Happy Summer’s End!

Labor Day weekend. A holiday weekend for many, often involving barbecues and beaches. Sometimes a time to reflect on the summer, but almost always a symbol of the start of autumn. I am guessing that even my friends in Phoenix, where the temperature as I am writing this is 107 degrees, are thinking of sweaters and boots and pumpkin-spiced things (full disclosure – I am not a fan of the latter – hate me now).

As the doggies and I look toward fall, I thought I’d take a couple blog posts to document and update our late spring and summer. In the interest of efficiency, I will execute it using captioned photos with just a smidgen* of narrative.

*A smidgen turned out to be more like novelesque. I am breaking this into two parts.

Flashback to late April — as the weather started to warm up in the lower elevations of Arizona, we headed for the north-country. That proved to be a bad idea.

In our previous 2 years of late April travel, I delighted in enjoying the warm days and cool nights of the northern part of the state, while appreciating that I was avoiding the Phoenix countdown to hell. This year, not so much.

NOTE: For any Phoenician who reads the above section and thinks, “Serves her damn right for being so smug when she thought she escaped the first 100 degree day”,  you are totally correct!

Since we were hanging around northern Arizona, we decided to take a detour to the Grand Canyon (South Rim).

During my first trip to the Grand Canyon in 1987, I saw the below sign in the then-visitor center. I took a bunch of photos of it — photos that are now tucked away with thousands of others in my storage unit in Arizona. On this trip, I looked all over the visitor center – no special sign with the words of Teddy Roosevelt. Of course, in the intervening gazillion years, the visitor center has been replaced with a new one. But my favorite sign is still in what they now call the “Park Headquarters”. A nice blend of progress and tradition.

 

In our current political climate, where the elected and appointed leaders of our country have no concept of preservation, words like those above ring so much more true than they did when they first impressed me in 1987.

We drove into Utah in mid-May. First stop – Kanab.

I’m not a big sweet-eater (I’m more of a salt & crunch girl), but I have adopted a new travel practice — seek out the local bakery. It’s always good for an experience. Coffee + Pastry = Experience.

Our weather continued to be yukky. Sorry, weather is a theme in this post. Below is the view out our back window.

For reasons too long to get into (think weather), we needed to stay in Kanab longer than planned. Because it was over the Memorial  Day weekend, the manager made up a little campsite for us. The gigantic rusted dust bins and pitchforks didn’t make up the most scenic campsite we’ve ever had, but it worked in a pinch.

Leaving Kanab on the actual day of Memorial Day, I was stalking the reports on road conditions. I grew up driving in snow, but it’s been many dozens of years.

We were glad to arrive safely at our destination for one night, a somewhat deserted campground in mid-Utah, sans pitchforks.

We will leave this post for now and update with Summer Part 2 in a day or two.