Ok, so the next day we got up and headed to a store in Cedar City to buy a jacket for me. We quickly found out that it is no easy task in summer to buy a jacket. Most normal stores do not stock jackets in summer for some reason. After finally locating one we headed back down the road to Kolob Canyons of Zion National Park. This is a neat area that if time permits, I highly recommend checking out.
We were quickly greeted with great views and the familiar red asphalt:
Gratuitous truck pic:
It's not a long drive into the park before you get to the end of the road and beginning of the trails:
We weren't set up for hiking this day, so we decided to mark it for next time and continue on. We headed back up the road and headed up into Dixie Mountain. Toward the top of the 13% grade we came upon Brian Head. I'm guessing it is a ski resort judging by all of the hotels and ski lifts..
After passing through Brian Head, i found a trail leading off the road to what would be the top of a mountain. It looked like there should be some great views, so off we went. Unfortunately, we were there too early in the summer and got thwarted by snow:
11,019' in June
Shortly after getting back on the road we came upon Cedar Breaks National Monument. There were some great views to be had:
Another area:
Very neat stuff.
Yet another gratuitous truck pic:
Heading down the east side of Dixie Mountain, while looking for an area to camp, we came across a gigantic pile of volcanic lava flow. The pic does no justice to how much volume of this stuff is here:
We didn't find anywhere to camp that we liked. Mostly because it was too early in the day to be stopping to set up camp, so we kept heading down the road. We went through Panguitch on 89 and got onto 12 heading toward Bryce Canyon National Park. We were actively seeking a camp location along the way. We had to stop and look at the scenery along the way though:
With a truck that kind of matches the color of the scenery:
Another arch/tunnel:
We passed a really neat campground that had some nice bike trails in it. While we don't normally stay in campgrounds, we did scoop the loop looking for any open spots. We didn't find any and continued down the road. I noticed that the area north of the road was labeled as BLM land on the map so if we could find a trail, we should be able to find somewhere to set up camp. Before long we did and after heading back into the hills for a couple/few miles we found our address for the night. It was a nice secluded spot. We got set up and I got my boy's bike down so he could burn off some energy before we had dinner. While getting everything in order it started raining a bit. Now comes a quick non-complete explanation of the roof rack and its purpose. An awning!! A self supporting, no poles needed, no strings necessary awning. Well, in this case an awning structure with a tarp covering. The awning material was supposed to be finished before our trip, but didn't actually get done. I had grabbed a HF tarp and some cheap paracord and by combining the structure I made and the HF components, we had a nice dry area to eat our dinner:
The real awning is yet to come, so much like me, you will have to wait to see just how awesome it turned out!!