Category: Vacation

Zion Natl Park – Friday June 3, 2011

oday was the warmest day so far, 85+.

Hank and I went for a morning walk and man it was cold.  Cold down canyon wind only had us out for an hour.  Jean and I took the shuttle bus up the canyon for first time this trip.

Here are some of the pictures I’ve taken this year.

LINK

Google has changed a couple of the setting since the last time I published an album, please let me know if you can not view this album, it has 58 pictures.

Zion Natl Park – Thursday June 2, 2011

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I’m doing a little catch up.

We left Richards on Monday morning at 6:00 a.m. heading east on I-80. We took I-80 rather than Hwy 50 because of the weather. Saturday evening we had enough snow at Richards to turn the grass white and with several of the passes on Hwy 50 over 7000 feet I decided we’d take the longer but lower and more traveled I-80. The drive was uneventful until 6:00 p.m. the motorhome got a rock chip in the driver’s side wind shield.

Tuesday morning we found a rock chip repair place 3 miles from the Walmart we had spent Monday night. After the rock chip repair we headed south again.

We stopped to pee hank at a combination state rest stop and Flying J gas station in Beaver, Utah. After I pee’d hank we were just starting to pull out when the guy who had been emptying trash cans waved at us. I got out to see what he was looking at, when I started to move he saw a small flat spot on the outside tread of one tire. The short story is about 90 minutes later we left the Cooper tire dealership with 6 new tires.

Had a great birthday, Jean got me a book, “1001 songs you must hear before you die.” She’s already planning on me dieing, or at least setting some goals as to when.

It is now Thursday afternoon. I went for a 3 mile ranger lead hike up to the Watchman Lookout point this morning. Left at 8:45 and got back at 12:45, took 225 pictures.

It is nice day 79 and sunny.

Here are some pictures:
Hank is in vacation mode.

Here is some of the damage from last winter’s flood.  The river was to the left of this tree last summer with a nice trail along the river.  In September when Tanya and I hiked the Narrows the river flow was at 42 cfs (cubic feet per second).  The Narrows is open for hiking when the flow is at 100 cfs or below.  Today it’s at 623 cfs and at the height of the flood it reached 8000 cfs ( eight thousand is not a typo).

 

Here are a couple of flower pictures I took today.

We are having a great trip.

Richard’s – Sunday May 29, 2011

Vacation is about warm. 
Hank got me up at 6:30 and it is 51 degrees on the MH this is just not right.  We at least have SUN.

We had a great day however not to warm.  Had fun buying Vicki a new refrigerator, looked at everyone in town.  In the process I think Jean now knows what kind of towel hooks she wants in the bathrooms. 

The stuff on Richard’s car is snow. 
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Vacation – Zion Narrows – Saturday September 18, 2010

Saturday September 18 Tanya and I went on a Zion Institute guided walk up the Zion Narrows.

We got on the 8:00 a.m. tram for the 40 minute ride to the end of the tram road and the beginning of the River Walk which leads to the starting point of the Zion Narrows river trail. There is tons ofinformation about the Zion Narrows (plan a visit) already on the net so I’ll skip most of the Narrows details. We started the day’s walk at 9:00 am and returned at 3:45 pm. Went up river to the first Y, turned right and up Orderville Canyon to the turn around point, returned to the Y and up main river to Wall Street. At Wall Street we turned around and headed down river. I’d say about 80% of the time is spend walking in the river.

It was a great day with a really nice group of people. I scheduled the hike with the Zion Institute so we’d have the opportunity to learn something and I thought it would be more enjoyable going with someone who knew what they were actually doing. We could have walked up river on our own however going with someone who had done this a couple of hundred times was much more enjoyable. Gene could read the river and picked the easiest and fastest route up and across the river 99% of the time. I didn’t see how really good Gene was until the trip down river. We didn’t encounter many people early in the morning however on the trip down river we saw hundred’s of people. Watching them stuggle to pick the route up river showed Gene’s understanding of the river.

Our Zion Institute guide was Gene (as I mentioned above). He is in his 70’s and volunteers to lead programs for the institute all year round. Gene said his wife’s father was actually born at the same location as the current Zion Museum.

We had a great day. I’ll include a couple of pictures now and maybe some more later.

This is one of the 191 pictures I took during the day.

This is most of the group.
Have a Great day, Harry

 

Vacation Update – Monday September 13, 2010

It is Monday evening and I’m going to get caught up on our vacation.

We are at Utah Lake State Park on Utah Lake just west of Provo. Here’s what has happened:

Left home Thursday at 6:00 pm and drove until 11:00 pm., got to Wilsonville rest stop just south of Portland. 194 miles

Friday morning we were on the road at 5:30, got to Grants Pass at 10:00 a.m. And Richards at 7:40 p.m. 709 miles.

Saturday we went for a drive up into the mountain. Pretty much a paved logging road the sign at the bottom said up to 24% grade. It was a pretty drive. Had lunch at the top of the hill and returned to Richards.
Richard and I went to the rifle range which is just a couple of miles from his house to check the sighting on two of his rifles. He’s going hunt over the next couple weekends. They were both just fine. He let me shoot his .243 rifle. It’s been almost 40 years since I fired a rifle and I think I did pretty good. I’ll insert of picture of the 3 rounds I put into the target at 100 yards.

We then moved over to Vicki’s in Sparks. This will put us closer to Reno for the Sunday morning balloon races.

Sunday morning we left Vicki’s at 5:45 to go the the balloon races. I’ll attach some pictures, I took 493 all together. I’ll also put some into my google pictures later.

Sunday after noon Richard and I built a rack which attaches to the ceiling of Vicki’s garage so she can store her window sun shades during the winter.

Monday morning Jean and I left at 6:30 a.m and got to Utah Lake State Park just south of Salt Lake at 6:15 p.m. 562 miles for the day. This will leave us with 264 miles to get to Zion on tomorrow.

Night will do more later this week.