On Monday, we had two tours scheduled at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary.
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The first tour was a driving tour that gave us an overview of all the areas at the Sanctuary, starting with Dogtown.
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We saw a number of dogs who were enjoying being in their outside kennels (this one was in a smaller area). There were also several being walked by volunteers. If we understood correctly, all of the dogs (right now about 330, usually 400-600) would be given a 20-30 minute walk each day for exercise, socialization, and training. I wonder if I have that right, because that would be 110-300 hours of dog walking per day - even with volunteers, that would be a LOT!
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You may notice that one looks like a pit bull. Best Friends Animal Sanctuary took in 22 of the most traumatized fighting dogs retrieved from Michael Vick's kennels. More information on their website: https://bestfriends.org/sanctuary/about-sanctuary/vicktory-dogs Those dogs were either adopted out or the last one who stayed in residence has passed away, but, I think they may have more of the "difficult" dogs than many shelters do because they will take them and try to find homes for them.
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Then we drove by Cat World, and saw some of the buildings for the cats with their outside play areas as well.
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We drove by Wild Friends...
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... enjoyed a beautiful overlook of some of Grand Escalante National Monument...
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... drove by Angel's Rest...
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... drove by Horse Haven...
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Some of the stables and horses at Horse Haven.
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We are planning to find a place to park with dispersed camping when we leave Best Friends on Wednesday, so we drove out to check a couple of places... this road was *much* too sandy to consider taking Gracie on! We thought it might be too sandy to drive the Jeep on, so we decided to turn around instead of proceeding.
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Not all of the road was that sandy... some of it was pretty hard packed gravel...
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... and the main road that gave access to those places was the prior roadbed for route 89, I think.
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We found a site we liked at the end of the old roadbed - and it had a beautiful view. It was not occupied for Monday, anyway...
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We drove to another area we had heard about, and found a number of RVs parked there, but there were a lot of potential places to park.
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One 5th wheel was in a pretty precarious spot! (there are drop offs behind and on the left of the rig, and a pretty steep part to the right where the pickup truck is parked too!
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After lunch, we headed back up to the Welcome Center for our afternoon tour -- we had heard a helicopter flying low overhead and found that it had landed near the Welcome Center. We asked about it and found that there were students from a university in southern Utah who are enrolled in a study program about animal care and they come to the sanctuary to tour and maybe to help. It seems that they may also have some type of aeronautics group at the university and they provide the transportation by helicopter.
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Carl took some pictures of the rock formations around the Welcome Center.
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Rocks all around!
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We met up with our tour guide for Cat World and followed his van to the Cat area.
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On the drive, I noticed this cave/indention that has odd colors...
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Zoomed in -- it looks like it was being painted with red stain and some dripped down!
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Arancia has a very loud purr - it almost sounds like he is meowing, but it is his purr.
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Carl took pictures of me petting Arancia so he could tell Miss Kitty of my infidelity!
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We were busy learning so we didn't get other pictures in Cat World! But it was very interesting!
When we booked our spot here at Best Friends, we had spot 4 for 2 nights and then spot 3 for 1 night, which meant we would have to move on Tuesday morning. We decided to check to see if there was a site that was available for both Monday and Tuesday nights, and site 6 was available, so we could move Monday evening and have all day Tuesday for other activities.
So, when we returned to the campground, we moved to site 6... once we put the slide out...
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Maybe I directed Carl to park too close on the driver's side? Oh well, at least it didn't hit! (What is the saying, "A miss is as good as a mile"?)
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From the campground, we can see caves on the cliff face...
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| One (positioned near the middle of this picture) has a bush in the front of it, but it makes it look like it is an arch through to the other side! |
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