A Trip into Dixie National Forest

[Family and Friends Friday]

After we spent most of the week unpacking boxes and getting settled, we decided to take Father’s Day off and go for a Sunday drive. Driving east of Cedar City on state road 14 a person goes through Dixie National Forest. About 35 miles from Cedar City is a resort settlement of Duck Creek and we headed toward that.


The elevation of Cedar City is about 5800 ft and the road east climbs to about 9 or 10 thousand feet. On the scenic byway are some spectacular views. Near the top a person can look south and see the edges of Zion National Park. I know this because the sign at the viewpoint told me, because I sure didn’t have a clue as to what I was looking at. I just knew it was quite a distance away and was a Kodiak moment.


Farther down the highway, the road overlooked Navajo Lake from quite a height. The lake was formed by a lava flow and has no outlet, other than through sink holes. What a beautiful color of the water.


The area around the village of Duck Creek is usually not accessable during the winter because of the high elevation and the snows. It looks like there was a lake there at one time and the grassland just grew into it. So now it resembles a bog with a creek running through it. Log cabins with metal roofs, green or red-orange, are a common building type. I thought the church on the far side of the “lake” was picturesque.


This week we have been buying trees and Bob tried planting the first two. He had to use a pick axe to break the ground up in our yard as the fine clay slit is very hard when dried. The larger trees, CO Blue Spruce, Austrian Pine, and the Birch clump were picked up by the landscaper, Greg Cox. He, thankfully, used his heavy equipment to dig holes for these trees. Today we bought a couple of more trees, Crabapple and a Choakcherry, which will probably get put in the ground on Monday.


Monday the landscaping crew is also going to put in the fence posts for the 3 rail plastic fencing. We’re looking forward for that to go in so that we can start letting the dog out through the dog door…provided we can get the dog to use the new dog door. We have a pretty cautious dog, and the fact that the door exits over a basement window well doesn’t help matters. So we have to revise the ramp so that it is especially sturdy.


In my next blog I’ll tell you about the weaving studio, Bloomin’ Loom that I found in Cedar City.