St. George, Utah

Valerie showed at the St. George Art Festival last Friday and Saturday. It wasn't necessarily a great show for her, but it was a break-even effort and she made some good contacts. The best painter at the festival was Arizona-based Charles Thomas. He is represented by a southern Arizona gallery (http://www.galleriatubac.com/artists/thomas/), but he shows in St. George each year. My favorite painting was entitled, "Escalante." Thomas had applied the paint with a palette knife so it was rough and blocky—a little abstract but with a real feel for the area, actually, around Cannonville.

Park City, Utah

It was time for my yearly ski vacation in Park City. So, I went up to Mark and Kristi's place on Friday afternoon and drank their beer and ate their food. It was a good start. On Saturday morning, Mark had to go blasting, so Jason made me breakfast while I spilled a gallon of coffee all over the kitchen. By the time I had that cleaned up, Cylvick was calling me every five minutes to say that he was waiting for me on Crescent. When I got there, we went straight to Jupe. By the time we caught up with Mark, we'd done a couple laps in Scotts, toured Pinecone Ridge, and latched on to Tall Paul. From there it was a hike to High West, a hike to the North Shoulder, and a couple of beers at the Summit House. After a pair of cruisers, we called it a day. Mark had to go to the patrol banquet, so Cylvick agreed to play host to the free-loader. By the time I got my crap off, he was already waiting for me in Wanship. We toured his office (http://www.ziprider.com/) and went home to see the family. We had a beer, a martini, and a bottle of wine while we excoriated capitalists of all stripes. After a good sleep, Sarah mixed some pancake batter and we drank a pot of coffee. It was time to take my memories of good food, great snow, and outstanding friends back to southern Utah.

Rock Springs, Utah

We had to go to Tropic to drop off a few pictures for the new gallery at Clarke's (http://www.thegalleryatclarkes.com/), so we continued on to Cannonville. At first we thought we'd camp at Kodachrome, but the campground had four or five parties in it. Ellen, a girl after my heart, said, "We don't want to camp here with all these people." No, we didn't. So we went down on the Monument and turned on the Rock Springs Bench Road. After a while we got into a little trouble with the truck and the trailer in a steep, muddy wash. We turned around and went back out to the corral. There we found a really nice little camp just off the road. We hiked, climbed the sandstone around camp, and went to bed when the sun set. It was a pleasant until about 5 am. At that point, I realized that it was cold—too cold for my sleeping bag. It started warming up again by about 9 am, but those hours between 5 and 9, whew, they were cold. After breakfast we drove down the creek a little way and looked around. It isn't too far down to the Paria, but I wasn't going to make it with a little girl. So, we went back, packed the camper, and drove home.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/RockSpringsBenchUtah#

Second Left Hand Canyon, Utah

It snowed a lot yesterday. But today was warm and sunny and I wanted to see if I could get up the canyon. I forded the creek and mucked my way through the melting snow and mud for about a mile. When I found a place to turn around, I left the truck and went on by foot. I got to a formation called Noah's Ark (look at the pictures to see if you think it looks like that, but don't expect to see any kangaroos). It was big, beautiful, and quiet--the way I like it. Plus, I needed some wood and I found some. Can anyone tell from the cone what it was? The correct answer wins first prize, but Lannom doesn't get to play.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/SecondLeftHandCanyonUtah#

Snowbasin, Utah

There was no way I was going to let Wally have Benson all to himself on Valentine's Day. So, I left Parowan at 6a on Friday and drove to Snowbasin. It was, once again, a case of letting my heart over-rule my better judgment. I soon discovered that I had bitten off more than I could chew. Benson rides like an expert; Wally skis like a bat-out-of-hell; and Jordan finally gave up on me and took some laps on his own. I guess the only good news was that we didn't hook up with the sixty-something Harley riders who, I am told, stopped only to share a flask while riding the 'dola. Fortunately, just when I thought my rubbery quads would finally desert me for good, Wally called last run.

The test of endurance wasn't over though. After gorging ourselves on moose tacos by Katie, we went for a tour of neighborhood homes. My bedtime came and went as we viewed fine art, drank red wine, and solved the world's problems. In addition to enjoying the good company, I also had the benefit of becoming so drowsy that I was able to fall asleep back at the bunkhouse with the Benson buzz-saw running at full throttle.

