Still Exploring in Southern Utah

Cedar City, Utah

This was our last week in Cedar City, Monday we head back to Colorado to meet another returning missionary, to visit Grandma and Grandpa for a couple weeks, and to get all our teeth cleaned. We had already done the big sites here that were within a reasonable distance and our options for adventures this week were: to go back and explore further in favorite places we had been, to commit to 3 hours or so in the car to get to destinations a little further off, or to find more obscure locales in which to adventure. With the encouragement and advice of Cheryl and Rob (or maybe Ron?), who we spoke with briefly in the hot tub at the local pool, we chose option three. Did I mention we purchased a one month membership to the Cedar City Aquatic Center? Well we did, and it has been fabulous and not only because of the travel tips provided by locals in the hot tub. Though I have to admit that, while I did get in a few laps here and there, most of my pool time was pretty lazy stuff.

So, this week we saw:

An abandoned iron pit mine, affectionately referred to by the locals as "2000 Flushes," because of the bright blue water that filled the pit when the mine struck underground water. As is becoming standard out here, the road in was a relatively rough dirt road that google maps did not even know existed. The plan was to hike down into the mine a bit and get closer to the water. The reality was that there were multiple groups out shooting nearby and there were so many spent shotgun shells on the ground that it was impossible to walk without stepping on at least some. The place was used as a convenient dump and just down the hill from where we stood were things like broken microwaves and a burnt out old car. And also there was a dead cow. For reals. So, in the end we took a picture and left.

The remains of an old mining town, creatively named: Old Iron Town. As far as ghost towns go, it was pretty sparse in actual buildings, but there was a short little trail weaving around and through the ruins and explanatory signs at each to help those of us who don't know what an arrastra is (basically, its a mill).   There were the remains of one house and a handful of industrial remains, like a chimney from the foundry, a mill for grinding sand (the arrastra), and most impressively a huge furnace for making charcoal to heat the iron. All pretty cool stuff, but I think our kids were most impressed by the jack rabbits they spotted out on the edges of the site. Those were some big bunnies.

Lava tube caves: Utah's Mammoth Caves, which are just holes in the ground from the outside but huge caverns once you venture inside. The only real caves I have ever been in before are Carlsbad Caverns. These are no where near that size, but they also are not artificially lit, so once we went through the opening and then around a corner it was completely and totally dark. We all had flashlights, but they lit only a little path right around us, even standing near the opening still, the light penetrates only a little way into the cave. We turned all of our flashlights off a couple times just to experience the intense darkness. Supposedly there is a way out at the end of the main cave, but we didn't go that far, the further back we got, the more the floor was littered with large lava rocks that made walking difficult, the drippier the walls and ceilings became, and the lower the ceiling was getting with still no end in sight, so we turned back to the entrance. One of the side caves, Ronan did climb all the way through, the last quarter crawling on his belly out the other end, but the rest of us again went out the way we came in.

Lava Flows. Pretty much the whole canyon was full of lava, and we stopped at two great places to view the immensity of it all. First at a canyon overlook near the caves where groves of aspens were looking spectacular in their fall foliage against the lava rock landscape. Next we drove out along possibly the scariest dirt road yet at the bidding of a tiny wooden sign reading: "Lava Flow," to view acres and acres of lava rocks as far as we could see.  I sincerely never expected to see lava anything in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.