A day of out-of-the-way places: Meadow hot spring and Parowan, Utah

 

Friday evening, March 11

It's been a day of out-of-the-way places, which, so often, are the very best. Asked about other hot springs we could visit on the way south Jay suggested Meadow hot springs not far from the village of the same name.

We found the turnoff to Meadow, about 150km south of Spanish Fork on I-15, without a problem, but without any signage we had to ask directions to the hotsprings at the last house in the little town.

 Then, we had no trouble finding it since the dirt road leads directly there after about ten or twelve kilometres. It's hard to believe that anything but pasture and cows could be found in that flat, nearly treeless landscape, but we did arrive at a place where three or four parked cars indicated that something right there in the middle of nowhere must be of interest. And indeed there was! A short walk along a deeply rutted, after recent snow still partly muddy road we found the hot springs, maybe 10m diameter maximum but quite deep at about 6m. Only three people were soaking at the time, two of them self-proclaimed hippies (the pool is on private land and clothing optional, though officially that isn't permitted in the state of Utah), and Johann quickly joined them while I decided not to, today. One of the 'hippies' wore a cowboy hat and turned out to be a rancher from the area, and he and Johann exchanged their farming experiences - that certainly hasn't happened in any other hot spring we have visited so far. The water is crystal clear in these springs that are actually a crater, the temperature a pleasant 32 degrees Celsius, 'like a bathtub that doesn't get cold', said Johann. My greatest pleasure was to see and hear the Western meadowlark, a rare treat since these birds don't live in north central Alberta.

After this hour-long interlude we were headed south again, still not sure if we'd find a place to stay in Cedar City or St. George. The distance we covered today wasn't that important; our plan is to spend a night tenting at the Ringbolt hot springs, likely our favourite place on this whole trip, Sunday night. Along the way we are trying to find opportunities to hike for a while every day. Both Cedar City and St. George are bound to be busy on a weekend because of the proximity of Zion NP, and we couldn't decide where to book a motel. Where else could we stay, then? The GPS showed that close to the town of Parowan, just north of Cedar City, the “Parowan Gap” was a point of interest because of petroglyphs in great density and number. Dinosaur tracks can be found at the other end of the three-mile long canyon. We decided to check it out.

Driving along wide main street – towns in Utah are built with a lot of space, as we already saw when we stayed in Nephi a few years back – we spotted a sign for the 'Ace Motel' which turned out to be transformed into a series of small shops. But yes, there was another hotel, the Mountain View Lodge. ONE other hotel, no more, although there is a B&B, too, which asked for reservations before you could even look at it, with the owner nowhere in sight. Great luck: the hotel had a room for us, and a very nice one to boot. We took this as a sign: Cedar City and St. George could wait. A stop at the visitor office netted a brochure for the Parowan Gap petroglyphs, and by four in the afternoon we were headed out of town to see what we could find.

According to the brochure , the gap is a three-mile long pass that connects the Parowan and Cedar Valleys, “a classic example for a wind gap—an unusual geological landform marking where an ancient river has cut a 600-foot deep notch through the Red Hills.” A sign for Dinosaur Tracks close to the beginning of the gap was our first stop. Beautiful red and golden Navajo sandstone rocks towered above us, the valley floor strewn with huge boulders sculpted by sun and wind and rain; some looked as if they belonged in an outdoor art gallery. 

We followed the narrow trail, but even knowing that there were dinosaur tracks we couldn't see anything resembling them. After a little while we found small markers shaped like duckbill dinosaur tracks near some of the blocks, and with a lot of goodwill (and still some speculation) we were able to detect the tell-tale footprint on a couple of them. I'm sure that without the markers we would have left without finding a single one.

The petroglyphs a couple of miles further west, on the other hand, were well marked and easy to find and were indeed remarkable. While there is documentation of human occupation as far back as 12,000 years, the majority of the figures are believed to have been carved by the Fremont people who were closely related to the Hopi and other southwestern tribes. They were replaced by the Paiute who still reside in the area.

We were the only visitors to the site and could study the carvings and the different interpretations offered at leisure. There is no one explanation regarding their meaning, but judging by the density and quality of the stone writings this area must have held special significance for the people who occupied it over the centuries.

By now it was a little after five pm, and a cold wind made it uncomfortable even with the sun shining from a deep blue sky. We hadn't really attended to our daily dose of hiking; neither the walk from the car to the hot spring nor the stroll through the dinosaur track and petroglyph sites were longer than a few hundred metres. I needed a tiny bit of convincing to find the thought of hiking in that cold wind attractive, but once I had made up my mind I was fine. Several trails, likely made by off-road vehicles, led into the hills. While it's nice to have a destination to hike to there is a sure attraction in just moving without any plan but to follow the trail to wherever it might lead. In this case it was steadily up towards the next rise, and then the next. Piñon and cedar were scattered on the hillsides, gnarled and stunted and ancient looking. A few piñon cones still clung to the branches, but the pine nuts were hollow and dry by now. The view of the surrounding area was ever more stunning the higher we got. The wind in the trees was the only sound; only close to the bottom of the valley did we hear the faint hum of cars on the highway miles away. By then the wind had died down and it was no longer unpleasant – but maybe that was the result of all that uphill hiking, too ...

A special treat were a group of mountain bluebirds darting in and out of the trees along the road, brief sparks of metallic blue unlike any other blue I've seen in a bird.

                                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saturday morning

We'll soon be on our way south again, and next night we will stay in St. George, so we have only an hour's drive at most. That should give us plenty of time to explore Kolob Canyon, the more remote part of Zion National Park. We visited the main part of the park several years ago, and I was very much taken with the colours and rock formations. The word canyon alone is enough to get me excited.