In the morning we drank a couple of pots of coffee and ate bagels while the snow piled up outside. By the time we got on the road, the 45 minute trip to the Salt Lake Airport had turned into 90 minutes of terror. So much for a leisurely morning. I barely slowed down to push Benson out the door at Terminal 1. If his flight was cancelled, so be it, I needed to save myself. Of course, this being the Wasatch front, once I got off the benches and south of town, it cleared up and I had unimpeded views of Sandy and Draper as I headed down the freeway. I made it back to Parowan before dinner; tired but thankful for a Benson/Wallace sponsored ski vacation.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/SnowbasinUT#

St. George, Utah

This was the last day of the art exhibit celebrating Zion National Park's 100th anniversary. We went down to St. George to see it. It had two parts. On the ground floor was a juried exhibition of new works created by contemporary artists specifically for the centennial celebration. Valerie had submitted works to the jury and had not been selected. So, we were wondering what kind of pictures got in. In addition to the usual stuff from painters whose work I don't tend to like—for example, Bonnie Posselli and Jim Jones—there were a handful of very strong paintings from some unfamiliar artists. My favorite was probably Salt Lake painter Anne Penrod's vivid abstraction entitled The Road Less Travelled. It was like she had done Maynard Dixon one better with her strong blue shadows and bright blocks of color.

Speaking of Maynard Dixon, the second floor was taken up with an historic exhibit of works from a variety of artists starting in 1870. Aside from a very nice little painting by Franz Bischoff (and a watercolor from Wallace Lee), I thought the historic part of the show served only to highlight the remarkable skill of Dixon and his reported friend LeConte Stewart. Dixon and Stewart stood out as two of the best painters in the building and it would have been fun to sit with them, circa 1935, to see them strut their stuff.

http://annepenrod.com/welcome.html

Parowan, Utah

When I was guiding in Idaho a few years ago, I remember watching a golden eagle strike a flying chukkar in mid-air. The eagle followed the crumpled chukkar to the ground and began to eat it. I didn't have time to watch, but I was reminded of that incident today when we came home from church. Right in front of our house, a small hawk--a coopers or sharpshin?--had knocked a mourning dove out of the air. The two birds had just landed in the street when I pulled up. I drove up next to them and looked down. The hawk cocked me a weather eye, but otherwise refused to move. As I turned to park, it carried the dove off the street in two short hops. It was obvious that it couldn't haul it away. So, despite our presence, it settled down next to Ellen's swing and began to pluck the dove. With the feathers out of the way, it ate the breast, head, and neck before settling down to rest. Altogether, it hung around for probably two hours--even with me running the chainsaw. When it was gone there were mostly just bones and feathers.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/ParowanUtah#

Pipe Spring, Arizona

We drove down through Hurricane and Colorado City to Pipe Spring. It took about two hours. That's not bad, but I don't think we'll go back. The Spring has a somewhat interesting history and a very nicely restored Mormon pioneer structure to tour, but that is about it. The whole visit takes an hour. I guess I wouldn't pay $10 to go in there again. The old boy working in the gift shop did point out that the road to the cane beds actually connected to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes road. So we tried it. It would have been fine in the Chev, but it was pretty rough and muddy for the Sable. Fortunately only three or four miles of it were unsurfaced. We then paid another $6 to go into the State Park. Again, not worth it. We basically paid for parking when we later found free parking a mile up the road. The dunes are beautiful, but it is an ATV sacrifice area where the motors are forever roaring. We drove out to Highway 89, up through Carmel Junction, past Maynard Dixon's old studio, and over the mountain on Highway 14--another 200 mile loop.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/PipeSpringArizona#

Escalante, Utah

We've left Escalante now. Our new place is at 200 East and 300 North in Parowan. But before we left town we were staying at Ms. Sharol's. She has a very hospitable house south of town just under the Escalante Rim. One Sunday in December, I noticed a couple of coyotes chasing the rabbits that Ms. Sharol likes to feed. They hunted one down in the rabbitbrush on the north side of the house until it got away when they weren't looking. They gave up on that one and circled back to the south side. I couldn't see them anymore, but the next thing I knew there were a couple of crows in the pinyon by the north side rabbitbrush. "They got one," I thought. After a while when the crows were gone, I walked down there and searched around until I found it. Nothing but a couple of tufts of fur and some blood in the snow. (And I thought food came from the grocery.)

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/EscalanteUtah02#

Antone Bench, Utah

We sold our house in Escalante. We had to move out by the end of November. It was a horrible amount of work. Too much crap. I was so tired of it by Sunday that I decided to run to the top of Antone Bench via the Roundy Trail. Well, run isn't really the word. It is about a 1600 foot rocky vertical slog to the top of the bench. I wasn't running so much as sweating and complaining and feeling sorry for myself. There was snow under the pondos on top of the bench and the wind was cold. I went over to the east side and looked out over the canyons of Mamie Creek and Death Hollow. It was a spectacular view all the way to the Henrys. Since it gets dark early in late November, I had to turn right back around and get off the bench before 5 pm. I didn't want to be scrambling down the trail after the sun set. Whew. Then it was time to turn in the keys and say goodbye to the Escalante house.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aorlemann/AntoneBenchUtah#