Utah Trip - Heading Home

     Our travel day before we headed home sported some of the worst weather of the trip.  When we left Moab, it was overcast.  We hadn't traveled more than an hour when it started to rain.  On I-40 the precipitation changed to a driving snow as we crossed some of the higher passes on the interstate. What should have been a picturesque drive, featured white-out conditions in several spots.  It was still raining when we reached Cedar City, Utah, and fortunately our room was ready.  Not the most exciting day of our trip.
     Our last day in Utah was our longest.  Our flight was not scheduled to leave Las Vegas until almost midnight, so we had a lot of time to play.  We started the day by hiking in the northwest portion of Zion National Park.  This section of Zion, known as Kolob Canyon, has a brief scenic drive of 5 miles that ends at the mile long Timber Creek Overlook Trail which we hiked.

     From there we drove back down the road to the trailhead for the Taylor Creek Trail.  As a point of reference, it is probably better to visit Kolob Canyon in the PM, as the morning sun obscures views from the scenic highway as you look eastward and that;s where most of the dramatic rock formations are.

     The Taylor Creek Trail is a 5 mile round trip to the Double Arch Alcove.  The water level in the creek was up some due to the rains of the previous day, making hiking the trail more difficult as you were required to cross the stream 96 times, by my count.

The Double Cove Arch is huge and impossible to photograph as the trail leads right into the first alcove of the arch.  It was very impressive and we had it all to ourselves.  Again the benefit of being early morning hikers.  Here's a picture of me in the alcove which hopefully will give you some idea of its size.

     From Kolob Canyon, we had hoped to visit Cedar Breaks National Monument.  However, due to the amount of snow, the monument, which has the highest elevation of any National Monument, was not opened.  Therefore, we headed down to St. George, Utah, to visit the winter home of Brigham Young.  The St. George area is called the "Dixie" of Utah, as during the Civil War cotton was grown along the Virgin River.  The tour was interesting and only cost us getting our names on the Mormons list to receive a Book of Mormon.

      Our last visit of the day was made to Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area just outside Las Vegas.  Here a 13 mile scenic drive loops through the high desert where a number of viewpoint and trailhead stops gives you some great views.  Including the Calico Rocks.

and Pine Creek Canyon and Ice Book Canyon.

     From here we went to the airport and had to wait an extra two hours before taking off at about 1:30 AM, making it an extremely long last day of vacation.