West Trip 2012: Day 21

Dead Horse Point State Park, Utah to Orderville, Utah

320 miles

7 hours

Weather: sunny and hot 89 degrees!

Today we left the eastern part of Utah and headed for the southern part of Utah. It was a long drive to get here, and most of it was rather uneventful.

Before packing up this morning, Eric and Dennis went for one more run on the mountain bike trail. They had an even better time the second time-Dennis even made it up a steep, technical, rocky section. However, on one section he came down hard and sprained his wrist-so now he is taking Ibuprofen and has his wrist in an ace bandage. Well, we made it almost 3 weeks with no injuries!

We passed through several very tall mountain ranges on our drive west and south today-I think we recorded the highest altitude of the day was almost 8,000 feet! There were some long uphills and then some very long downhills!

Back at Moab, yesterday, we had stopped at a coffee shop to get wi-fi so that we could look up campgrounds for this part of our stay. We decided to camp somewhere centrally located between our next few day trips. Also, we wanted to pick somewhere that had more facilities-showers and full hookups. Don’t get me wrong-the place we stayed at Dead Horse Point was by far our favorite campground yet-we enjoy being able to subsist on only what we have in our RV, but it is nice to alternate. We can only go so many days before needing to fill up our tank with water and dump our holding tanks-and 3 days is about the max. We plan on being here for 4 nights and so we are at a place called Zion Ponderosa Ranch. It is basically a multi-faceted facility-tent sites, RV sites, cabins, and wagon cabins (called cowboy cabins). There are tons of amenities, some of which are included, and some that cost extra. There is a lot to do just at this campground, and I am sure we will do some of it, mostly in the evening when we get back!

The drive here was very interesting. The road leading up to the ranch is just minutes before the east entrance of Zion National Park, however it took us 30 minutes in the RV to get back to the campground! If we hadn’t called and confirmed as well as made a reservation, I doubt we would have continued on the road! We kept wondering how much longer it could be! Lots of winding roads going way back into the hills and canyons. The view here from our campsite is of part of Zion National Park, so we are very close!

Once we got set up and at dinner (leftover spaghetti, salad and bread), we headed over to the very nice mini golf course! (This is the one amenity that we paid for-the kids have really gotten into mini golf!) The course is 18 holes, with real water hazards and lots of variety. Bay and Leah played ahead together, and they were really laughing and carrying on like it was the best thing in the world. Dennis, Eric and I played behind them, and all of us lost a ball in one of the water hazards at least once! The balls float to the top and they provide fish nets to reach and get them out-how clever!

After mini-golf, we headed over to check out the pool. The pool is included and it is a very nice facility. It has 2 hot tubs, and 2 pools-one upper leading into one lower. There are water slides built into some fake rock also. The air had cooled enough so that no one wanted to get in the main pools, but we all got in one of the hot tubs for a little while. In the Rec Barn, the kids are looking forward to playing some foosball, ping pong, and other games like that. They even have billiards, tennis courts, and basketball-just to name a few things!

While camped here, we expect to explore Zion for a couple of days and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.