Super fun day!!!

Captains Log September 11 – A day we will never forget!

Since we didn’t have to leave the RV site until 12 or so and it was only about a 90 minute

drive to Kanab, UT, we started our day by the 3 of us going to the Discovery Dinosaur Museum in St. George/Washington.    It was land owned by a Dr. who discovered dinosaur tracks on it and turned it into a tourist site.  Now they have a big building over the site with lots of information and manmade skeletons of some of the prehistoric animals that  were there, in addition to the tracks.  It was very interesting and well laid out. 

One of many prints

 

Back at the RV we put everything away and closed her up and headed on down the road to Kanab.  It’s not a very big town but very well known for its history as a filming location for Western movies.  We were there years ago and stayed in the little motel that names each room after a movie star.  When we stayed there we were in the John Wayne room at Bill’s request!

We had a GREAT afternoon there!  We visited the Moqui Cave which is

prehistoric.  There are petroglyphs on the ceiling and they have dinosaur tracks along with a huge collection of rocks from states all over that when under black light produce a wide variety of colors in the rocks.

Bill at the bar

The man who bought it turned this 3 room cave into local bar!  The one room is still set up exactly like it was 3 generations ago.  The middle cave holds the rock collection and the smallest is currently the gift shop. 

It took him some time back in the day to clean out the caves and

Rocks under black light

paint the opening inside and then block in the cave opening so it had door closing. 

Next we looked for and found the Belly of the Dragon Cave. It's not a big cave and we could see it down on a ledge but were not sure about getting down to it. There were a few “steps” going down the side but Bill didn't think we could get in and went back to the truck. Well, Melissa and I are persistent as well as “risk” takers. She went down first and had no problem. I was more concerned about getting back up! A group of Asians came in so we let them venture on further back as we did not bring headlamps or flash lights. Nice little side stop!

Melissa waiting on me 

Melissa from the
inside Belly

On the main road on the way to Moqui, we saw several cave openings up along a ridge and there were people in the caves, so I knew there was a way up. I told Bill I wanted to go there! So on the way back Melissa said she'd go with me. That's the great thing about her, she would probably not do these things normally but she was more than willing to give it a try. We watched other people and saw the “trail” they took up and over so we had an idea of where to go. The distance across was over 200 yards. The going was the slow half as we had to get a feel
for the rocks and angles of the rock sides. Bill waited patiently in the truck and got out and took a few pictures of

The caves we climbed to

us scaling the rocks. I have to say, that was one of the more invigorating things I've done. The caves were awesome and for a while we were the only ones in there. There are multiple openings facing the road that open off of a more central room and there was one tunnel back into the mountain that we walked in bit but again, with no flashlights or head lamps we didn't venture too far. Here we were, 2 women in our late 60's, doing what much younger people were doing. I can't tell you how it felt, just awesome!

The trip back across was pretty easy til the going down and we had to be more careful as there

View out one entrance

were not really any footholds. I'd do it again in a heartbeat! That is something I know Kam would have enjoyed as well.

I forgot to mention that the campground is a bit “ghetto”. When Bill checked in we had reserved 2 nights in a full hook up pull thru. They asked him if we would take a back in with full hook up paying for only 1 night. Bill asked me and I said sure, half price is a great deal. The first 2 sites I was not comfortable trying to get into so we “gently” backed into the 3^rd one and we felt like we were the ham between the bread! We didn't do much but sleep and eat some there as we were gone more than we were there so, it was a good deal!