Day 45
It’s been 45 days since we departed Texas Home Base.
It seems like 450.
If that sounds like a complaint, I can assure you that it is not!
I think that it’s just that we’ve crammed so much travel into this stretch that our little Planet Winnebago has entered its own time-warp. Which is just fine…… we’re retired and really don’t care what day it is and, in fact, we’re so old we don’t remember either! I know for a fact that yesterday was Saturday because the Walmart of Hurricane,(Yes, Hurricane) Utah was filled to capacity when we arrived. It’s just something that we’ve come to be able to analyze quantitatively. This is also one of the Walmart’s that has posted signs about No Overnight Parking. We did call a day ahead and when I asked the young lady who answered the phone if they allowed RVs to park overnight she replied, “No, not really but if you park as far away from the building as possible no one will bother you.”
We are testing that theorem tonight and as I write this (4 AM, Mountain Daylight Time) two police cars have just pulled into the parking lot and have stopped about twenty yards away from us. Report to follow.
Back to the narrative. I am sure that you have heard the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” Case in point…. not just two days ago we were leaving the snowbound northern nether regions for warmer and sunnier climes.
Success! ☹ It got to freakin’ 92 degrees yesterday!
We needed to run the generator for a bunch of hours so that we could keep the AC running. Walmart does not have full hook-ups in their lots! It was actually hotter here than back in Texas…. the place we vacated before it got to be Hadestown. That other old adage, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” is mostly true. Back in Texas the humidity hovers around 3017% and here in southern Utah it is 23%.
Ahhhh, the comfort of it all!
Our plan for the day was to visit a very small section of Zion National Park. This area, Kolob Canyons, is only accessible by its own entrance in the northwest part of the Park, so it does not get the same amount of visitors that the much larger Zion Valley gets. The road into Kolob is only five miles long but it goes past some spectacular scenery and its easy to see how this area got annexed to the Park. As you can see by the photos, we are back to our originally mandated 15 on a 1 to 10 scale of weather.
Since this adventure was somewhat reduced by the fact that the Park is that small, we took advantage of our extra time to get things ship-shape as it were. Both the car and the motorhome kind of get trashed when we’re just running from place to place and we’re not in a position to be able to stop, empty everything out, and re-pack it nicely. Thankfully, yesterday was one of those days, it was sorely needed.
News Flash…. the Police departed without a word. 🙂
Another thing that was needed was to give Miss Biggie a bath. This is something that I normally do by myself armed with a large micro-fiber washing mop and a hose. Most campgrounds and all Walmart’s frown on this practice. So, after all that time (the 45 days) and all that inclement weather we drove through, our baby looked like it was owned by some ne’er-do-wells. The solution was to visit a Truck Wash. These places are huge drive-through garages with about ten guys armed with large brushes and power-washers on steroids. We’ve only done this once before and that was down in Tucson. That experience was fine until as we exited, all shiny and clean, a Haboob Warning went off and the daily dust storm swept our way aiming itself directly for us and our still wet motorhome.
It was not a pretty sight when she got through with us! Luckily, downtown Salt Lake City does not schedule dust storms on a daily basis!
On to the main part of Zion today!
