Why be moody when you can shake your booty?!

October 22, 2021

Hurricane fun day

Since we are dancing tonight, today was going to be another non-bike day.

The first and most important thing we had to do was locate a portable, camping toilet for our upcoming boondocking experiment. So after breakfast, we drove into St George and checked out Sportsman's Warehouse.

They had a 5 gallon bucket toilet with attached seat that seemed like it would work. It was a reasonable price so we'll try it out.

Next we got gas and some food at Costco, then stopped by the UPS store to return the toilet we had ordered on Amazon.

Errands completed for the day, we drove back to camp where we had a quick lunch. We had wanted to bike the Kolob Terrace Rd to Kolob Reservoir, but decided to just drive the road today.

Boy, were we glad that we hadn't biked this road! There were a couple of VERY steep switchbacked sections that had you climbing up and up above the river valley. It was like biking some of the tougher mountain pass roads in Colorado and would be doable if we wanted a workout. We would have been walking some for sure!

The road dipped into and out of the national park a couple of times with other areas being ranch land. There wasn't any formal entrance station and not much traffic. We enjoyed the beautiful vistas and stopped several times to take pictures.

The paved portion of the road continued to Kolob Reservoir which was tucked away in the yellow aspen at a little over 8000 ft in elevation. There were many cabins and summer homes around the lake. From what I read, the road continues to just east of Cedar City but is now gravel.

We turned around here and returned back to Hurricane. It had been a pretty drive, and if you visit Zion NP and want to avoid the crowds, I'd suggest exploring this road. There were several hiking trails that took off from here.

Back home we had a couple of hours to get cleaned up and have dinner before we drove back to the Dixie Elks for one more dance. I had wondered where the term Dixie came from as it's used at lot in St George - a college is named Dixie College, there is a big 'D' on the side of the hill above town, and everywhere you see 'Dixie this and Dixie that'.

I found out that when this area was settled in the 1850's, Brigham Young encouraged Mormons from the deep South to come to St George. In addition, cotton was also grown here when the Civil War threatened to cut off the flow of cotton to Utah. A cotton factory was built and operated until the 1890's. This, along with the fact that St George was located in the south of Utah led to the designation as 'Utah's Dixie'.

It was a quiet night at the Elks and we had the floor mostly to ourselves. The music was provided by 2 women who sung to background music (one was the singer from last Friday night). They were good singers and even took requests.

They kindly played a tango, bolero and waltz for us. Of course, we were the only ones dancing at that point. Just entertaining the bar crowd!

They also had some karaoke and there was a guy visiting from England that was a really good singer. He sang a couple of great foxtrots - including a peppy 'Mack the Knife'. I don't think we've ever danced to karaoke music before but it was fun!

By 9, even though we were having a great time, we had worn ourselves out. It was time to head home. We'll definitely be returning to St George and the Elks soon!

Want to sleep in a Prairie Schooner or teepee, this resort in Virgin, UT has both!

The views of Zion along the Kolob Terrace Rd were stunningly beautiful.

The paved portion of Kolob Terrace Rd ends at Kolob Reservoir.

We ran into this touring cyclist from France at the grocery store today. Don played 'Trail Angel' when he saw that the guy was struggling to fill his flat tires. Full size pump to the rescue! The story is that the guy flew into Chicago, took the train to Grand Junction, CO where he started cycling west. His destination is San Francisco. I liked the fun bike bling!

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