Touring the Wild, Wild West

Boyhood home of legendary outlaw Butch Cassidy

 

A Delightful Day

After a not-very-restful night at the Flying J truck stop, made even less so by the fact that we were parked as far as we could get, but still not very far, from an Arby’s all-night drive-through, there did not seem to be much incentive to lie abed when morning light came. We ate quickly, raised the trailer’s stabilizers, checked the hitch and the tires and headed south on U.S. Highway 89 in beautiful, clear morning light.

After the previous day’s  misadventures on Temple Mountain, we decided to give ourselves an easy day. U.S. 89 goes through some gorgeous country on its way past Bryce Canyon and on to Zion National Park, and we even found a few pleasant surprises along the way. 

An hour's easy drive found us in Junction, Utah. Since we needed a few things, we stopped at the Junction General Store. It looks small from the front, but the building is very deep and the selection of products available would make Wal-Mart blush with envy. Even better, next door was a two-story Victorian house with an ice cream shop behind its white picket fence. 

We were still slurping our ice cream cones as we came to Circleville, six miles south of Junction, and found a small log house behind a large parking lot just south of town. Turns out it was the boyhood home of the notorious outlaw Butch Cassidy, sidekick of the infamous Sundance Kid.

1959 Edsel. Both photos Fuji X-Pro1, Fujinon XF 27mm f2.8 lens

Moving on down the road to another little town, I found another of my interests: abandoned cars. In this case, a 1959 Edsel. I have a special affinity for Edsels, because Louise's mother drove one for years. When we first started dating I didn't have a car, so some of our first dates were in that car. Second on my list of book projects behind Lost Barns of Rock City is Found on Road Dead: An Anthology of Abandoned Automobiles. I already have enough old cars to do the book, but I didn't have an Edsel, so I was glad to find this one.

In mid-afternoon we found a pleasantly situated campground about two miles north of Mt. Carmel Junction, where the road turns off to Zion National Park, and parked our trailer in a shady spot. As we were finishing our set-up and Louise was making friends with the people in the next space, a young couple from Canada drove into the empty space on the other side, pulling a travel trailer that was at least 25 feet long with a Volkswagen Toureg, a smallish SUV. "You can't do that!" I said. "You can't pull a trailer that big with a car that small!"

"Of course I can," he replied. "It's a diesel. It has 332 foot-pounds of torque."

That shut me up. My full-size Chevy pickup with a gasoline V8 engine only generates 296 foot-pounds of torque.

All in all a delightful day. 

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts? 

(Photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2020) 

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone