Saturday 10/15. What a gorgeous day!  Sunny, 85 degrees and beautiful. Today was our first hike since the appendix episode and it was the best yet (well, maybe tied with Bryce Canyon).  We went to Lower Antelope Canyon. You have to go with a guide and a group.  We really lucked out because our group was so big that they had to split it.  We were in the last group and there were only about 8 of us.  Our guide was a Navaho who grew up in the area.  His name was McKaoy and he was wonderful!  This was a slot canyon formed by flash floods over millions of years and it was unbelievable.   We had to walk down 5 flights of stairs (a couple of them were ladders) at the beginning.  Then several places we had to squeeze through the slots. As you worked your way through, it gradually went back up so when you got to the end you just rose up out of a "crack" in the ground.  The tour took about an hour and a half.  It was very cool as you will see from the pics.  Words just can't do it justice.

Stairs going up!

McKaoy

This is the slot we came out of at the end of the tour and our great guide McKaoy!

Friday 10/14  Well, after a few days of recuperating for Pops, we hit the road again.  We only went about 100 miles to Lake Powell near Page, Arizona.  This is slightly different scenery.  Still lots of red rock formations but with the added twist of Lake Powell.  This lake is HUGE.  Over 1,000 miles of shoreline and as deep as 400 ft in some places.  It was created when they built the Glen Canyon Dam and took 17 yrs to fill, according to the boat guide.  The Dam took 3 years of continuous (24/7) concrete pouring to complete! Yes, we took a boat tour today, a little modified adventuring.  The boat took us down by the dam and through a canyon.  Beautiful scenery again.  Some sections of the canyon walls looked like Navaho tapestry.  Tomorrow we are going to try to hike into Antelope Canyon.  The pictures from there should be spectacular.  I just have to keep Pops from overdoing it.  We are going with a guide and it is only supposed to last 1 hr and 15 min. so that should be okay.  Stay tuned as we wander on.🌅

Sunday 10/09. Well, we had some excitement on Friday.  Pops got up feeling sickly.  We ended up in the ER at the small local hospital.  They determined that he had appencitis and transferred him to the larger hospital in St. George, two hours away.  I picked up Jax and some clothes and headed over there.  Dropped Jax at a boarding facility and found the hospital. Thank goodness for GPS!  They operated on Pops at 8:00 pm.  I was told that, if everything went well, he would be dismissed that night!  What???  😱. Michelle started looking for a motel room for us ( I wasn't driving two hours back over the mountain at midnight with a semi-conscious pukey hubby).  Because of the Senior Olympics happening in St George (11,000 participants), rooms were scarce.  Michelle finally found us one and, after a stop at Walgeens at 11:30 pm, we finally made it to bed at 12:30 am..  Thank you, Michelle!  Since we could only have the room for one night, we left at 10:00 the next morning (Pops moving very slowly and carefully), sprung Jax from doggy jail, and headed back to the camper at Kanab.  We had planned to leave Kanab on Monday but we were able to get an extension to stay here for a few more days.  Pops is feeling somewhat better, but still pretty sore.  Whew, what an experience.  Sorry, no pics.  The photographer was out of commission at the time😢.  There will probably not be anymore blog posts for a few days because sitting around resting and recovering isn't very exciting.  Hopefully, we will be back to adventuring again by the end of the week.

Thursday 10/06. Zion National Park. Interestingly, to get into this park at the SE entrance, you have to drive through 2 tunnels in the mountain.  The second one was a little scary. It was 1.1 miles long!  Every quarter mile there was a "window" so you could see out.  However, you are not allowed to stop to look out.  Anyone who is clautrophobic should not do this tunnel!  Another strange thing about Zion is that you cannot drive your car through most of it.  You must use the shuttle or a bike.  The good things about the shuttle are that you get narration about each part of the park as you drive from one stop to the next, you can get on or off anywhere along the the way, and it is free. Lots of walking to shuttle stops.  Zion is beautiful, not as jaw-droppingly awesome as Bryce, but it had some very different scenery.  Some of the massive rocks looked they were melting.  Some looked like they had been painted with swirls by a giant paintbrush.

We had planned on 3 hikes, but only did 2.  We hiked up to the Weeping Rock first.  The top part of the rock so porous Navaho sandstone that water can work its way through.  But the bottom half is limestone and the water can't get through.  It is forced out laterally and creates this "weeping" rock.  The second hike was up to the Emerald Pools and waterfall.  It was only .8 of a mile to the lower part, so we went.  However, it was, as usual, mostly uphill.  Sucking wind again!  Then when we got there, the pool was only as big as our koi pond and the "waterfall" was only a small stream.  Wrong time of year, I guess.  By the time we got back down, we were tired and skipped the last hike. We picked the dog up and headed back to the camper.  Got back about 7:00, had a light supper and crashed.  We did have over 15,000 steps on the step monitor!

Tuesday 10/04. Last week we went to Mars (aka Goblin Valley).  Today we were transported to the Sahara Desert (aka Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park).  We walked up and down, all over dunes.  The ranger told us to watch for the Coral Pink Tiger Beatle.  This is the only place in the world where it can be found.  We looked all over but never saw one. It would have been fun to get a picture of one.  Another strange thing about these dunes is the pine trees growing on and around some of them.  We were told that there is water down deep under the dunes and the pine trees roots can reach way down to get to it.  The dunes are made from Navaho Sandstone.  Apparently the wind is funneled through a notch between two mountains, increasing the wind velocity to where it can carry grains of sand from the fragile, eroding Navaho Sandstone.  The  dunes were fun and a nice change from red rock formations.

Sunday 10/02  Moss Cave Trail was our destination today.  The trail follows a pretty stream for about a half mile, then heads up a hill and a switchback.  At the switchback the trail split.  We followed the right one first because it went to the waterfall.  We discovered that the stream was originally a canal that pioneers from the 1800s dug by hand to bring water to the area for crops and livestock.  The stream has run continuously for the last 200 yrs.  The waterfall was not very big, but it was pretty.  We hiked back to the split and then took the left trail up another hill to Moss Cave.  The cave was disappointing, not particularly pretty, just a small damp cave.

On the way back from the trail we drove back into Bryce Canyon.  We wanted to get pictures from Fairyland Point with the sun shining on it.  At the time of day we were there yesterday it was in shadows.

Finally, we went to pick up Jax from the dog boarding facility.  Tomorrow we are packing up and heading for Zion National Park.