The last two days in So. Utah have been amazing. The scenery continues to astound.
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| Natural Bridges National Park |
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| Natural Bridges National Park |
Yesterday our first stop was Natural Bridges National
Park. One of us has been anxiously
awaiting the opportunity to get the National Park Service Geezer Pass, better
known as the Golden Pass, entitling the holder and a companion to free
admission to ALL federal lands including the parks, monuments and forests. Never mind that yesterday was Free day in all
federal lands, a Geezer Pass was obtained at the Natural Bridges Visitor’s
Center and on we went. We were moving
from Bluff to Torrey so we had Chuck with Toad attached and the cats in the
rig. We unhooked Toad in the Visitor
Center parking lot (badda bing-badda boom – nothing to it), brought the cats in
their carriers and drove Toad around Natural Bridges NP. Words and photos can’t do this area
justice. Every turn in the road opens up
vistas that leave us agog.
After the drive around the park it was back to the parking
lot, hooked up Toad and away we went on to Torrey, UT for the night. We had a good dinner at the Diablo Café and
then to sleep at the Thousand Lakes RV Park.
Today things were a bit more eventful. We struggled with getting Toad’s signal and
brake lights to light, programmed John with our destination of Glendale, UT,
turned the wrong way out of the RV park, argued with John for about 3 blocks,
realized he was right and turned around heading the correct direction. More stunning scenery of sheer red bluffs and
canyon walls, rushing streams relieved by high grassy plains with cattle and
horses followed by rough black buttes and canyons, always climbing or falling
with the terrain. Everywhere, lots of
uninhabited land, long roads broken by small, I mean really small, towns.
About 35 miles from our destination of Glendale, UT, our
first “check engine” light of the trip came on.
A soft “bing” alerted me to look at the dash and there was the yellow
light and the ominous message: “Engine
Coolant Low”. Mind you, we were on a 2
lane U.S. highway in the midst of the mountains with virtually no shoulder, no
pull-offs and a large green semi-truck in my mirrors. On a Sunday afternoon. What to do?
We turned the AC off, slowed down as much as we could with getting
pancaked and the light went away…..for a while.
A few miles later as we climbed a long grade it came on again. This time we turned the cab heater on
figuring it would dissipate some of the engine heat and that worked, for a
while. We were getting close to Glendale
and were on a long, steep grade heading into the valley. I didn’t want to downshift and make the
engine work harder and I wasn’t sure how using the exhaust brake would impact
the temperature situation, but the brakes alone weren’t doing a great job of
holding the rig down so finally, with the exhaust brake turned on we coasted
into Glendale, UT with a sigh of relief.
Deciding that coolant research could wait a few hours, we set up at the
RV park, fed and watered the cats and jumped in the car and headed 20 miles
down the highway to Zion National Park.
The term OMG was meant for this place. The same red buttes and cliffs and bluffs we’d
been seeing for days but now with green pine trees and yellow and red flowers
sprouting from the rock. Breathtaking views
around every turn. Robin gleefully flashed
her geezer pass as we sailed through the park gates.
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| Exiting the tunnel |
The road into the heart of the the park includes a 1.1 mile
long tunnel blasted through the rock that
opens into the main canyon and leaves you gaping. Zion has 3 million visitors a year and the
park handles it very well by running non-stop shuttle buses up and down the
scenic drive allowing unlimited on-and-off the buses. It’s an amazing place. We rode the buses with Germans, Australians,
Japanese and others all as impressed as we were.
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| Zion National Park |
Back to the rig for another BLT dinner (thanks for the
tomatoes Julie) and a hopefully uneventful evening when one of the two
thermostats in the rig malfunctioned and lost its display. After an hour of cursing, fuse-pulling,
circuit breaker flipping and various other trouble-shooting, we opened the
windows to the mountain breezes and called it a night.
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| Zion |
On the agenda for the next couple of days: visits to Bryce Canyon National Park, Best
Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab and serious research into how to add coolant
to the engine.
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| Zion |
And some good news…Robin occasionally (?) bemoans changes to
familiar places, saying things like, “when I lived here (50 years ago), there
was a stop sign here, now there’s a d*mned stoplight”. Well,
as we were leaving the park she said, “Zion is just as I remember it from when
I was 11 years old”. Isn’t it nice to
know that rock formations hundreds of millennia years old don’t change?
We’ll keep you posted!
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