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.