A Lock With No Key

By now I am several posts behind. I’m afraid that I’m enjoying myself a little too much! In the spirit of catching up a little, here’s where I was a month or so ago:

Ortona Lock and Dam campground is outside the little town of Labelle, FL. It’s a site built (and run) by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps of Engineers maintains campgrounds all over the country, although they are less common in the western US. There are a lot (plethora, abundance, bunches, etc.) of canals in Florida. Most of these canals eventually reach the ocean. Thus, there are many boats traveling on these canals. Therefore lock systems are needed to assist the boats in getting around the dams on the canals, which is where the Corps of Engineers comes into the picture. They built the dam, they provide the way to get past the dam.

dam at Ortona

anhingas

canal

Every now and then the Corps puts a campground near one of the locks. Ortona is one of those places. (The state also has campgrounds near many of the boat launch sites on the canals, but they usually are pretty basic.) The Corps of Engineers campgrounds usually have electric hook-ups and a dump site and may also have water at each camp site. The state-run campgrounds might have a porta potty and some picnic tables and a trash can or five. They are also usually free, where the Corps campgrounds have a small fee (small if you have a national parks pass, anyway.)

I pulled into Ortona without a reservation and was lucky enough to get the last walk-up site available. While most sites can be reserved ahead of time, a small percentage of the sites are kept open for people who don’t want to plan that far ahead (like me!) Once you have a walk-up site you can stay for up to two weeks. So while there are walk-up sites available in theory, if everyone who has one wants to stay the full two weeks, they reality can be much different. But I got one, so life was good.

I site I got was on the canal side of the road, so the water was pretty much right outside my door. Sweet. There is also another water course that comes into the canal around the middle of the campground. There are a couple of families of river otters that live on that river. They were a delight to watch. I’m not sure who was more curious about whom. When the otters would see me walking Topper along the bank, they would rise up out of the water to watch, their sleek bodies moving to watch our progress. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of them. But it seemed like every time I saw them, the light was glinting off the water so brightly that it washed the details out. Oh well, at least I got to see them.

It was a lovely and peaceful place. Well maintained. And while I enjoy campgrounds like that, I also enjoy the more natural ones where you have to bring everything you need with you and the whole place isn’t covered with asphalt or concrete and manicured lawns and plantings.

green heron

I ended up spending five lovely days there before heading farther south. I spent most of my time wandering along the canal, watching boats going through the lock, looking for the otters and bird-watching. The last day I was there, I took my scooter for a spin through the countryside and wound up at a little Cuban barbecue place on some back road in the middle of pretty much nowhere. It smelled so good that I had to stop and have lunch. I was so glad that I did.

The food wasn’t fancy, but it sure was good. The ribs came in two styles American and Cuban. Neither had any kind of sauce on them. Instead they were rubbed with spices and slow-roasted. I found that I preferred the Cuban spice mixture to the “American” one. But it would have been nice to have a nice sweet/sticky/smokey sauce for the American style. Of course that would have made it hard to compare the spice mixtures. Whatever. It was a good meal and I didn’t need to cook dinner that night as I was still too full from lunch. I rode back out that winding little road and rolled back into camp one happy camper.

That evening turned quite cool, cold by Florida standards. While walking back to my site I found a little frog hunkered down on the gravel, too cold to move. He (she?) was a cute little thing, so I took its picture then carried it down to the canal. At that point the water was warmer than the air, so I set it in shallow water and left it to its own devices, allowing it to decide where it wanted to spend the night.

The next morning was clear and cool. Perfect for driving so off I went, heading for the Everglades.

Kanaraville? What’s a Kanaraville?

   Turns out, Kanarraville (founded in 1866) is a quaint little town fairly close to St. George, Utah (about half an hour away.) In many ways it reminded me of what Lehi, Utah used to be like when I was a young girl and used to visit my grandparents there. Lots of old, old houses, large trees and quiet streets. And strangely enough, no commercial enterprise whatsoever, unless you count the guy doing vehicle repair out of his home. (Groceries? We don’ need no stinking groceries….)

Kanarraville from the campground

I pulled into town and located the Red Ledge campground. Nice little place, green lawns, large trees, not very big but well kept up, and reasonable for full-hookup. (Accepts Passport and Escapees discount plans.) I took a site right in front of the office since I would only be staying two nights. Just long enough to do a couple of loads of laundry and see a bit of the town.

Since it was already afternoon, I unloaded the scooter for later use then started in on the laundry. Once again I was ever-so-thankful for the little washer/dryer unit in the bedroom. Yes, the RV park had a laundromat for the guests. Yes, I could have done all my clothes in one load there. I don’t care. Being able to set it and forget it. Not having to continually check in on my wash to see if it needs to go in the dryer, wait for a machine to be available, worry about if I have enough quarters to get the job done. All that is worth so much more to me than “one load or two?” could ever be.

