Camping, Pine Valley, and a Wildfire.

This week was SUU's Fall Break, so we went car camping and hiking in Pine Valley with a few friends to make the most of the long weekend.

*Once again, click on the photos to view them as a slide show


This was our sweet kitchen set-up. Tony has built a removable bed that fits into the back of his Toyota, complete with a pull out table. It made dinner so much easier and cleaner.  


Our campsite at night. I am slowly figuring out how to take pictures in the dark, hopefully there will be more successful attempts to come. We watched a movie out of the back of Tony's truck once the sun set. I wasn't able to get a great picture of it, but it was a full moon and almost as light as day. When the moon rose, we couldn't even look directly at it because it was so bright.


Andy, the pups, and my home for the weekend. The new jeep has tons of room for sleeping in the back, and it was a comfortable night even with the two dogs sharing our 'bed'. 


We explored the Pine Valley Wilderness. We originally had planned to attempt summiting Signal Peak, but sometimes nature has other plans and you end up following game trails along a scenic river instead.


The forest is mostly towering Ponderosa Pines accented with golden Aspens, and is a beautiful oasis that is much less used than the Cedar Region of the Dixie National Forest.






...

The night we got back from camping, a wildfire popped up near Cedar City in the Hill Creek region. So far all the news stories say it started up because of a control burn on private property three weeks ago. The wind has been bad lately, and it whipped up the old burn. So far the fire is about one thousand acres and four homes had to be evacuated. It is far enough from Cedar that there is no eminent danger, but quite a lot  of views. Here a just a few pictures I got of the blaze.









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