St. George, Utah

Easy drive from Vegas to St. George as it was only 115 miles.  We stayed at the McArthur Temple View RV park and we had a great site - long enough for motorhome, trailer and car with full hookups.

Between the town of St. George and Washington, there was about any store we would need so the first day we just took a drive around town as we had never stayed in St. George before.  Craig also took the opportunity on one of the days (the only day with high winds and rain), to get the motorcycle serviced and a new front tire.

Found a great church South Mountain Christian Community.  We've been spoiled as most of the RV Parks we've stayed in have their own church services so we haven't had to go off site for church on Sunday.

We spent the afternoon at Red Winds Desert Park and Pioneer Park which was about 5 miles from the RV park.

To the right of the Joshua Tree is the Provo LDS temple - the first one
built in Utah in 1877.  

Lots of rock climbing and propelling in the park.  

We took off and drove to Pine Valley and then to Veyo as we heard the pies were great.  The drive out there was beautiful.  The pies were good, but we had better in Julian, CA.

The Pine Valley logging community, built this church with Ebenezer Bryce doing the designs.  Bryce's experience was as a shipbuilder, so the attic of the building is essentially a ship's hull turned upside down.  The chapel was completed in 1868 and is the oldest Mormon chapel still in use.  The organ pipes were also constructed out of the pine trees from the area.  

From Veyo we drove south to Gunlock Reservoir and met these burros on the side of the road.  

We were then going to check out the most northern Joshua Tree Forest and then go though the canyon drive between Arizona and St. George on I15.  When both of us were driving, it was hard to take in the beautiful mountains and canyons.

As we were driving on Hwy. 91 south, we found a road that would take us through the Joshua Tree Forest Backway.  The backway route should have given us a clue, as the road was about 16 miles long, all gravel, and took us through the Shivwits Paiute Indian Reservation, Wittwer Canyon, Bulldog Canyon while driving through the Beaver mountain pass.  We did not see a Joshua Tree for 11 miles and as it turned out, the forest was all along Hwy. 91 if we would have just kept driving.  

First Joshua Tree we came too.  

The pictures I took as we were driving through the canyon on I15 don't do the view justice.  The hillsides are so beautiful and so red.  

We went out to the Kayenta art village and enjoyed the art galleries and again the views were beautiful.  While there we spent most of our time talking to the artist at Mystic Canyon Light Gallery.  His work was beautiful and he gave us lots of hints on visiting Antelope Canyon.

Desert Rose Labyrinth - made of over 1800 stones.

Last day was cleaning day, making summer appointments for all the doctors in Puyallup and Craig smoked a Boneless Pork Shoulder Butt Roast - I'm sure we'll have some that we freeze.

Places to see next time:  Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, Silver Reef, Santa Clara River Reserve, State Parks; Coral Pink Sand Dunes and Snow Canyon.