Where bluebirds fly

Hurricane, UT – In a farmer’s field on our way to Kolob Canyons this morning, we passed an irrigation apparatus – the kind that looks like a mile-long pipe strung across a field with bicycle wheels every ten feet or so – that was glittering with ice, as was the grass around it.  Someone must have turned it on before realizing how cold it was this morning.

This set of canyons is officially part of Zion National Park, although it has a separate entrance north of the main park and is much smaller. It still offers visitors a breathtaking vista of cliffs, buttes, mesas, streams and multicoloured strata, not to mention a huge variety of plant and animal life.

The magical part about today’s visit was the fact that we almost had the place to ourselves. It was cold enough for me to turn up my jacket collar and retract my hands into the cuffs of my sweater as we took one of the walking trails in the park. There were other visitors, and cars were parked at the trail heads, but it was by no means crowded.  The sun was bright and the sky was perfectly clear, and in our walk we could hear the wind whispering in the pinyon pines and the cheerful conversations of the birds.

Kolob Canyon is the home of the Western Bluebird and the Mountain Bluebird, and I’m pretty sure we saw both today.  They never stayed still enough to get a photo, but they were a brilliant shade of blue as they swooped past, or lighted on a branch and took off again seconds later.

The road into Kolob is only five miles long, and there are three walking trails. The park guide provides a list of the trails with the return distances and approximate time to walk them.  Some of the most spectacular rock formations, unfortunately, are at the end of a four-hour, 14-mile hike, which we were not quite ready to undertake today!  We opted to satisfy ourselves with the Timber Creek Overlook Trail, a one-mile round trip, which was no small prize.

At the peak we could look out on the craggy peaks of Kolob to our left, the Pine Valley Mountain Wilderness, dusted with snow, on the right and far, far off on the horizon in front of us, the northern rim of the Grand Canyon!  And down below was the silver ribbon of the La Verkin Creek, meandering along the sandy floor of the canyon.  It was spectacular.

Our route home took us through the small town of Toquerville, where we passed a row of glorious fruit trees covered in bright purple blossoms. Other gardens sported sunny daffodils, and the cottonwood trees were coming out in a fresh spring green.

After picking up a few groceries, we returned to the RV and pulled out our maps, atlas, campground catalogs and laptop to plot the next leg of our journey.  I was surprised to see that we had actually come by this way before when we drove back from Las Vegas in 2011. We will be varying the route a little bit, just to maximize our exposure to this beautiful land.