Memorial Weekend...Day 3

Day 2's post left off with pancakes in Dixie National Forest, the morning of day 3. Here comes the rest of the day, starting with the drive through Dixie:

This is Posey Lake, an adorable little lake tucked in valley in the middle of Dixie National Forest. We took a walk around the lake, and Kona gave Sam a thank you kiss! She had so much fun!

The road to Escalante, UT - AKA Little Death Hollow...WTF. What a horrible name, right? Don't worry, we came out unscathed. 

Yummy lunch - "Escalante Tapas". When we camp, we treat ourselves to good food at restaurants that probably don't appreciate us coming in looking all dirty and gross. But we appreciate some good food!

We drove out of Escalante down highway 12 towards Henrieville - to see this:

This is a slot canyon, just outside of Henrieville, UT. To access it, you must hike along the rim to the end where the walls are about 4-5 feet tall, there, you can jump in (there's no flowing water) and hike through the canyon - the entire hike is a couple miles long, but we ran into a hiccup that prevented us from seeing much more than the mouth of the canyon.....

In the pictures above, the first one is the rim of the canyon, the second one is actually a bridge that was built across the canyon by shoving a few cars into a narrow spot and compacting it with dirt....you can actually see some car parts in the picture... though it's hard to tell what you're looking at...sorry. The third picture is also taken from the rim looking down, those little dots in the middle are hikers! 

So, the hiccup that we encountered happened here, at the first  drop off - it was about 8-9 feet of rock that you had to climb down - easy for us, but Kona said "Oh, HELL NO! - I'm not going down there, are ya nuts!?" And promptly removed herself from her collar while we tried to coax her to jump down. It would have been an easy jump, wasn't like we were asking her to parachute with no chute! But alas, Sam and I took turns climbing in, taking some pictures on the auto-timer, and we hiked back to the car.

That's me attempting to show you that I could touch both walls of the canyon - again, auto timer picture with the camera sitting on a rock - hence the bad lighting.

Kona, in all her stubbornness, decided time was better spent lying under a cool rock.

And that concludes the Henrieville slot canyon.

Moving on. Next stop, Bryce Canyon. It was literally right around the corner. 

The wonky rock formations are affectionatley known as "HooDoos".... though I'm not sure why. However, we did pick up a 6 pack of HooDoo beer from a brewery out of Salt Lake that was delish.... Random side note. 

Bryce Canyon is phenomenal, really cool place, but it's a complete tourist trap... so we went to some scenic viewpoints, took the necessary pictures, and headed back down to Henrieville where we caught the Cottonwood Canyon Road to Grovsners Arch.

Cottonwood Canyon Road is slightly famous road for off-roaders - when it rain it can be 100% impassable due to wash outs - it's a very sandy kind of road. The road runs from Cannonville,UT to Highway 89 - near Page, AZ. It's 47 miles long and had some awesome views, and a side road leading to Grovsner Arch.

 

From the arch, we found a camp spot for the last night of the trip:

Picture overload? Sorry about that. Lot's of cool things to see on day 3. One more day to go, with equally as cool places. 

Happy Friday everyone! 

Tomorrow Sam and I are hitting up the Flagstaff Extreme course. a high-ropes course here in town, with our friends Bethany and Chad.

I'll try to get day 4 done by Monday! 

Memorial Weekend... Day 2...Arizona/Utah Heffelfinger Adventure Cont.

Welcome to day 2 of our Memorial Weekend. Yesterday we left off on the drive to Utah with those wicked awesome socks that I was wearing...jealousy struck you hard when you saw those, I know. 

So here we go:

As we are leaving Arizona and crossing over the Utah boarder, we ran into this beauty...Lotto, Guns, Ammo, and Beer..sounds like a scary combination...but hey, whatever makes you smile huh??

NOTE: In Utah you can only buy liquor, i.e. anything other than beer, in a liquor store, which are hard to come by...not that we needed to find one, but that's why the border towns carry so much. Also, all alcoholic beverages in Utah must have a lower percentage of alcohol in them...so even when you do buy your liquor, the same bottle of whatever it is purchased in Arizona will have a higher alcohol content....Now you know!

And here we are! Welcome to Utah folks! If you want to find us on the map, this is highway 89 driving out of Kanab, Utah.

 Pretty. Can't complain about a drive like this!

Ok, bad blogger that I am, missed taking pictures of an entire town that we stopped in...sorry.... but here is Sam enjoying a vanilla shake from a drive-thru diner in Panguitch, Utah. Cool town! Tiny, but incredibly full of character. We walked down Main St. where it seemed they were having a town-wide garage sale. We picked up two beautiful blue mason jars that will be used at the wedding. Such kind people, full of American pride on this Memorial Weekend! If you ever get the chance, drive through this sleepy little town, grab a shake, and go antiquing!

From Panguitch, we continued driving up highway 89, then took off to the East on highway 62, towards the 24, then the 25....got it? At least,  I think it went something like that....Sam will be the first to admit that I'm not the best co-pilot...but anyway, final destination for day 2 was Fishlake. This is one of Sam's favorite family vacationing spots. The following pictures were mostly taken from the car because 

it. was. freezing.

Like 40 degrees in the afternoon and below freezing that night.

It was like an ocean out on Fishlake! Look at those whitecaps! Brrr....

This might be an exaggerated picture of the dark clouds that surrounded us that night due to my poor photography skills, but this picture does depict an excellent example of how I personally felt about the weather.

 Snow!? At the end of May.....not a fan.

View from the campsite the next morning - pretty rays of sun shining on the valley floor.

 The view of Fishlake from the road that we camped off of the next morning.

Fishlake, obviously a beautiful spot, I wish we could have spent more time fishing, letting Kona swim, and enjoying the beauty, but coldness doesn't make me happy, especially not in the early stages of summer, so we made our way down the mountain into Dixie National Forest, stopping along the way in an sheltered area to whip up some pancakes. 

Another side note: We set up the back seat of Sam's truck with blankets for Kona to sleep on - she gets half the back seat all to her self - the other side gets piled up with our bags, clothes, jackets, etc - things we'd rather not have dog fur all over... but where does Kona choose to sleep???? Right on top of all our stuff....of course.

 Kitchen camp box makes some delish pancakes.

As you can see by my happy face - I'm always a happier camper after breakfast.

Alright, I technically shouldn't have posted the pictures of breakfast - that's the beginning of day 3. But please enjoy our drive into Utah, our freezing adventures at Fishlake, our travel conditions, and our pancakes. 

Tomorrow our pictures will take us to some pretty neat places - much warmer places too. So stay tuned.

Happy Wednesday! 

And the last side note --- remember the surprise I mentioned a while back about something periwinkle???? Cross your fingers for some good news about that surprise in the coming 1-2 weeks!!! Yipee!