Thursday

Its near the end of our stay already so today we took time to go to the Visitor Center and the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) headquarters in St. George.

the Tabernacle seems to glow even on a gloomy day

 Our usual pattern is to bumble around an area, seeing things by chance and then, when it's almost time to leave, we get around to picking up maps and other helpful information to help us get the most out of our stay.

It seems to work well for us, we've always done things this way and have come upon some pretty spectacular things in the most unexpected places.

Virgin River at the Virgin Falls park

We wandered around our "home" at first.   Sand Hollow Reservoir isn't a very large body of water, but the neon orange sand running directly down to the blue water, flanked by snow dusted mountains makes for a wonderful spot.

tiny Mr. Bufflehead

One day we turned right out of the State Park's entrance and went where the spirit moved us.

pecan grove at Confluence Park in LaVerkin

We turned off onto a dirt road and followed it until we came to another narrow track leading to a tiny park on the banks of the Virgin River.

the original Sheep Bridge on Sheep Bridge Road below the modern bridge

everyone here is so very polite......

Dave and Lew select the perfect lunch spot

We ate lunch beside the narrow rapids while Lewis explored and waded.  We were the only ones there.

raccoon tracks

We enjoyed the warm sun for a long time before continuing along the road. 

Another dirt road led us to some beautiful views over the small town of LaVerkin and the Virgin River gorge.

Dave overlooks the trails and river far below

a makeshift shrine on the rim of the gorge - we wondered what happened here

Pam and John told us that they ran into snow at about 7000 feet on Kolob Terrace Road so we decided to drive up and let Lewis have a little romp in the white stuff.

The scenery was just beautiful along the drive.

we needed to get down and see these formations up close

We pulled off the road to explore an area with really unusual rock formations.
My knee has been singing to me lately so we found a nice, sandy Elk trail to follow instead of rock crawling.

tracks in the sand

hurry mom, we're already here, hurry, he's waiting, come on!

Lew always finds water

waiting

Back on the road, we passed a small tent community called Under Canvas.    Evidently they are for folks who want a "glamping" experience, complete with private bathroom and woodstove heat, near various National Parks.

spectacular spot to glamp!

The higher we went, the colder it got until we started to see snow along the road's shoulders.

We got out and let Lewis have some fun.  He dug, he ran and he caught snowballs.

Lew is a ball dog.  Rubber, plastic, snow....makes no difference to him

We drove up as far as the reservoir but it was obviously frozen over and the road was getting bad so we turned around and headed back down to warmer elevations and home.