Saturday May 27, 2023
Written from the perspective of Dana:
Rob and I started the day by going in search of a place to do laundry. It had been four days since my last load of laundry, and we had done a lot of hiking in those four days. We let the girls sleep in for the morning. After asking a store clerk at al local market if there was one close by, I was directed to one of the nicest laundry mats I’ve ever been in – Dixie Spin Laundry. In less than and hour, all of the clothes were washed and dried. The whole place was centrally controlled. You used a panel on the wall to select your washer/dryer and the settings for each. And there were different sized washing machines – from 20lb to 100lb. One hundred pounds of laundry in one machine – I’m sure that weight is wet laundry but that’s still a lot of laundry. Anyway, let me go back to the market place where I asked directions. The name of it was Bee’s Market. It was a gas station, grocery store, pharmacy and coffee shop in one location. The town was Colorado City which is right on the Arizona/Utah border. This town is interesting because of the story of Warren Jeffs, once on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. He was the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and currently serving a life sentence in prison. He had 78 wives! I won’t go into all the details of his crimes, but his former home in Colorado City is now a Bed and Breakfast which was saw on the way to the laundromat.
Once we arrived back at the house, Laura Kate and Anna were awake and ready for their next adventure – sand sledding at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. The dunes were not like sand dunes at the beach, they were more like mountains of sand and were a light orange color. The girls rented their sleds Anna had a standing version which was more like a snowboard, and Laura Kate had a sitting version. Then, we headed toward the Sand dunes! Laura Kate and Anna started on the smaller dunes and went several times trying to get a feel for things. Rob and I each took a turn sledding to the bottom… Rob’s turn did not have a good ending because he fell. The worst part of sledding down was having to climb back up the sand dune because you sink into the sand as you walk. The girls decided to do their final run on the tallest sand dune, which looked more like a mountain. Laura Kate made it successfully to the very bottom Anna not so much. About midway down the dune she stumbled and fell face first in the sand but, got back up and kept going until she fell again. This fall was much worse, it was more of a wipeout. As she flew forward, her face hit the sand with her legs up in the air and she slid a few inches before stopping, providing for a finale fall. I think she still had sand in her hair the next day. Sand sledding was a unique experience for us all.
To end the day, Rob grilled steak and chicken for us all. I added baked potatoes, salad and garlic bread for one of the best meals of the trip. This was our last night in Cane Beds, Arizona. Tomorrow we head to the Grand Canyon.
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