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We learned our lesson from yesterday so today we started out earlier to hike up an 860 cliff. Now this hike was rated easy to moderate with a few strenuous parts. Hah!!! At times it felt like we were going straight up the 800 feet over huge boulders on a narrow trail where one mis-step would send you tumbling over the edge. With that said, it was a pretty climb and the view from the top was pretty amazing, of course then we had to go down over those same boulders. If you look closely in the picture I posted, the little white dot is our car. We had a picnic lunch at the top before heading down.
Then it was on to Pipe Springs National Monument, another place I have never heard of. The first neat thing about this spot was the ranger let us in for free even though we had left our National Park Pass in the RV. (This pass has already saved us $100 on this trip alone. If you are over 65 and don't have one, hurry to your nearest national park or monument and sign up.)
Pipe Springs is a preservation/recreation site of a Mormon settlement at a natural spring in the middle of the desert. The informational material was quite unbiased as it discussed Paiute, Mormon and National interests in the spring. The settlement site was very accurately done. We were very impressed by the cattle corral done with rough small cedar trees rather than more modern finished posts. Even the recreation of the telegraph line (the first in Arizona) was done with rough juniper posts. All in all we were impressed.
Tomorrow it's off to Zion. We hope that it will be less crowded once the weekend is over.
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Brian Sounds great, though we will stick to hiking ALONG the ridge rather than up it.