What an adventure we had today. First off, we were just driving from Cedar City to Salina Utah and found more very impressive geological formations just by the side of an ordinary highway - not even in a National Park or State Park. Next we went to see the Art Robinson's personal collection of 65 restored old trucks. He started a trucking company in 1946 that pretty much focused on hauling coal and other heavy materials. He went blind a few years ago and died about 7 years ago; but he had a love for some of the old trucks and had one after another restored. We got a two and a half hour personal tour - unbelievable! Being nice really pays off.
And the photo above of Mom's Cafe duplicates a photo that appeared in the January 1996 National Geographic. The building was completed in 1878 and served as a mercantile for many years. For a very long time it has been recognized as one of those very special places to eat in America. It was so good that we ate there twice.

We are in Cedar City tonight.  Today we wanted to go to Cedar Breaks but it was closed due to snow.  So we drove up toward Cedar Breaks and enjoyed incredible landscapes of rock formations, beautiful vistas, lots of snow on the sides of the road and ground and pretty trees.  We saw icicles hanging that were about 15 feet long, very amazing.  The picture above is an interesting rock formation, a close up of something that is in the middle picture (toward the left).  Then we came down the mountain, another beautiful drive, and ended up in Cedar City.  We visited the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum, which was very interesting.  The picture of Ann is by a pioneer wagon. We have seen several of those in the past few days in Hurricane, Cedar City and some of the other small towns nearby.

We spent today in Zion National Park.  What an amazing place!  It was so beautiful--so many interesting formations of beautiful red and white rock.  The first picture is of Ann under the waterfall at Emerald Pools.  It was a wonderful hike up to see it.  In the next picture we are by the Virgin River at the point where it is flowing through the canyon, a good hike too.  The last picture is Lookout Point where we are overlooking the valley and some beautiful rock formations.  We first drove through a tunnel that was carved through the mountain, completed in 1930 and then we hiked up to see this wonderful view.  What a day!

Monday we drove from Las Vegas to St. George and visited the Valley of Fire State Park. Oh my goodness what an awesome place that is to experience. Here we are in front of one of the beehive formations. Pretty cool huh? The next one is called Seven Sisters and everywhere you looked in the park it went on and on with breathtaking vistas. We ended the day and had a wonderful stay with Bob and LueAnn Barnard in St. George. They have been great friends for a very long time and it was great to see them again and have time to visit.

Here we are in Las Vegas at Ann's nephew's home, Peter Thunell and his family--Jackson on his shoulders, his wife Tammy, holding Hunter and Tanner on the bike.  They fed us a wonderful dinner and we had a great visit with them.  The weather is quite warm and nice.  Everyone has told us we chose a good time to come since it gets up to 120 degrees in the summer.  We enjoyed going to church in the Chapel Heights Ward, a very friendly, welcoming ward.

Here I am with a new friend, Don Beatty, who is one of only about 88 survivors left of the sinking of the Navy ship USS Indianapolis. He and the others were rescued after five days in the water and shark attacks that took many shipmates. What is so cool to me is that I was born on the exact same day the ship was sunk and I have remarked many times how they were in the water for the first five days of my life. We owe a lot to them. They were crewmembers of the ship that delivered the components for the two bombs that hastened the end of WWII in the Pacific and saved the potential 1 million US deaths that were anticipated had we been required to invade the Japanese homeland to end the war.
We had a delightful day in Las Vegas - went to a swap meet and had some great food.

Yesterday we drove from Coronado to the Navy Air Weapons Station at China Lake. On the way we visited Ann's parents graves in Ontario. Today we drove through Death Valley and ended up in Las Vegas. It was extremely stormy last night and we gave up on the idea of staying in our tent at Furnace Creek in Death Valley. The gusts were in the 40MPH range and sustained winds in the mid 20MPH range. The other part that made it not a good idea was the very heavy rain - gully washer rain.
Anyway, it was so cool to come across the old Harmony Borax Works near Furnace Creek. Here we are standing in front of an original three wagon set that was pulled by 20 mules - it took them 30 days to make a round trip. When I was a kid, I got a plastic model set of the 20 mule team and it was just like the one pictured here. I was totally stoked to see the real deal and to stand on the original site just blew me away.