Friday July 13, 2012

It was 96 when we went to bed last night and it did NOT rain!  It only cooled down to 82 by morning so we decided to break camp and go somewhere cooler.  We said “UNCLE” to Arches and its intense heat and after a quick breakfast, packed the truck with all of our gear.  Dave and Theo dropped off the rest of us at the Fiery Furnace trailhead.  We took a 3-hour ranger led tour through the fins.  We had to jump and scramble over rocks and make our way through tight places – the boys had a blast!  I, however, found it a bit harder to do that I did in 1985!  We saw lots of hidden arches and had a great, but HOT, hike.  Dave and Theo had gone into town while we were hiking.  They got more ice, cold drinks, and gassed up the truck.  They also stopped at a rock shop and a corvette dealership for Theo’s entertainment.  We were happy to get into the air-conditioning and to suck down the cold water (we had water with us, but at the end of 3 hours, it was lukewarm)!  We went back into town for lunch and then headed towards Zion, our next camping spot.  We had seen a town on the map that looked big enough for motels, but when we drove through it, we could see it was pretty small.  We continued on and stopped in Cedar City, but something must have been going on in town and there were no rooms to rent.  We finally make it to St. Georges and found a room.  We had a small dinner at the local Denny’s (across the parking lot from the motel) and got into bed about 10.  Everyone was exhausted and we figured a couple of nights in air-conditioning would do us all good.