Escape from the North Rim

Evening, Campers! It's Silver Cliche' here again. Writing to you tonight from Hurricane, Utah. Waaaatttt? Utah? “But, Silver Cliche'”, I hear you ask “I thought you were spending three nights at the Grand Canyon. As a loyal reader I believe you only spent two and now you're gone. Wa happa?” Well, funny story about that. You see, we had two afternoons with “thundersleet”, two nights hovering around 40 degrees, intermittent rain, a campground with no electricity and not enough sun to drive the solar charging system which meant two sessions per day of lugging the generator out of the truck (in warmer weather we don't need to charge that often but in the cold the furnace blower motor can fully discharge our batteries in under 24 hours so we recharge morning and evening). Plus, I hate to say this, but once you've sat on the edge of the Grand Canyon for 15 or 20 minutes (longer for some, shorter for others) you've seen it. At least at Yellowstone there is variety… a hole in the ground that shoots boiling water, a lake of the strangest colors you've ever seen, boiling mud, waterfalls, bison, elk and other critters, etc. At the Grand Canyon, once you've walked to the precipice then the next option is to drive 10 miles to another precipice, then 20 more miles and more canyon, etc., etc., etc.. Some people want to see the Canyon from every angle. If they start at the North Rim where we were and want to see the South Rim it is a 210 mile drive one way to see it. Now, I don't want to poo poo the Grand Canyon. It really was amazing and has a scale so significant as to humble and inspire anyone (we should send presidential candidates there as a test of their humility potential and a test of my prior statement). But we had had enough. So, at 8:00 this morning I looked at Mrs. C' and asked “Shall we blow this pop stand?” and she replied “I thought you'd never ask”. By 9:30 we were off like honeymoon pajamas.

Off to where? Well, first you have to escape the Grand Canyon. That's a challenge in and of itself. It's about a 30 mile drive north from the North Rim to the first intersection with anything other than a Forest Service road. We knew that tomorrow night we would be in Zion National Park, and we knew we wanted to be warmer than we had been so we set out sights on a place closer to Zion and much lower in altitude (remember, out here in the West altitude changes produce temperature changes). And that led us to… Saint George, Utah!

Saint George is like a lesson in Utah's Mormon heritage. It is located in the far southwestern corner of the state. It's the county seat for Washington County which borders both Nevada to the west and Arizona to the south. The population of Saint George is about 75,000 and the County about 150,000. Those figures are a close match for the city (Vero Beach) and county (Indian River) where we live, so I immediately thought of Saint George as Utah's answer to our home. Population is about the only similarity. Geographically, southwest Utah includes the lowest point in the state, mountains over 10,000 tall and the northeast corner of the Mojave Desert. It's quite geographically diverse. Before settlers arrived this was Piaute country… we have left Navajo territory behind now. Based on our short trip through Saint George, this area today is whiter than a first communion dress. It was settled by a group of 300 families sent from Salt Lake by Brigham Young in 1861, The Brig man was concerned that the onrushing Civil War might disrupt the Mormon's cotton supply, so he told the 300 famulies to move to the warmest place in Mormondom -- the southwest corner, As for the name, it is not named after the guy in Europe who slayed a dragon, it's named after George Smith, a Mormon leader who wrangled sainthood and a city naming. 

The trip here was west-northwest and ran along some of the most spectacular red sandstone cliffs we've seen. I'm guessing that the people who named features in the Southwest came, as we did, from the east. I went to get a name for the features we passed today. A very similar landscape between Page, Arizona and the Grand Canyon was named the Vermillion Cliffs. The hero pic I posted the other day of the truck and trailer parked at the base of some… well… vermillion cliffs was taken at a pulloff there. By today in northern Arizona when I said to Mrs. C' “Look at those spectacular cliffs. They are almost as impressive as the Vermillion Cliffs we saw on Sunday” and she replied “When are we going to get there?”. Neither of us decided we should stop for pics. When I did the research tonight I could not even find that the cliffs we saw today had a name that applied to them collectively. So I called them “just some more red cliffs” and we drove on. I did attempt a shot or two for the “Silver Cliche' Driving Experience” Here's what the drive today looked like:

 

So, we arrived in Saint George. After finding a parking spot near the place TripAdvisor said is the #1 restaurant in Saint George (#1 of over 200 I might add) which is “The Painted Pony” we went in to chow down. It was good. After a couple of duds, the Pony rode into the winner's circle. We then walked around the vicinity of the restaurant which happened to be a section with shops, boutiques, women's apparel stores and the like. This town was unquestionably the most well cared for, loving landscaped and properly appointed small city (large town?) I've ever been to. Here is a pics including a steampunk, lifesized Bison in the center of a traffic circle which I dedicate to our dear friends Mr. and Mrs. Buff in whose Buffalo driveway we parked the Cliche' last September when it was 43 degrees and sleeting as I recall just like the North Rim (od, 50 and raining... just like its been doing at home in Vero Beach where yesterday set a record of just shy of 12" of rain in a single day. The most on record. Even more than in any hurricane that has hit.

The whole town had that "neat as a pin" look. It's an admirable demonstration of civic pride and a bit Stepfordish all at the same time.

After a bit of retail therapy it was back in the rig for the 25 minute drive to Hurricane Utah and Sand Hollow State Park where we are now settled in for the night. It was hot and we were loving it. Most of the trailers and motorhomes around us had their AC running. We opened the trailer front and back to let the breeze blow through. We'll leave it that way all night. Maybe by tomorrow we will have shaken the bone chilling experience of visiting the Grand Canyon. Here's a pic I took after dinner as I walked from the trailer over the embankment to the lake that is the attraction of Sand Hollow State Park. Even on a Wednesday evening in May the place was full of people boating, paddle boarding, tubing and generally enjoying the out doors:

 

So that's it. We escaped from the North Rim and happy we did it. It was well worth seeing. We saw it. Not it's time to look forward to Zion tomorrow, then on to Bryce Canyon, Arches and back into Colorado near Ouray a week from tomorrow.

Stay tuned for more adventure!

SC'