SUNDAY MEMORIES
Judy Wills
Heading to Utah, we stopped at the Pipe Spring National Monument near Colorado City. It is a very interesting place—built over a natural spring. (an interesting footnote is that during World War 2, a series of tankers were built and named after National Parks. Here is a picture of the S.S. Pipe Spring, courtesy of National Park Service)
I was intrigued to learn that the fort at Pipe Spring was home to the first telegraph station in the state of Arizona. While not on the original line from Washington D.C., or from San Francisco, the Mormon church built its own adjunct line linking communities north and south to Salt Lake City. It was called the Deseret Telegraph. There was a room set up in the fort with the telegraph equipment. It was manned by women usually, the first being only 16 years old.
We were surprised to learn that Texas Longhorn cattle had been brought to Pipe Spring, and were an integral part of that culture. There are descendants of the original cattle still there today.
From Pipe Spring we drove north into Utah, and Zion National Park. Unfortunately, we decided to take the last eight miles on a road that was barely on the map! It was full of ruts and holes and took WAAAYYY too long to get to our destination! But make it, we did, and decided it was the worst part of the trip so far. Also unfortunately, it was the most direct route to get to Zion.
Brian wanted to hike to The Narrows—a gorge where there are cliff walls a thousand feet tall with a “narrow” opening through them.
The Virgin River that runs through there can be relatively calm, or—with flash floods—can be very dangerous. Fred, Karen and I did a short hike, but then turned back to wait for Brian. There is no way to hike through The Narrows without getting into the river and depending on the time of year, getting your feet, or knees, or entire body wet.
It sounded like fun, and we saw plenty of wet, happy folks emerging, but my knees just wouldn’t let me hike very far. We later took a shuttle ride through the park and got some great pictures.
We also saw some deer, and got some good pictures of them.
We learned that in 1968, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was filmed in the park.
From Zion National Park, we stopped for supper in Hurricane, Utah. We ate at Durango’s Mexican Grill. Really good—very similar to Moe’s Mexican Grill, if you are familiar with that.
From there we drove to St. George, Utah. We stayed in the Lexington Hotel there. We were about half-way through our trip, so we did our laundry there—enough to keep us in clean clothes until we returned to Orlando.
~~~~~~~To Be Continued~~~~~~~
Old Things R New 