Life Elevated – Day 4

Since the Iron Horse offered no breakfast we stopped at McDonalds before continuing south into Sanpete and Sevier Counties.  The most memorial cache for me in these counties was Chief Blackhawk which was one of two caches we got commemorating the Blackhawk war.  My comment for this one that it looked like the Chief was a body builder.

In order to pick up Piute County we were going to have to do an out and back route down to Marysvale.  In planning the route I was disappointed to have to make this sort of detour but it turned out to be well worth it.  Highway 89 down to Marysvale was a beautiful ride and we got a cache right across from the Big Rock Candy Mountain (one of my favorite childhood songs sung by Burl Ives). 

We enjoyed our ride back out of Piute County and got on the Interstate

heading west and then south toward Beaver.  We hurriedly picked up a couple of caches in Beaver as we could see a thunderstorm approaching.  Just as the storm hit we pulled off into a gas station/restaurant with a roof over the gas pumps.  Yancey was really in luck because not only did he not have rain gear but it was noon and the restaurant was a Mexican one.  It was a real downpour and it was nice to have a leisurely lunch in a dry spot.  By the time we finished the storm had pretty much abated but I donned my rain gear anyway.  I was glad I had because we hit another fairly fierce burst of rain after getting back on the Interstate.  Fortunately it was brief and the sun soon returned before we stopped for the next cache.  Yancey’s larger windshield had kept him from getting too wet.

We picked up a couple of
caches in Iron County before reaching Parawan where we got “Parowan's Most Muggle Proof Geocache”.  It was a metal box attached to a building locked with a horizontal alphabetical combination lock.  The hint was “Found” and that was the combination to the lock.  From there we began the ascent into Cedar Breaks National Monument.  It was a beautiful ride but I got cold before stopping near the summit and putting on my windbreaker.  We entered the viewing area and we both agreed that it reminded us of an unheralded place out in a Wyoming desert that we had seen the previous year where a science fiction movie had been filmed.  At any rate, it was quite spectacular.  This was just a sample of what was to come the next couple of days.

After leaving the Breaks we turned west and headed down the mountain toward Cedar City.  This should have been a great motorcycle ride but we had the only close calls of the trip.  All the cracks in the road (and there were so many that in places they literally covered the road) had been patched with fresh tar.  Motorcyclists call these “tar snakes” and they can really bite you.  When I first got into these I pulled over to check my tires because my bike was not feeling stable.  Even after determining the problem we both almost went down when hitting these “tar snakes” leaned over in a curve.  I had to put a foot down at one point to keep upright.  I was freaked out for a day or so every time I saw a “tar snake” but I eventually discovered that it was only the fresh ones that tended to melt in the heat and these were the only ones we encountered.

At this point we were headed toward Chuck’s and Joanne’s home in Ivins just northwest of St. George.  Chuck is Kathy’s brother and he and Joanne have made Ivins their home for a number of years.  They have a beautiful home in this fantastic desert country.  It was hot though.  It was Chuck’s birthday so we celebrated by going to a buffet and Yancey treated us.  There was supposed to be a meteor shower that night so I stayed up till midnight with Chuck but I saw only 3 or 4.

Joanne washed all my dirty clothes and I had a nice comfortable bedroom with no snoring in earshot and a computer to upload all my caches.  Pretty sweet.  (To be continued)  M/W