TOP: Arches being formed in Zion National Park

2nd: A tunnel through the rock. A most interesting engineering achievement from decades ago

3rd: Kathy picking up that a tree was about to pounce on her!

4th: Lumpy, Steve, Cousin Joanne, Idella, and Cousin Pat hanging at Pat and Idella's homestead.

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Following our fun visit to Prescott, we moseyed again (mosey being our term for this trip) up to St George Utah, via Hoover dam and Las Vegas. Surprisingly, in all my travels I'd never been to that little southwest corner of Utah, and I was looking forward to seeing it. We drove alongside Lake Meade for what seemed like hours, and then finally made the drop down to Hoover Dam. Amazingly, the water lever below the dam was massively below "normal" stage, even where we'd seen it just a few years earlier. The west is going to run into some real water (and maybe power also) problems soon unless this gets addressed. Good thing there's no global warming situation. Thanks again, George for your leadership.

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Following a stunning drive along the Virgin River (was there ever a more ironic name for something deep in the land of the Mormons?), we arrived into St George. It was small than I expected, but very pretty landscape. The town is basically surrounded on 3 sides by mountains, lot's of red rock, and I can see why it's an adventure racer and mountain biker dream.

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After a brief driveabout town, we went over to yet another cousin's house for dinner and family catch-up. Pat was one of the cousins that I knew the best, just a couple of years older and a sportsman also. Joanne is his older sister, and, like Eddie down in Phoenix, she had moved out west years back so I didn't really know her all that well. All three are kids of my Uncle Eddie, my dad's middle brother, who was a great guy. Gregarious, good looking, and just a joy to be around. He died just a couple of years ago, and I hold very fond memories of learning to shoot at his rural homestead, him taking pictures of our wedding when we didn't have the money to hire a professional photographer, and many, many more.

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Pat moved out west a couple of years back following the collapse of Kodak back in Rochester. After some 25 years, he was discarded in the wake of the disaster that was one of the great corporate collapses of our lifetime. Here was one of the best brands not only in America, but worldwide, and their massively inept management totally missed a technological turn and the company just imploded. When I worked there back in the 70's after high school, as a 3rd generatio laborer, there was something like 75,000 kodak jobs in rochester; now there's something under 10,000, and continuing to shrink. Sad to see, but this was not a failure of free trade; it was a failure of corporate leadership.

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Anyhow, Pat married idella out in St George, and they've crafted a nice little life for themselves. They're raising Idella's daughter, who we met for the first time and seems like a real nice kid, and Pat's gone Mormon, which I think has helped him through the tough times. A good example of where religion can do good for people, instead of all the bad that it so often causes.

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We spent a couple of days in St George, and went over to Zion National Park to do some hiking. Unfortunately, Zion represented the worst of everything the National Park system stands for; unending crowds, a polution layer hanging in the valleys from the relentless car traffic, and a way overbuilt park. Pretty sad to see. We did however drive up to Zion Kolob, which is a separate park a couple of hours north. This way much nicer, much less populated, and we got in a very nice hike through hills highlighting the formation of new arches. Well worth the extra drive if you're ever in these parts.

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Well, time to say goodbye to southwest Utah, and continue our road trip on up towards Idaho and Montana. A couple long drives ahead of us, but hard to top I-15 as it ribbons alongside the Wasatch Range. I was looking forward to just opening up the throttle and heading North.

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"Go North Young Man" Lumpy out