Sunday, April 29, 2012

Coral Sand Dunes, Movie sets and Pipe Springs

Since we ended up spending most of the day at Zion on Wednesday and chance of rain increased to 90%, we decided to visit Kanab and the surrounding area.
Our first stop was Coral Pink Sand Dunes. We "climbed" to the top of one of the dunes, sinking ankle deep in sand....and with storm clouds that looked like it was going to pour at any moment.




Our next stop was Kanab. So many movies and tv shows were filmed in this area including Gunsmoke and a number of John Wayne movies. There is a museum that has a number of the movie sets.




After lunch we went to Pipe Spring National Monument. It is a spring that was used by the Pueblo people and also the early Mormon settlers. The Mormons built a fortified house. There was an interesting tour led by a Kaihab Indian. One thing we learned was that the Kaihabs use to hide in the fortified house. The Navajo Indians were kidnapping them, taking them to the Presidio in San Francisco or San Diego and selling them as slaves to Mexico. There were a number of "hiding places" in the house, also used for hiding Mormon husbands and their "first wife" when the government stopped polygamy. Evidently other wives were left to fend for themselves.




No comments:

Post a Comment