WOW! We hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas, a safe and Happy New Year; and that the loves in your life remembered you on Valentine’s day. It’s been a good while since we posted so I’ll do my best to get caught up and the get the new season started.
West Yellowstone, Montana was good to us, but the days were getting shorter and much colder. So it was time to say good bye to new friends and head south for the winter; to see good friends and family.
The southerly path we chose, took us through Utah.
Willard State Park was our first stop and a welcome dose of warmth. The area was beautiful, albeit full of house flies. We and Nala enjoyed to lake and the freedom; but the houseflies became unwanted castaways that traveled with us for weeks. Now I do remember science class and that houseflies only live a short time but these guy were either mutant flies or very prolific because we did struggle with them for weeks before we were rid of the last of them.
We stopped off to contact some new friends we made in Yellowstone and get a wonderful tour of their home turf. Our next stop over was in Hurricane, Utah. That’s pronounced Herkin by the locals. It is a beautiful area and winter home to some dear friends we met in Yellowstone. We hiked our first slot canyon in nearby Snow Canyon State Park and spent time in Kanab looking into the Moqui Cave Museum and the Sand Cave, a wild cave.
The Moqui cave was originally a beer joint and dance hall built by Garth Chamberlain. He was a stuntman in old western movies, which were filmed in that area in the early 1950’s. He bought land with a cave and opened a dance hall and saloon for the movie stars and set workers, because “there was no nearby place to cool off and find a cold beer”; out there in the desert.
The Sand cave was just down the road from there and I LOVE caves, second only to waterfalls and wildlife. This was a personal challenge for me as I am NOT grace in motion and this required a certain amount of rock scrambling. The original excitement faded to grime determination and lots of encouragement from Mark; but I was glad a persevered as the cave was worth the effort. The rooms and openings in the cave were awesome and the views from them were inspiring.
Thanks for checking in on our Semi-retirement travels. I hope you are enjoying the weather and taking time to get out there and make your own adventure. Please continue to share. We love to keep us with you all.
Love the pictures, and loved being able to see y’all!!
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