[Rockhounds] Accommodations

[Jeanette Wimpee]

Pete, you can send me a few of those sunrise pictures. I'd love to see them.

Glenn wants ME to tell the story of our night in Zion NP. Although not 
officially a rockhounding trip (I'm not saying we ever took rocks out of a 
PARK), it did involve rocks.
We drove out to Utah in '93 to take our girls to BYU for a youth event. We 
left them in Provo and took off for our first tour of Utah.  Before we left 
home, we'd stowed our smallest tent in the car, just in case.  We first went 
to St. George where we spent the night at the Holiday Inn then in the 
morning, visited Feller Stone, a wholesale aquarium rock outfit which 
supplied the pet store I worked for. Our sales rep there loaded me up with 
rocks for my personal use, especially petrified wood. then we left for Zion 
NP.  Somewhere, too far from St. George to turn back, we realized we'd left 
our pillows at the Holiday Inn, so we called the motel from Zion's visitor 
center and made plans to go back the next day to get them. Hey, I love my 
down pillow!  We spent the afternoon exploring Zion and since we wanted to 
do at least one of the hikes, AND...we had a pup tent, we decided to spend 
the night in Zion.  We picked out a nice campsite under a big cottonwood 
tree, and proceeded to set up our tent. Apparently somebody, namely one or 
more of the girls, had used to tent to camp out in the back yard, and didn't 
repack the tent with all the equipment. We had one three of the four 
required poles, no stakes, and no ropes.  So we made do with a ball of 
string out of the car's toolbox, a couple of screwdrivers for pegs, and 
rocks in the corners to hold it down, and arrrgggh no pillows.  Well, 
evidently a thick bed of cottonwood tree down, and clothes for pillows makes 
good sleeping because that was one of the more comfortable nights of camping 
we've ever had.  At least until just before dawn....I awoke out of a sound 
sleep to the sound of distant roaring.  I lay there wondering what the heck 
it was when the wind hit the tent. Evidently there is something about the 
air heating up down in the desert that sends a morning blast of wind up the 
canyon.  It only blew a few minutes, just long enough to pull the "stakes" 
out and blow the tent down on our heads, but the rocks kept it from blowing 
away.  We crawled out and watched the most incredible dawn as the sun lit up 
the west side of the canyon walls.  I grabbed the video camera and got about 
a minute of the sunlight racing down the walls before the battery died....
Remind me someday to tell what happened when we drove thru the Petrified 
Forest later with a van full of petrified rocks from St. George....
Jeanette
    and Glenn


>>  ...weirdest, most primitive (or high-end), most dangerous or coolest
>>  place that members have camped, boarded or otherwise racked out during
>>  a rockhound trip.
>
>
>
.  In the morning I was treated to about  the most magnicent
> sunrise I'd ever seen; clouds and colors kept changing as the  sun moved 
> up
> toward the various hanging clouds and fog banks down low in the  valleys 
> to the
> south, and I took "gazilions" of pictures with my digital  camera.
>
> Pete Modreski, Denver CO
>