lunch in Beaver. I think we waited half an hour there for our food. It wasn't a great trip for prompt food service.
From there we headed home through a rain storm much of the way. All in all the experiment was a success and Ann is already saying things like "maybe we can go out for date nights now", which would be a big plus in my book.

Day 9

Sometimes there are unexpected adventures in life. Day nine of our trip, our journey home, included one such journey. But first, we got up and kind of leisurely got ready to leave our motel in Kanab. We stayed at the Victorian Inn as I had mentioned in an earlier post, and when we left, our first stop was to go and collect some large slabs of sandstone for future use in yard decorating. I had collected two earlier in the week and Ann wanted two more, so we drove down into Arizona, past Freedonia, turning off highway 89A and onto highway 22, back to approximately where I had collected the previous slabs. We found a couple more and headed on our way. Our plan was to take a scenic route, up Johnson Canyon that we had driven up the previous day, and then take a 31 mile dirt road called Skutumpah Road. Skutumpah was rated a 1 on the easiness scale for dirt road travel, and that's as easy as it gets. Two-thirds of the way in, we were in for an unexpected surprise when suddenly the road was wet--mud, then snow and ice. It looked dangerous as the road rounded a hairpin turn and headed down a shelf, covered in snow. We didn't want to turn back at that point as that would add hours to our travel time. This part of the drive takes people into breathtaking vistas on mountainsides. On the downhill side of the road in many cases there was a foot-wide berm, also made of mud, that if we happened to slide into wasn't going to stop us from going off the edge. But in many cases, going to close to the uphill side would create a situation where we might slide into a ditch and get high centered. It was a bit nerve-wracking, especially once we were on the ice. Fun though. It's the kind of road that shows you what your vehicle and tires are made of, and if you have the skills necessary to complete the drive. What a rush!

The snow on the road got to be at least six inches deep in places. This photo shows a bit of the snow and mud.

This steep section included an ice flow. I nearly fell on my head trying to get to the back of the Yota to take the shot.

Once we negotiated the last ten miles, we were treated to vistas like this one:

Looking north from Stutumpah Road

The book had rated the scenic beauty as a 9 out of 10, but until we dared to drive that last third of the road, we didn't see anything like this. Since I'm writing this, we obviously made it. There were no further surprises on the trip, and we pulled into the driveway at around 6:45pm. All told, it was a pretty good trip.

Day 7...

It was time to be on the road and headed home. Since we had stayed up so late the night before, we got off to a late start and didn't leave Tom's until after nine. We had been seeing this little restaurant called "Hoosiers Cafe" and yesterday when Ann was going to Great Clips to get her hair cut, I noticed that Hoosiers had a sign that said "voted best breakfast in Mesa". I told Ann that we should try that on our way out of town and she agreed. So this morning we stopped there. It was as good as they claimed. I had the shrimp omelet and it came with fried potatoes and a biscuit with gravy. The omelet was amazing and came with fresh salsa. I gave it a 9 out of 10. The rest of the food was good too, and we ordered a couple of their cinnamon rolls for eating later on the road. I actually gave them lower marks at 5 out of 10.

We actually didn't get out on the road until almost 11 and our first stop would be at Jerome, which is a small mining town that has become an artsy, touristy, restauranty place. We had been there years ago with the kids and I wanted to see it again. I made the mistake of stopping in the museum...Ann stayed in the car and wrote in her journal. The museum had a $5 charge to get in and was pretty much a typical mining history museum. I would have enjoyed it if Ann would have felt like coming in, but as it was, I worried about her waiting outside the entire time I was in there, and so I just rushed through it, certainly not getting my five bucks worth. Another thing is, if you've seen one mining museum, you've pretty much seen them all, except the names of the mine owners change. For what it's worth, it's better to read up about a place you intend on visiting before you go, and then spend the extra time actually walking the streets. Ann couldn't walk the streets either, so I walked up and down both sides of the street, quickly, looking through windows, wishing I could spend more time--I think I could've spent at least three hours there--and then after I ran up a flight of thirty or so concrete stairs, bought some fudge and we headed out of town. I'll say this, Jerome is certainly worth a visit and I will try and go back some day.

We decided to take the route north that would take us through Sedona. We'd been through there years ago, but I had forgotten how beautiful it was. We stopped and took a few pictures and headed on our way. We would be stopping at Kanab for the night and knew that if we didn't get moving, we'd get to our motel after check-in hours were over. We made it at a little after nine to our motel, the Victorian Inn in Kanab. And finally, daily internet access!