new digs: west of Zion NP

Spent the morning in St. George, picking up the Amazon loot and reprovisioning.  The locals were taking a reasonable line on Covid, distancing but not losing their gourds.  Maybe 1/3rd of people were masked up.  I had made one out of a shirt I didn’t like and I did cover up.  No biggie.

The water kiosk outside was wrapped up with a sign saying it was unavailable.  Hmmmm.  Dunno if it was a tech problem or public health overreaction.  I still had about half my fresh water tank (half of the original 35gal) which should be enough for another two weeks, but that makes me nervous.

I found a park on my way out of town and used a water bandit and short length of hose to hork 5 gallons;  that is enough of a buffer that I’m not [overly] worried about not filling up at the kiosk.  It was a low-flow faucet, maybe .3gal/min so I only took the one bladder full.

Other cities in arid areas have lots of standalone water kiosks where you can buy water for pretty cheap;  haven’t seen any in UT so far.  Weird.

Back to camp.  Here’s a view to the SE of camp:

It’s  a designated BLM camping area (on the little marker poles) so there are folks nearby.  There’s a Class A about  200’ to the west, and a couple Class Bs to the south:

Everyone is quiet.  I assume it will be crowded and loud on the weekend, but that’s part of the deal. It’s our public land.

The Verizon is 2-3 bars which is the best I’ve had on BLM land lately.