Walt & Snookie Travel

UTAH - DAY 4 - 9.24.23

Today we moved to Mount Caramel. I did make reservations for this place when we first arrived, which is kind of unusual for me because I usually don't unless I know its a holiday week or weekend.

So today we moved a whole 17 miles. The Best Western here in Mount Caramel has about 10 full hook up campsites across the street from it. We were told about this by Juniper Ridge friend, Larry M. The price had gone up a bit since he and Roxy stayed here but what hasn't gone up?

If I hadn't mentioned this already, we had incredible water pressure at the first campground in Kanab. Before we left this morning, we of course, emptied and cleaned out our holding tanks. We have one of those wand things for the black tank and with the water pressure I'm convinced we cleaned out "stuff" that was in there from 3 years ago! Our tank sensor is even working again! Wonders never cease! Gee, aren't you glad I shared that with you?

We had an uneventful 17 mile drive to our new temporary home. We are on a grassy area for the most part and we have a stream running, barely, behind us. It certainly won't lull us to sleep. Once again, we have no TV, its not like 17 miles would make a difference.

Our spot in the campground.

When we were registering at the Best Western we saw this "little" camper. A man and woman are traveling in this. Behind that door in the back is the kitchen which has to be at least 2 foot in depth just to get a fridge in there. It's 8 feet in length. I don't know if I could do this. I have to have a place to hang things. I have to have a table for my laptop. I have to have a BATHROOM! No, I couldn't do this.

Since our drive was so short it was still early in the day when we arrived and got set up. After just laying around yesterday we had to get out and see or do something!

Another Juniper Ridge friend, Michele D. told us about the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. It was close by and on our must do/see list so off we went. On the way we passed the Pink Sand Dunes State Park. Another on our list.

Within 20 minutes we arrived at our first destination and on the way I just had to take a scenery picture.

I like that one!

This sanctuary had over 1600 animals on the property this day. This place is just amazing and any animal that ends up here is very lucky. The care these animals get is just wonderful.

Our first stop was the Visitor Center. There we met four dogs up for adoption. I wanted to take them all.

A pretty little garden area outside of the Visitors Center`.

It was here we found out about the free tour that was about to take place. Since we had Abby with us we followed behind the 10 passenger van but they did tell us what radio station to tune in to so that we could hear the guide.

Of course, as we drove through the sanctuary there was SCENERY!

The first animals we saw were the horses. Some of them are adoptable and some are here to live out their days.

They just got 6 new ones and they soon found out one was expecting so now there is a new foal on the property.

Our next stop was the area called Angel's Rest. The cemetery for so many. There are over 2000 windchimes here and today of all days there wasn't a breeze to be had. I can only imagine how that would have sounded.

We were on to the next section and, of course, there was scenery to be photographed.

The next stop was Casa del Calmar. The Calmar's were great cat lovers, in fact, Mr. Calmar had a picture of every cat he ever owned tattooed on his body! This couple funded the cat building where cat's that have feline leukemia live. So many nooks and crannies where the cats can crawl up into for their naps.

We passed another horse area on our way to Piggy Paradise.

We made our way to Piggy Paradise where the pot bellies live.

Too many people are told that they are buying mini or teacup pigs. There's no such thing and now they are growing like weeds and they eat a LOT and they end up here.

The tour was over so we turned to leave rather than follow the van back to the Visitors Center. We had someplace else we had to go see.

Just down the road we saw the sign for the Coral Dunes. The park was 12 miles down this turn off but we saw a group of cars and rental RV's about 10 miles in. We could the people from these vehicles atop this hill and they were all taking pictures. STOP! LET ME OUT! Walt said there was no way he could make it up the hill but I was determined I was going to do it. I'll tell ya, it would have been a whole lot easier if the sand wasn't so deep and soft. It was a struggle!

So I get to the top expecting to see what the brochure shows. Uh, no. Perhaps we should have gone all the way to the end to see the really big, CORAL dunes. What I saw was yellowish, to reddish to pinkish sand and the dunes weren't anything to write home about.