We awoke on Sunday morning in the rental house in Kanab. Much to the girls delight the Easter Bunny had found them, and there were little chocolate treats hidden all over the place. No Kinder Surprise eggs though... after all, those are illegal in the good old USA!
After the girls scoured the house and found all the little easter eggs, we had breakfast and then headed out for the day. It was a late start, so we didn't have any elaborate plans. We drove out to the east for 40 miles and hiked to the Rimrock Hoodoos. It was very different from when I was here last fall as it was now spring and everything was coming to life. The yucca were beginning to bloom and there were wildflowers all over the place. I'm not sure exactly what everything was. There were some orange flowers that were taller but very similar to what we call Scarlet Mallow here in the Alberta badlands. There was a very prolific bloom on of white flowers... two different kinds.... and they both looked very much like our Gumbo Evening Primrose. Some were almost identical, while others had a very similar blossom, but the plant was bigger and bushier...
It was clear and bright and very warm. The afternoon temperature got up to about 80 degrees... that's +27C for us metric-loving Canucks. Our winter whitened skin quickly became red and we all ended up with a touch of sunburn. The sunscreen came out pretty quickly after that and we soon adjusted to the warm summer-like conditions. Quite a change from the snow, cold and wind that we had left behind back in Alberta. We hiked on up to the hoodoos and spent a little time exploring there. Lots of little beetle tracks in the sand, and few lizards scampering around. It was a very enjoyable afternoon...
We tried to take a drive up to the Old Paria townsite, which is actually a movie set from many of the western movies that were shot in the area over the years. But a very isolated and rather heavy rain shower passed over us and the road quickly became a quagmire. We turned back and decided to leave it for another day. Later in the early evening Margarit and Helena decided to stay at the house and have a nap... still needing to catch up on some sleep from the long drive south. I headed out for a short evening drive with the other two girls. We headed to the north of town and explored a little in Kanab Canyon. We didn't really find anything particularly spectacular but the evening light on the landscape was pretty nice. We did come across a rattlesnake when we tried to climb up a rock formation. He quickly began to buzz us with his rattle, warning us to keep our distance. We retreated and left him alone. This brought to an end our first day out in the high country of southern Utah.
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