Our house in St. George is the perfect base from which to visit the slots of Las Vegas. Dave and I have never cared much for those slots, but we love using our St. George home as a base to visit a different type of slots--the slot canyons of Buckskin Gulch. 
The weekend of June 13, Dave and I hiked the Wirepass Trail through Buckskin Gulch with our longtime friends, Bob and Deanne Wilde. Deanne was one of my closest friends in college and introduced me to Dave, whom she used to date. Bob was in ROTC flight training with Dave in the early 1970s and, in fact, was an Air Force pilot for six years before he went to law school. Now that our children are grown up and gone, we have time to get reacquainted.
We all love to hike, so we filled our backpacks with water, trail mix, and a juicy grapefruit (brought by my always-creative friend, Deanne). We passed the stern sign warning of flash floods and other disasters, and headed deeper and deeper into the canyon. It was dry, hot and sunny outside the canyon, but cool and wet inside, with deeper and deeper pools on the canyon floor, the farther we walked. We finally turned back, some four miles in, when we came to a huge pile of boulders, with chest-high pools beyond. If we kept hiking and sleeping overnight in the canyon, in three days we would be in Lee's Ferry, the desolate town where my Grandfather Eyring worked for a summer as a teenager in the 1880s, helping to ferry pioneers and their livestock across the Colorado River.+of+P1050475.JPG)
In this picture, the narrow slot canyon is just a crease in the front of the mountain.
We finished the trip with a gourmet meal at the Rockin' V Cafe in Kanab.
One other very fun experience, the week of June 7-13, was a meeting of the Board of the U of U Hospital Foundation at the Air Med hangar near the SL airport. I heard the director of the Air Med program talk about rescuing injured hikers from remote mountain areas, downed skiiers from the resorts, and high risk pregnant mothers who needed to be life-flighted to the U of U Med Center from all over Wyoming and Montana.
The highlight of the program was trying on the night goggles the Air Med team uses on its night flights to remote areas. The goggles cost $10,000 per pair. They turned everything in the dark closet in which I experimented with them bright green, but clear as day, just like in the movies!
The weekend of June 13, Dave and I hiked the Wirepass Trail through Buckskin Gulch with our longtime friends, Bob and Deanne Wilde. Deanne was one of my closest friends in college and introduced me to Dave, whom she used to date. Bob was in ROTC flight training with Dave in the early 1970s and, in fact, was an Air Force pilot for six years before he went to law school. Now that our children are grown up and gone, we have time to get reacquainted.
We all love to hike, so we filled our backpacks with water, trail mix, and a juicy grapefruit (brought by my always-creative friend, Deanne). We passed the stern sign warning of flash floods and other disasters, and headed deeper and deeper into the canyon. It was dry, hot and sunny outside the canyon, but cool and wet inside, with deeper and deeper pools on the canyon floor, the farther we walked. We finally turned back, some four miles in, when we came to a huge pile of boulders, with chest-high pools beyond. If we kept hiking and sleeping overnight in the canyon, in three days we would be in Lee's Ferry, the desolate town where my Grandfather Eyring worked for a summer as a teenager in the 1880s, helping to ferry pioneers and their livestock across the Colorado River.
In this picture, the narrow slot canyon is just a crease in the front of the mountain.
We finished the trip with a gourmet meal at the Rockin' V Cafe in Kanab.
One other very fun experience, the week of June 7-13, was a meeting of the Board of the U of U Hospital Foundation at the Air Med hangar near the SL airport. I heard the director of the Air Med program talk about rescuing injured hikers from remote mountain areas, downed skiiers from the resorts, and high risk pregnant mothers who needed to be life-flighted to the U of U Med Center from all over Wyoming and Montana.
The highlight of the program was trying on the night goggles the Air Med team uses on its night flights to remote areas. The goggles cost $10,000 per pair. They turned everything in the dark closet in which I experimented with them bright green, but clear as day, just like in the movies!
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