Kanab, Utah Rambles

April 19 - 21, 2014:

Another nice easy one hour cruise to the town of Kanab, Utah.  Kanab is a sort of overnight stop on the road to Zion and Bryce, lots of tour buses, motels, restaurants and shopping.  Kanab is also a big western movie location, they have a downtown western movie walk of fame and the "Little Hollywood" museum.  Over 100 western movies and TV shows were filmed in the area, mostly in the past. For the animal lovers, Kanab is also world famous for the "Best Friends" animal society.

Old movie sets at Little Hollywood

Entrance to Little Hollywood

Walk of fame plaques along Main Street Kanab

Dale Evans was here

Also the Lone Ranger

Of course John Wayne was everywhere

We settled into the Kanab RV Corral in downtown Kanab into a comfortable full hookup site.  One of the pleasures of boondocking is going back into civilization afterwards and having a long hot comfortable shower again.  We then took a tour of the downtown, was pretty deserted and half the shops were closed, but it is the day before Easter and this is Mormon country.  We then went out for dinner to a mexican restaurant, the food was OK, but I thought the decor a bit strange, half Nascar and half western movie star ?

Great Stetson Ad

Kanab mural

Crescent Moon Theater in Kanab

Downtown Kanab view

Kane County visitors center

The other side, great murals !

A beautiful historic victorian in Kanab

A new look for Twinkles

Easter day was a loop ride on route 89 south to Johnson Canyon road and then back to route 89 again.  It went past an old movie set that appears to be slowly falling apart.  It is privately owned and you can't go in to look around.  Also much great scenery along the road which for the last 8 miles was dirt. 

Every one of these Cow signs on Johnson Canyon road were killed

A roadside view

We then returned to route 89A to route 389 to visit the "Pipe Springs" National Monument.  This place has a quite remarkable history.  The Kaibab Paiute indian tribe has inhabited this area from about 1250 to the present.  They had contact with spanish explorers in 1776, then in the mid 1800's the Mormon settlers arrived on the scene.  At that time this area was part of Mexico and the Mormon's came here to evade religious persecution in the US.  Unfortunately, this area soon became part of the US.  Pipe Springs was a reliable year around spring and the Mormon's built a fort outpost over it to protect it from potential Navajo indian raids andy keep it all to themselves.  It was built in 1869-70 and they called it Windsor Castle.  The spring amazingly is still running through the building.  This was a massive stone outpost that still stands in really good condition. They have an excellent museum and film on Mormon and the Paiute history in the visitor center.

Inside the Windsor Castle

The spring flows through that trough in rear

Big mean looking long horn steer in the corral

Also big mean looking lizards were encountered on our hike

View of the Windsor Castle

The Kaibab Paiute tribe went through some desperate times, almost died out, the Mormon's cattle ranching decimated the native grass land, plants and animals that the Paiutes survived on.  They still are a very small tribe, but now have a reservation encompassing 175 square miles.  

Monday morning while Twinkles cleans, I go off for a short hike to the town park which has a trail that overlooks the town of Kanab. I was really feeling the "zen" of hiking on this short ramble, more on that latter.  Kanab is a nice small town with considerable tourist traffic passing through on their way  to the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon.  The RV Corral has been a very good camp site, super clean, great shower facilities, well maintained and the WiFi even works most of the time. 

View of Kanab from the  trail

Trail side view

Sandstone rock with sand dune ripples

We have agonized over our next stop, the original plan was to go right into one of the Bryce Canyon campgrounds.  The campgrounds are dry camping only and Bryce will have colder temperatures and another cold wave is coming in.  It is difficult to run the furnace much on the batteries alone and as a result, we would be freezing our butts off.  As a result, we wimped out and made a reservation for a full hookup site outside of the park.  We are going to spend a full week there taking in the sights.  

Stay tuned for more Utah-where they say, life is elevated,

Twinkles and Slick