Brrr… it’s cold to start

DAY 16

4/3/26. Thursday

Walk around the van. Woke up to a cold morning and the wind was still blowing but not a gale force wind at least! In our van life we are trying to adopt routine checks and one of them is to walk around the van before we depart camp or anywhere we’ve taken things in and out of the van. Jim remembered to do this before we left camp in the morning and ‘lo and behold’ he found my bright blue camping down puffy jacket. It must have blown out in the gale storm when he was working hard against the wind to close the sliding door last night (in the dark)! He didn’t even notice it exiting the door. But as he walked around he spotted it a little ways away. He thought at first it was the young people’s blue tarp when they evacuated in the dark! Yeah… thank you Jim. I would have missed that old favorite jacket. It likes camping with me.

Kolob Canyon in Zion. We are headed into Zion National Park again this morning but to a different section of the park to the north. It’s called Kolob Canyon. It’s closer to Cedar City.

We’re planning to hike the Taylor Creek Trail. It’s about 5.5 miles. When we started it was 41 degrees at 9:45am. The cold wind was still blowing. We were hoping to escape the wind when we were hiking up the creek.

Creek crossings. It turned out to be a really nice hike with a far, far fewer people compared to yesterday. It got busier as we were coming down but nothing like Zion proper. The trail had about 15 stream crossings where you had to plan the 2-4 rocks to step on to keep your feet dry. The creek was neither deep nor swift today. The ranger said it was about normal flow today but the past couple of days it was a river. The trail was closed!

It was entertaining as we actually had to cross the creek about 52 times… it got easier and easier as we got higher in elevation. We did bring walking sticks so we each used one. Not totally necessary but at times convenient and helpful.

Old cabins 1930’s. Along the trail there were two old cabins from the 1930’s. They were probably about one mile apart. They both were terribly delapitated but you could walk around them and peer inside.

Double Arch Alcove. Eventually the trail ended at a point called Double Arch Alcove. It is a tremendous scooped rock alcove. The coloring on the wall is so beautiful. It really was a treat to have the trail ending be so surprising.

Hiking down. The temperature did warmup some by the time we finished about 3.5 hours later. But I only took off my blue puffy. About the only disrobing I did was my buff I was wearing under my cap. Today most everyone was bundled to keep warm. By the way down we saw maybe 2 people in shorts…brrr.

Dropped the 3 year old. On the way down at one of the trickiest crossing there was a passel of children slightly ahead of two sets of parents. One of the kids… the littlest… was about little girl about 3. She was keeping up with the big kids and oh we was cute. I called her “Chloe”… blonde hair, dressed in a pink sweatshirt, pink sweatpants and pink high top tennis shoes. As she approached the stream behind the bigger girl (who easily crossed) she got a little scared. The older girl turned around to help her and was balancing on two rocks and then tried to pick Chloe up. As you can guess Chloe was a little too big for her to pick all the way up while balancing wide legged on rocks. She lost her balance and Chloe fell on her back into the cold creek! It took her 5 seconds to realize how cold and wet she was!! Poor kid! Mom and dad didn’t seem too concerned but Chloe was not happy. We could see this coming as if enfolded. Good day gone bad for Chloe and maybe the whole gang. Needless to say we chuckled and moved on down the trail. Sorry no photos of cute Chloe.

St George Utah. After the hike we headed back south toward St George. We found dispersed camping on BLM near a suburb area called Santa Clara UT just a bit northwest of St George. It’s a beautiful overlook of Santa Clara and Ivins and looks toward the Snow Canyon State Park where we will ride bikes tomorrow. We can see the city lights below us. There are a handful of other campers around us and below us but nobody is too close. The best part is …it’s not too cold and not too windy!!!

Tomorrow will be warmer and far less windy. We will take a scenic bike ride. It’s beautiful here. St George is one of the fastest growing cities in the west.