Day 19 – Wednesday, May 18

It rained most of the night last night, but stopped toward morning.  We got up about 7 and discovered that when the rain stopped, it was because it changed to snow.  It was 30 degrees.  Unlike yesterday, the snow kept coming down.  Then, it got heavier.  Dad decided to make sausage and eggs for them.  I don’t need to tell you what I had.  It kept snowing and the wind was blowing again.  By 9:30 when we were ready to leave, there was 4” of snow on the trash can where we left our trash. 

Fortunately, when we got out to the main road, it was slushy, so not too bad for Dad to drive.  We were on the road for about 15 min and passed another motor home in a pull-out.  As we passed, Dad noticed that the car that they had been towing was sitting funny and part of the tow bar was under the motor home.  He drove up a little way and turned around to go back to help.  There isn’t any cell phone coverage out here, so if you are broken down, about all you can do is hope that someone stops to help.  They were actually in pretty good shape.  The tow car had rear-ended the motor home a couple times before they could get stopped, but didn’t cause any damage to the radiator or fuel filter (it was a diesel pusher).  It had flattened the exhaust pipe, but Dad was able to bend that, so that they had proper air flow.  One of the rear pieces of the motor home had come loose on one side and had a lot of scars in it.  Dad had duct tape to hold it back on and they said that they had a friend back in Denver who could touch it up for them.  We also loaned them our window scraper to get the snow off the tow car’s windows.  When we left them, the motor home and the tow car were both driveable.  They will need a new hitch ball and some repairs to the tow bar, before they will be able to tow the car, but at least everyone was safe and could drive away from the scene.

After about an hour, we stopped at a place called Pipe Spring National Monument.  It’s a place in Arizona, on the border with Utah, where the Mormans established a ranch for cattle that were given to the church as tithes.  There is a natural spring called the Pipe Spring that gave the area it’s name.  The old buildings have been rebuilt and it was very interesting to hear about life in the late 1800’s in this area.  The National Monument is in an area that is now an Indian Reservation and we bought gas for $3.78.  From there, we drove to Zion National Park.  We plan to spend three nights here.