Kodachrome Basin State Park

After Bryce Canyon, we had reservations at Kodachrome Basin State Park. Due to a little bit of bad timing, we were just going to miss being there at the same time as our friends Hans & Lisa of Metamorphosis Road. In fact, we actually had reserved the exact same spot that they did, just for different weeks. We visited them during their say at the park, and got a little laugh over the reservation cards which showed just how closely we missed each other.

We bumped up our arrival by one day to get away from the cold weather at Bryce, so just as we were arriving, we passed Hans & Lisa on their way out. If you look closely you can even see their cat Rosie in the back seat of their truck!

We knew from visiting Hans & Lisa that Kodachrome was beautiful. We also knew that it would be a complete dead zone when it came to cellular service. Our planned stay was for 6 nights, and I got a little twitchy at the thought of not being able to get on the internet for that long. After a day or two we got used to it, but we did drive into the nearby town almost every day to check our messages!

Driving into the park, you can tell right away that it’s a unique place.

There are four nice hikes right within the park, and the first day we did the Angel’s Palace Trail, an easy 1.5 mile loop that goes up onto a ridge overlooking the park.

At a few places on the trail you’re actually looking down on the campground. The group site parking lot is in the foreground of this photo, and beyond that you can see the RVs in the campground.

Some the rock formations were, um…interesting.

Another day we did the Panorama Trail, a 6-mile loop that features the Cool Cave at the midway point. It was little hotter this day than the previous ones, so the cave was the the perfect place to cool off and enjoy a picnic lunch.

We also did a couple of hikes outside of the park, but I’ll save those for the next post.

One day while walking through the park I noticed a truck and trailer with Louisiana tags. The owner happened to be outside, so since I’m from Louisiana myself, I struck up a conversation with him. Turns out he was the local Methodist minister from my home town! Since my dad was the Presbyterian minister, he immediately knew who my parents were. I love small world stories like that!

Our other little adventure involved an extra passenger we had somehow picked up along the way. I noticed the tell-tale sign of a stowaway mouse – a shredded roll of toilet paper. Last year when we had a mouse we had put out some poison, but had since learned that this isn’t the best solution as the mice could go off and die somewhere inside the RV. Which is exactly what happened last year. We had to put up with the disgusting smell for a few weeks, and finally located and removed the dead mouse when we had the heater worked on at Tiffin. So this time we replaced the poison with a few traps. We quickly caught one mouse in a trap, and we hoped that was the end of it. However, the next day I lifted up the bed to get the vacuum cleaner out, and there was a pretty yucky smell under there. The smell had not been there just a few days prior when I had completely cleaned out and organized everything under the bed. I made Deas take out everything…and low and behold – another dead mouse! Ewwww!! I screamed and ran to the front of the RV while Deas made fun of me. Dead or not, I do NOT want to see a mouse!

Thoughts on the Park: If were not for the lack of cell/internet service, this would be the perfect park. We had a full hook-up site with 50 amp service and got excellent satellite signal for the TV. The sites were large and well spaced, and the park was beautiful and very quiet. Only 10 of the sites are full hook-up – the other sites are dry. There is access to good hiking within the park, and you can also hike in the nearby Grand Staircase National Monument. We’d definitely stay here again.