I am the highway.

I got up about the same time as Suzana was heading for work. After a quick shower, since I didn't know when I'd get the next one, and filling of water bottles and pouches, I headed out. I stopped at a grocery store to pick up provisions such as gallons of water, fruit, pasta, lunch sandwich stuff, etc. The camera stores didn't open until 9AM, so I had a little while to play. I drove down to the strip so I could get in some early morning photographs of some sights when the traffic and heat were still low. I hadn't been to Vegas in several years, so it was nice to drive around a bit and remember the last trip and sites visited. After getting the things I needed at the camera shop (they fortunately opened the doors about 10 minutes early, I hit the interstate and headed north.


My first quick stop was at a Bureau of Land Management office in St. George Utah to pick up an 'Old Spanish Trail National Historic Trail' stamp since it was just off the interstate. Part of the plan for the trip was to pick up as many of the National Park Service stamps as I could along the way for my park passport book. After that I headed to the Kolob Canyon entrance for Zion national park. Kolob Arch is the second largest arch in the world, however viewing it would involved a 22km round trip hike that I didn't have time to do. I grabbed a Zion NP stamp at the VC and then took the scenic ride up. The drive was a great way to see the sheer canyon walls that that I remembered seeing in King's Canyon in California last year. There were plenty of pull-outs that had sweeping views. at the top I took a 1.2 mile trail to a sweeping vista as a means to get acclimated to the altitude a bit and enjoy the area.


After taking off I headed back north to Cedar City UT for a stop for another 'Old Spanish Trail NHT' stamp (there would be a lot of these along the entire trip). After a bit of backtracking, I got off the interstate and headed to Cedar Breaks National Monument. I picked up my passport stamp at the visitor center and headed to the main overlook. This area is a basin full of hoodoos much like the well known Bryce Canyon but sits at a higher elevation. I spent quite a while here just enjoying the view and lack of major foot traffic and tried to hit all of the available vistas along the way. On the way back north I check out the Brian Head area that is a fairly popular ski area in the winter. There was a nice drive up to the top of the mountain that had some nice views as well.

After a good bit more driving, I finally pulled off at some random exit and looked for a place to crash. At first I was just going to find a side road on which side I could set up a tent, but I hadn't taken into account the extremely hard clay that made up much of the desert area. I finally found a gate and fence line somewhere that met at a 90 degree angle and set up my hammock tent.

After getting out of Las Vegas, I pretty much started to listen to audiobooks for most of the rest of the trip. I had started 'Alice in Wonderland' a while ago and finally got a chance to finish this as well as 'Through the Looking Glass'. If you ever wanted to know what goes through the mind of a child with seemingly extreme ADD, then this book would be a good revelation. Wow did the story ever jump around!