Yankee Reservoir

Hillside Aspens

A trip to see a play at the Utah Shakespearean Festival presented an opportunity to look for the October fall color you can see in the west. The difference between the other parts of the country and the west in the autumn is that the colors of the west are primarily yellow from the aspen trees. There is a hint of red in the sumacs you can see in Utah that grow in Utah. Otherwise, the predominant colors are they greens of the gymnosperms and the browns of the grasses.

You take Utah route 143 from Parowan to Brian Head to see the color of the Markagunt plateau. The aspens and pinesline the highway. A side trip you can take goes to Yankee Reservoir. The first several miles of the road are paved and lined wiht pines and aspens, as well as with other deciduous trees, which have mostly brown leaves before they fall. After a few miles the road becomes a well graded road. This road continues well pasy Yankee reservoir, but I have not taken it beyond the reservoir yet. You break into an area of open meadows after the paved road ends. The meadows are easy for hiking and present the opportunoity for seeing stands of yellowing aspen both nearby and in the distance. The meadows are not enpty. I saw hunters on ATVs and boy scouts hiking throughout the area. There were also campers.

Yankee Reservoir is where I stopped along the road. The reservoir is stocked with trout, which draws plenty of fishermen. It also means that there is a path around the lake. There were plenty of fall wildflowers in the open meadows and along hte creek that feeds the reservoir. The fishermen were plentiful, thoough they did not seem to be catching much. The late morning was warm and pleasant. It was so nice that I decided to have lunch there before completing a hike around the lake. By the time I was finished it was late afternoon, time for dinner before going to see the play.

Kolob Canyon

Canyon Aspens

One of the ways we often complete trips to Cedar City is by taking a side trip to Kolob Canyon. This is easy because the entrance to is directly on I-15. The exit takes you right to the Kolob Canyon Visitor Center of Zion National Park. The road takes you to a high point overlooking Kolob Canyon.

There are pullouts about every mile along the Kolob Canyon Road. Some of them take you to viewpoints, others to trailheads. The pullouts often stop at hanging canyons across the valley. They asre beautiful places where you see aspens and pines in the valleys above. At others, you look down onto stands of aspen. All of them had turned yellow. At the end of the road you are on a high point looking down onto the main part of Zion Canyon. The view is expansive. The day was entirely clear; you could see for many miles. The color was great and the mountains are majestic. That is why we return to this canyon so often.

This ended my trip; it was a rush on the freeway back to Las Vegas and thr routines of normal life.