Valley of Fire & Road of Snow

We reluctantly left Blue Diamond mid-afternoon Sunday after getting a last minute tour of a house Adam and LeAnna are considering purchasing.  LeAnna has already posted some pictures on her blog, so I will move on with what has transpired with our trip since then.  We drove through the Valley of Fire NE of Las Vegas near Lake Meade.  Adam had taken me there on a previous trip, but Karen had never been and it was certainly worth revisiting.

Red Rider doing well, although we would like a little better gas mileage.

Because of the late start we were only able to do a couple of short hikes and unable to spend much time in the visitor center which has some very nice explanatory displays.

Everywhere you look there are pictures begging to be taken.



One of the hikes featured a number of petroglyphs scratched through the varnish on the rock face.

Despite the dry winter there a number of desert plants doing their annual display.

Time to gather our poop and hit the road.  Because of our late start we spent the night in St. George, Utah with the plan for getting up early the next morning and heading into Rock Springs, Wyoming by early evening with maybe a couple of short stops along the way.



We started early Monday and jumped off of I-15 to drive a scenic loop (recommended by Adam) through parts of Zion NP, that would eventually connect us back near Cedar City to continue our trek north.



Truly breath-taking vistas all along the way.

About 2/3 of the way (and at approximately 10,000 feet of elevation) to Cedar City we began to drive through patches of snow across the unpaved road along with some pretty wet and muddy sections.  We handled them all pretty well I thought, until this one, which it turns out is the last one we would encounter.  This one turned out to be much deeper than the previous ones and the truck simply did not have enough clearance or speed to make it through!

Karen did yeoman work hauling and packing rocks for traction, but it took 3 new best friends (Travis, Nick, w/his dog Duncan & Doug), their truck with tow straps, a drive through the pasture and 4 hours later we were in Cedar City .

Red has a new trim color!

We did make it to Rock Springs late in the evening and after a couple of visiting days with Malia, Ryan, Megan & James we'll be heading home, without any more snow!