Dad’s Weekly Report

Dear Family,

I have heard many deserved complaints that I haven’t made any new entries lately. I will try to do better. I definitely need to put some pictures of our new house up but I haven’t taken any and so I will use this post to talk about the trip that Sandy and I took earlier this month with Mark & Bodell, (Sandy’s cousin and my roommate from college).

We met at a campground near Escalante, UT on 5 May. We got up early the next morning and drove about 55 miles on a dirt road to the Hole in the Rock then 55 miles back. For those of you that don’t know this was part of a wagon road that Sandy’s family helped build back in 1879 from southwest Utah to southeast Utah. The Hole in the Rock was a notch in the cliff down to the Colorado River. It is about 1500 feet down. Sandy and I drove in our car about half way then we all piled into Mark & Bodell’s truck for the rest. The last part was too rough for the car

Our first stop was Dance Hall Rock. This is near where the group camped and they used the natural ampi-theater to hold dances. We hiked around it.
The cactus were blooming and the desert was really beautiful. The last 10-15 miles the road got pretty rough and it took a long time but we were able to drive right up to the notch in the cliff which we could see from the distance.

Sandy at the top ready to head down.

It took us about an hour and a half to hike down. There are a lot of rocks that have fallen from the cliffs above since the road was built, some of them as large as cars. That and the steepness of the trail made it slow to go down. We went up quite a bit faster. We could see were they had cut ledges and stairs in the rock and where they had stacked rocks to build up the trail. On the way up we found where Sandy’s Grandpa Ben drilled holes in the rock. They put oak branches in these holes and built up the on them. We could see where they had cut the ledge in the side of the cliff. Can you see the holes in this picture there are about 6 of them visible below the ledge.

Grandpa Ben's road.

It was a long day. It took about 13 hours to drive out and back. The next day we drove to some of the places that they places that they traveled to between Escalante and Cedar City and then went to a wedding reception in the evening. It was a great trip and we really saw some beautiful country.

I’ll try to get some pictures taken this week of our new house and put them up as soon.

Love,

John