What do you get when you squeeze 18 people into one 900 square foot cabin & 5 tents then add RAIN? A muddy, squishy, laughing, complaining, exciting gun shooting, cave scraping, hotdog roasting, smore’s eating Memorial weekend.

Although southern Utah didn’t make national news with the amount of rain that fell we all agreed that these were the wettest days we’ve spent at the cabin in 17 years … the road in rivaled a good redneck mud bog. 4-wheel drive mandatory. After a solid afternoon, night & morning of rain we escaped by cramming into four 4×4’s, slid and skidded through the mud bog and escaped to Kanab, Utah. A friendly little town with a big history and the BEST chicken fried steak from Houston’s Trails End restaurant on main street.

We (18 minus 2 teenagers who opted to remain at the cabin) descended on the Kanab Movie Museum which is a collection of rescued movie sets from films like Sergeant’s 3 (with the ‘Rat Pack’) and The Outlaw Jose Wales (Clint Eastwood).  http://www.littlehollywoodmuseum.org/

From Kanab we headed east to Johnson Canyon (http://www.v isitsouthernutah.com/Johnson-Canyon) and drove north to what is left of the Bunting Ranch to see petroglyphs from the car … rain rain go away.

For the animal lovers in the group our next stop was the Best Friend’s Animal Sanctuary (http://bestfriends.org/The-Sanctuary/Explore-the-Sanctuary/) where we anticipated a tour … wrong! All the tour spots were full …NOW what?

We circled the wagons at a pull-off to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes for a fire, hotdogs, and a confab on what to do next … THEN a minivan pulls in next to us and the driver starts to question us on our intentions … they owned the property next to the public turnout.

Explaining our dilemma she told us they had been cave scraping up the road and showed us the fruit of their labor. Jars filled with multicolored layers of sand. Well that perked us up!

After a drive back into Kanab for jelly jars we climbed red rock foothills to a cave that made Joseph’s coat of many colors look grayscale. Explosions of smiles and exclamations of wonder that we had never in 20 plus years known this cave existed accompanied scraping sand grains into glass containers.

How totally cool! and there were only 3 broken jars … 1 on the way up and two on the way down…all shards of glass cleaned up, and new jars refilled by eager artists.

Day Two began the same as Day One … rain rain go away … please?

Packing lunch, guns and ammo we bounced and slid through the mud bog’s now deeper soupier ruts and  headed to Kanab’s well designed and maintained shooting range where Grandpa Greg (master gunsmith) gave instruction and ran a well-ordered and safe shooting experience for all.

What is totally awesome? Shooting the 22 rifles he built for each of the grandsons when they turned 12.

From the shooting range the group split up and Sweetie, the older grand-kids and I followed a sand and wash road to the Peekaboo Trailhead and took an easy hike through this breathtaking slot canyon.

Of course Day 3, leaving day for the main group, was filled with sunshine and the smells of Ponderosa Pine and wood smoke. Many hands made camp tear down easy a boisterous tumult of tents pulled, trucks packed and a final camp check clean up.

Sweetie and I waved them away, smiled, pulled chairs into the sunshine and opened our books.

Another year of Memorial weekend cabin memories for the scrapbook and photo albums … I’m a bit nostalgic; the cabin is for sale, 2 grandson’s graduated from high school .. one has enlisted and the other is heading for college … 3 more grandchildren will graduate next year. Isn’t life wonderful? My bucket is full of hugs, laughter, and love.

I am blessed. Life is Good. Thank you God for Everything!