Utah & Colorado

After parting ways with our friends, Jim & Corinne, we headed north into Utah. We planned to stay a week in Kanab and then hook up with fellow full-time RVers, Rob and Laura in Hatch, UT, just south of Bryce Canyon National Park. From there we planned to go into Colorado and potentially land at Amy’s sister’s place for several days.

Kanab, UT

We spent a few days in Kanab, UT last spring at a new RV park just outside of the main town. The J&J RV Park was familiar to us and was open for business, so we stayed there for a week. The stay was mostly uneventful with just a couple of highlights to break up the boredom.

They day before we left Homolovi State Park, a nice couple had introduced themselves to us through RVillage, the social networking app for the RVing community. Once we were settled in and posted our location on RVillage, Dave and Kate messaged us to inform us they were boondocking just north of Kanab. We were familiar with the location they sent us because we had checked out the area last year for potential future stays. We drove over to visit them. We had a nice afternoon while practicing safe social distancing. It is always nice to meet new people and maybe our paths will cross again in the future.

One of Kanab’s local attractions is the Peekaboo Canyon just north of town. We had read about this slot canyon hike last year but we were led to believe you needed a 4 wheel drive ATV to get to the canyon. Upon further research, this time we learned that the drive into the canyon is around 3 miles. The canyon itself is only 3/4 of a mile long so a round trip hike from the parking lot would only be slightly over 7 miles. Piece of cake! We do hikes of this distance all the time. What we didn’t realize is that the need for 4 wheel drive is because of very deep and soft sand and hiking through heavy sand, including many uphill sections, can be quite difficult.

Once we made our way to the canyon and entered the slot, we knew it was worth the effort. The cool air inside the canyon was a relief and the coral-colored walls were stunning. Given the current situation with Covid-19 limiting travel, there were very few people in the canyon. We were the only two, however, that did not ride to the mouth of the canyon in a capable vehicle. On our way back out of the canyon, a woman coming in pointed out the steps that were worn into the canyon wall. These were done by ancient Native Americans and are known as Moki steps. Shortly after observing the Moki steps, we emerged from the canyon and it was time for the long trek back through the sandy trail. By the time we got back to the parking lot and the truck, we had hike 8.6 miles. A bit more than the estimated 7+ but we thought it was well worth the effort.

Hatch, UT

Our move to Hatch, UT was a short one and with a later than usual departure from Kanab, we were all setup in our new location by early afternoon. We were looking forward to Rob and Laura’s arrival at the site next to ours. They were coming from south of Flagstaff, so their day of driving was much longer than ours. We met Rob and Laura last year and spent time with them this past November near Austin, TX. They also had hosted the Escapees Hangout event that we attended in Tucson in early February. We knew we were in for a fun and eventful week.

This was our friends’ first visit to the beautiful state of Utah and we had been here a couple times before and did a lot of hiking in the area last year. We hiked almost every day, taking Rob and Laura on the hikes we discovered and thoroughly enjoyed last year. Most of these hikes are in the Red Canyon area of Dixie National Forest.

After our first day of hiking on the Golden Wall trail, we planned to grill something for dinner. As Dan got in the truck to move it into position for grilling on the tailgate, he received a low tire pressure warning. We have had a history of valve stem failures with the aluminum rims on the truck and this appeared to be another instance. Since it was Saturday, we had to wait until Monday to get it taken care of. In the meantime, Dan had to add air to the tire every morning and evening as it lost almost 20 lbs over a 12 hour period (normal pressure for the rear tires is 65 psi). On Monday morning, we called the Ford dealership in Cedar City and found out they could take care of us in their express lane without an appointment. While they had it we also got the oil changed and fuel filters changed (they were due in 200 miles anyway). It took less than 2 hours and we were back in business and ready for more hiking.

Bryce Canyon National Park was scheduled to open on Wednesday and we knew we wanted to be there on opening day. That left us with figuring out what to do for Tuesday. We mentioned Kodachrome Basin State Park to Rob and Laura and they said “Let’s go there!”. So we once again, took our friends on a hike that we had thoroughly enjoyed last year as we walked the 7 plus miles of the Panorama trail long loop.

Entering Bryce early in the morning on the park’s first day of operation in several weeks was surreal. There were other visitors in the park but not that many. We estimate that somewhere between 100 and 200 people were there during the time we were in the park. We hiked down into the hoodoos from Sunrise Point along the Queen’s Garden Loop trail. Several popular trails were closed for maintenance, including the famous Navajo Loop trail, but we enjoyed the views along the trails we walked. Once we came back out of the canyon, we drove further into the park to visit Observation Point, which is where Dan took sunrise pictures last year.

After hiking to the top of Inspiration Point we had enough and it was time to head back out with a stop at Ruby’s restaurant for lunch. Yes, restaurants are open in Utah for dine-in service. They have more than half the tables closed so that patrons are widely dispersed and all staff wear masks and gloves. The food was awesome with generous portions. Only a couple other groups came in to dine while we were there so I think it will be a while before things get back to normal, both for the park and the businesses around it.

On our last full day with our friends we decided to drive over to Zion with the hopes of being able to hike somewhere in the area. Zion was still closed with plans to open the following Wednesday, one full week after Bryce opened. Unfortunately, we did not find anyplace to hike but did enjoy the drive to Zion along route 9 from Carmel Junction. We had been to Zion a couple times before and it is one of our favorite national parks and had hoped Rob and Laura could have experienced more of it. We told them they have to come back and visit again when the park is open for visitors.

Colorado

We left Hatch and spent two nights at the KOA in Green River. This was a convenient location to break up our trip but turned out to be a bit more interesting then that. Our daughter’s college roommate from the University of Rochester follows us on Facebook and noticed our checkin for Bryce. She contacted us about the area and decided to take a short trip to get out into nature. We told her our plans to stay in Green River so she planned her trip accordingly and we had a nice afternoon getting re-acquainted and meeting her husband. We took the opportunity to surprise our daughter with a FaceTime so they could catchup while we prepared dinner. And, yes, we did take precautions with masks and hand sanitizer and no hugs or touching of any kind.

Our ultimate destination for Colorado is to spend some time with Amy’s sister in Monument, CO but before we get there we wanted to make a couple stops along the way. First was a couple nights in Fruita, CO to check out the Colorado National Monument. After checking into our site, we took the scenic drive through the national monument and stopped at the closed visitor center to hike the rim trail for some pictures. The drive was spectacular and if you are ever in this area, we highly recommend it.

The next morning we took a hike that had us walking through the rock formations that we were observing from above while on our scenic drive. The hike was a 5 mile loop that took us by Independence Monument, a centerpiece of the area. It was a great hike and a worthwhile stopover on our way to our (so far) favorite KOA campground in Silt, CO.

We are now at the KOA along the Colorado River. We normally use KOA campgrounds sparingly because they tend to be expensive and sites are not always very big. We stayed here last year and were talked into upgrading our site to one of their premium riverside deluxe patio sites. We enjoyed it so much that we booked one of them from the start for this 4-night stay. Our running average cost for a night since we’ve been on the road is just under $26 a night. The $61.05 per night we are paying for this location is definitely splurging but we think we may actually be getting our money’s worth here. Besides being backed up to the Colorado River, the site has a nice fire ring with a pair of Adirondak chairs, a covered table, and a full size gas grill to use. All on a concrete patio. Yup, its OK to splurge every once in a while.