Back to snow: Nephi

On Thursday we said goodbye to St. George for the next – longer, this time – leg on our way north: we planned to spend the night in Nephi, Utah. Before we started our drive we went for a walk on one of the trails of the extensive urban trail system, a well-planned and ever expanding system of trails that connects already several of the neighbourhoods of the sprawling city and aims to add many more miles. All the trails are paved, as one of the people in the parking lot near the river told us, excellent for bicycles (maybe not quite as nice for walking, but that is debatable, of course), and already there are 20 or 30 miles of trails in use. We took a trail along the Virgin River, a nice neighbourhood on our other side. Soon after we started two roadrunners crossed our path, a hummingbird rose straight up from a branch and darted off into the shrubbery, geese honked when they landed on the river, and all kinds of songbirds made it sound as if spring had sprung full force. It had, too: it was really nice and warm for the first time since we came south. We had wanted to stretch our legs before we started driving, but these five miles or so were almost a bit more than we had bargained for considering it was all on hard pavement. We had a picnic lunch on a bench in the park, Johann snoozed for a while on the lawn, and by one-thirty we were on our way north on I 15.

The drive to Nephi led us through more beautiful country, but bit by bit we left the warm temperatures behind. In Nephi it was only six degrees Celsius, and the snow cover was still intact. Still, it felt like spring, water dripping merrily off the roof. On our way back from the little Mexican restaurant across the road from the motel we could see our breath, and, as so many times before on this trip, I was glad that the heater was working in our motel room.