Scenic Highway 12 from Bryce to Capitol Reef is one of the most beautiful thrilling drives I’ve ever taken, but it got the best of me. The blind hairpin turns, steep elevations, and sharp drop offs on both sides pumped me so full of adrenaline and anxiety I finally gave in and asked Ali if we could take off the car and drive the vehicles separately. I wanted Lucy, the RV, to be as agile and light as she possibly could be on this harrowing road. Ali was driving the rig and she felt fine, said it was a challenge and required a lot of concentration, but she didn’t feel any of the danger I was feeling. She was trying to understand why I was so affected and if there was anything she could do to help, when I drew the comparison to how she felt about Angels Landing. We had pulled over and stopped on a shoulder at the crest of some unreasonably high mountain to take the car off the tow bar. A hawk flew overhead and screeched in our direction as we stood there reveling in the “OH! Now I get it” moment we were having with each other. I hadn’t really understood her fear of the harrowing hike and she hadn’t really gotten my fear of the harrowing road, but now we had a full mind-meld going on. To be harrowed or not to be harrowed, no longer a question. If I’m completely honest about the root of my fear, it’s about control, about being a passenger. Allison is an excellent driver, she has never given me a reason to mistrust her skills and even if I am the one driving on the scary road there is still fear about...

After spending a glorious 4 days with Saundie and Donna in relative luxury at the Worldmark in St. George, thanks to Ken, Ali and I turned back on the RV, got the fridge cold again, moved all our food back in, put away our 5 loads of clean laundry and headed to Bryce Canyon National Park. The circus train was back on the road. The fearsome four was back down to the intrepid two. Our legs were sore that morning from the Angels Landing hike we’d done the day before, but it wasn’t at it’s worst yet. The drive was uneventful though we did climb a fairly steep mountain on our way as we traveled north and east into Utah’s Dixie National Forest. We had a reservation at Ruby’s Inn RV Campground, which is just one part of a really big complex of buildings and services located just right outside the park entrance. There’s a general store with clothing, groceries, and a gas station, plus a full Best Western hotel lodge with an indoor pool and hot tub, a restaurant and several other buildings of rooms. It was cold and cloudy that late afternoon when we pulled in, so we of course went straight to the hot tub! The next morning started off with a groan as we attempted to lift our legs out of bed and tried to use them to carry our bodies to the front room. We were like a couple of Frankensteins, walking with arms out in constant search of a surface to lean on, stiffly dragging our now defunct appendages behind us. Once again it wasn’t at it’s worst yet, that came when we tried to walk down the stairs out of the RV. Let’s just say it was...

Nature wrote a tale of contrasts that day for four heroines who suited up their bodies, hearts and minds and set out to dance with a mountain named Angels Landing. Two of us had been there before and were armed with experience, while the other poor souls wore only their imaginations and a desire to meet the challenge. We had read the description. We were properly intimidated. The Angels Landing Trail is one of the most famous and thrilling hikes in the national park system. Zion’s pride and joy runs along a narrow rock fin with dizzying drop-offs on both sides. Just before the trail spills onto Scout Lookout, it’s time to ‘squiggle the wiggles,’ as they ascend the steep twenty-one sharp zigzags to a scenic plateau. Walter’s Wiggles was named after the first superintendent of Zion who helped engineer the steep zigzagging section. The trail culminates at a lofty perch, boasting magnificent views in every direction. Rarely is such an intimidating path so frequented by hikers. One would think that this narrow ridge with deep chasms on each of its flanks would allure only the most intrepid of hikers. Long steady climb. 1488 feet change in elevation. Courtesty of Zion National-Park dot com But I don’t think we truly realized that we were about to jump out and take a giant tarzan swing on the pendulum of life. And did we ever swing, big and wide, from tears of exhaustion to tears of exhilaration, we felt the fear of doing it and then the even bigger fear of not doing it, but I’m getting ahead of myself. You already know Ali and I and our various powers (and weaknesses), but let me introduce you to the two guest-starring super-heroines of the day. First,...

We headed west from Lake Powell into Utah. It was a fairly short, but windy drive to Kanab, we passed through Big Water again and I waved to my hidden hoodoos. After a couple of hours we herded our rig into the Kanab RV Corral and tied her up in her pen there for the week. Our original plan had been to stay 10 days in St. George when we thought Ali’s family might come out to meet us and stay at the timeshare there, but that plan shifted out to a June reunion in Portland. So instead, our very generous dad Ken, offered to use timeshare points to get a 2 bedroom unit for us and our friends Saundie and Donna for 4 nights. The girls had planned to fly out to St. George to golf and hike in Zion for their 20th anniversary and the timing lined up perfectly. That freed us up to change things around, stay in Kanab for 5 nights before that and volunteer at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. We had 2 free days on either end of our volunteering to explore the Kanab area. Our heater ran pretty much the entire first night. We intentionally keep it set at a fairly low temperature for sleeping and rely on our down comforter, so we woke up with cherry red cold noses. We pulled the comforter up over our heads and rochambeauxed (rock, paper, scissors) for who would make the dash to turn on the coffee pot. We’ve turned to this method of decision making quite often on this trip. Not that I don’t appreciate evaluating the choices and having discussions, but when you’re choosing between two wonderful things or who has to do a yucky thing, a quick...

So we’d been hearing about these hoodoos, a pillar of rock, usually of fantastic shape, left by erosion and we’d read about a hike in Big Water, UT that trekked you out along a wash to the Paria Rimrock Toadstool Hoodoos. It was a 45 minute drive out to the trailhead and then a 3.8 mile round trip hike so 2 hours, plus lunch, but as we often say to each other, “What else do we have to do today?” We’d spent the previous day lounging around the RV, cleaning, writing and sitting in the sun so we definitely wanted to get out and exercise. The clouds suggested that we take care to dress accordingly which meant layers. We also put our coats in the car, our lunch and our new walking poles and camel back. The first mile and a quarter was essentially flat, but through the deep sand in the wash with banks along the sides that undulated in height from knee to eye level as it curved and twisted into the canyon. Along the way we were experimenting with our new poles. We only bought one set thinking we would test them out before investing in a second pair and we took turns with them trying out different stick tempos and placement strategies. I was not really a fan of the poles, but Ali did invent a sort of baton twirl flourish during the forward pole movement that I really liked. The drum major in her required the flare. Finally we settled in on just one pole for each of us. There was also our new camel back which we’d “cleaned and prepared” with lemon juice. No deal. Just like a chardonnay picks up a buttery oaky flavor from the barrel,...

The other thing on our list for our Las Cruces stop was White Sands National Monument, another hour and a half drive from our RV park, this time to Alamagordo, NM, out Highway 70. We were a little less than bright-eyed that morning because of the wind. It’s a tad difficult to sleep through 45 MPH winds in an RV. First, there’s the noise. Wind is different than the constant white noise of rain which can actually be lulling. Wind gusts with varying velocities at unequal intervals bringing a full orchestra of noises to life. There’s the canvas awnings that cover the exposed roof of each slide-out. They vibrate like a homemade Kazoo – you know the wax paper on a comb kind – except, thank God the wind wasn’t humming a tune while it blew that night. A handle bar from one of the bikes on the rack was knocking into the wall of our bedroom intermittently. The strap you use to pull out the main shade-awning on the side of the RV was tapping on the wall up in the living room. The plastic poop shoot cap that dangles by a rubber leash when it’s not in use was ting-tinging each time the wind blew it up into the metal bottom of the poop tank cabinet. And there’s an old metal aerial antenna that’s folded down flat to the roof, but has just enough play in it to allow the wind to lift it a half-inch and then drop it for a nice clunk-clunk. Now all of this can mostly be ignored with the aid of earplugs once you know WHAT is making the noise, but the curse of an intelligent mind, or maybe just a stupid curious one, is that it...