From a pamphlet I picked up in the office, I learned that the property had been in use since the 1890’s (as Josiah Reeves Travelers Camp.) The property has been in continual use since then, so the site has a rich history. The little fold-out also listed several other buildings in town of historical interest, including an outdoor dance pavilion that has been in continuous use since the 1930’s.

old house and barn

The next day, after an exceedingly quiet and peaceful night, I got on the scooter and headed south. A couple of miles outside the town proper, there was a mid-sized subdivision of large, new homes. Probably mostly retirees seeking a warmer climate than wherever they were from, built at the base of the cliffs to the east. Nice houses, all painted in boring, neutral tones to match the dirt (with the exception of one nice, green one).

I cruised the streets, seeing if I could access any of the canyons leading inward from the subdivision, but couldn’t find a way. Until I followed the dead-end street on the northern end of the subdivision. At the top of the street there was a narrow dirt road with plenty of tire tracks, so I followed that. There was a turn at the top of the track, where the dirt road led off to the left, and there was a gate at the start of a trail to the right.

fall in Kolob Canyon

Upon reading a small sign on the gate I found out that the trail led into one of the Kolob canyons, part of Zion National Park. The sign told me to go somewhere or the other and pay for entry, but as I have a National Park pass, I figured that wasn’t really necessary. Through the gate and up the trail I went.   There had been some rain recently and many flowers were in bloom.

more wild asters

busy bee

The first thing I noticed was the sound of splashing water. A small stream tumbled over the spillway of what was at one time probably a small dam and reservoir. There was a cement spillway on one side, leading off toward town leaving me to wonder if this was once part of the town’s water supply. There was some sort of gate for water control off to one side, now mostly buried in sand that must have predated ownership of the land by the national park system. It looked rather sad and abandoned, surrounded by shrubbery while nature slowly buried it in debris carried by the stream.

old dam site

As I continued up the trail, it rounded a corner and ahead of me I saw a delightful little waterfall, maybe 25 to 30 feet high tumbling over the rock wall that formed the head of this little canyon. The whole thing was maybe a quarter-mile from start to dead-end. But such a pretty quarter-mile! Fall was still in full flush, lots of reds, yellows and golds. And I was the only person up there. If it weren’t for the other footprints in the sand, I could have pretended I was the only person who had ever gone there.

canyon and falls

I spent about an hour taking pictures, exploring the different types of rock in the stream bed and canyon walls, examining the local flora, and just relishing the peace. After checking out the canyon sides fairly carefully, I was pretty certain that if I wanted to exert the required energy, I could have climbed up and around the waterfall and gone farther up the canyon. But it was very steep, with lots of loose rock and a slip and fall would have resulted in, at least, more loss of skin than I cared to risk, so I passed on the exploration of the upper reaches. Guess I’m getting at least somewhat cautious in my “old” age.

base of falls

falls close-up

I finally pried myself out of the canyon and headed back to the RV park to have lunch. After that, I headed down the road on the north side of town. A nice enough ride, decent scenery, but nothing to write home about. Once back in town, I followed some signs that led to the local cemetery. Yeah, I’m weird. I like old cemeteries. I can walk around them for hours, examining the headstones, looking for the oldest dates, reading the inscriptions, admiring the sculptures on the older ones. Call it a hobby.

The Kanarraville cemetery was a pretty little thing, surrounded by a wrought iron fence with the town name and date of construction over the entry. There were a lot of graves marked as the internment sites of Mormon pioneers. There were several members of the Willis family in “residence”, who may very well be distant relatives of mine. The branch of the family that moved west during Mormon migration was actually Willes, but some members changed it to Willis for some reason.

view of hills from the cemetery

headstone

There was a map of the cemetery near the entrance (an Eagle Scout project for some young man) with each of the graves marked and the names of those buried there. It must have taken him quite a bit of research to find all the names as many of the headstones were illegible due to decades to wind and weather. However, some of these graves had secondary headstones that had obviously been placed there in the past few years so that deceased family members could be more easily located.

There was also a slot canyon, just to the northeast of town that was also the location of Kanarraville Falls. The pictures of saw of the area were really lovely, but the information I read about the hike indicated that it was a five-to-six mile journey, round-trip. Since it was already late afternoon when I located the info, I had to pass on making the hike. I suppose I could have paid for another night and hiked the canyon the next day, but I have family in St. George who were expecting me and I hate to disappoint. And I know that I will pass this was again and I can put the canyon and falls on my itinerary for that trip.

So I ended my stay in Kanarraville with another peaceful night, then headed for St. George and a visit with family the next day.