Cedar Breaks National Monument

September 7 –Although we worry about our home in Ocoee, there isn’t much we can do from here but hope our children save the things that are important to us and do the best to keep our house secure.  We are lucky to have family so close that we know will do all they can for us in our absence.  Not being there has both its good and bad points.  We hope our friends and family will all be safe and make good choices during this stressful time.

What an eventful day we had!  I cooked some of our yummy Idaho sausage and made macadamia nut pancakes and fruit for breakfast.  We weren’t in any real hurry today so eventually we headed out for Cedar Breaks National Monument.  It’s about 30 miles to the visitor center from our RV park and it’s a 2 lane weaving road with an elevation of over 10,000 feet.  The ride up was beautiful in itself with a number of pull offs that we were not able to take advantage of.  There was a truck transporting huge concrete dividers and behind him were 2 big RV’s and then a line of cars that we were in.  Bill didn’t want to lose our place in line and not be able to rejoin the car train up the mountain.

It's way in the bottom!

Finally when we arrived at our turn off, the truck pulled into a pull off big enough for him and we all picked up the pace for sure!  Of course by then we were only a few miles to the entrance and visitor Center of Cedar Breaks.  I can only say, Wow, what a view!”.  You just can’t get enough!  It’s

One of many glorious views

basically a large amphitheater with varying types and colors of formations.  It looks different from each angle.  Down in the bottom they say are quite a few arches and one is visible from the visitor center.  It took a minute to locate it as it blends in so well.  I managed to get a close up with my camera. 

There was a resident marmot that came out to see us and a

Mike the Marmont

vestral (the smallest of the falcons) flew over, so we managed a touch of wildlife too!  We stopped at all of the overlooks and the further we got, the windier it got!  We forgot that we were headed to higher elevations and didn’t take jackets so a couple of our stops were REALLY fast!

When we exited the park we left via the road to Brian Head, a well known ski area, with 8 chairlifts and 71 runs.  During the summer months they are growing in popularity for 4

burn area

wheeling.  On the other side of the “town” we began seeing quite a bit of recent burn and eventually were halted in road work where we asked when the fire was and it was the middle of June.  It appeared to have taken out a lot of trees but we didn’t see any burned houses.  One had burn all around it!  Amazing!

The road led us to the small town of Parowan where we had lunch at the Parowan Café on the main street of town.  It was OK.  It was our waitress’s 3^rd day and she did OK but the “cook” didn’t follow orders too well.

West of town is the Parowan Gap Petroglyphs and Dinosaur Footprints.  The footprints are

The triangle shape is it!

fossilized in stone and they have markers at each one.  It took a while to figure out what we were supposed to be seeing.  They are not imprints, they are outprints and most are small, about a foot (no pun intended) wide but there is one about 2 foot wide.  The petroglyphs are very obvious, a

I zoomed in on one section

couple of miles further down the road.  They have a nice pull off with concrete walkways, a vault toilet and fencing to keep overly aggressive tourists back from the etched stone walls.  They are amazing!  I never tire of looking at petroglyphs and pictographs.  Unfortunately, it started getting very windy once we left the car and in the pass we could see dark clouds with rain that might be headed our way.  I did get lots of photos though!

We continued through the pass and turned left which took us back in to Cedar City.  So we mad a big loop today!  Bill dropped me at Joann’s while he filled the car with gas and then we stopped at Dollar Tree and Starbucks!  It’s been WEEKS since I had a Starbucks!

Once we arrived home, Bill washed the front of the RV from yesterday’s journey while I prepared 3 packages for the mail tomorrow and paid bills!  Ugh!

We had a light dinner tonight of salad with grilled chicken (mostly due to the java chocolate chip frappuccinos we had earlier).  I downloaded all my photos and prepped for posting and wrote the blog.  Once I post, I’ll have a little while to read and relax.