Leeds, UT

Kanab, UT - Leeds UT
5/6/24

Miles Traveled      80
Trip Total          3113
Travel Time       1:45

States visited: FL, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, AZ, Utah

Today was a very short drive, mainly as a filler day.  We have reservations in Boulder City from 5/7-5/11 and needed to fill in a date.   

We stayed the night at a Harvest Host - Zion Vineyards, a small boutique winery in Leeds Utah.  The drive there was uneventful, right up to the last mile.  Mark & Karen came in from a different exit than Angel and I, but we both ended up at Central Ave,  We were to turn left onto Central and Mark & Karen were to turn right.   As I looked to make the left turn, I hesitated because it looked like a small residential street, looking down the street I saw a sign saying no through traffic.  Knowing nothing good would come from making that turn, I pulled off the road and Mark and Karen did the same thing.  

While we were trying to figure out where we or the GPS went wrong, a women stopped and asked where we were trying to go.  Rather than give us directions, she said it was just as easy to have us follow her to the winery.     The winery was on the other side of I10 and at one point Central Ave did pass under it but the underpass was to small for our RV's and has been closed for years.  We were very grateful for the escort.  The other interesting tibbet on this trip, we hit our first roadway with a 80MPH speed limit.  It was weird going up a hill at 55MPH and needed to put our flasher's on because we were going so "slow".

After checking in at the winery we went to the Silver Reef Museum. Silver Reef is a was a small silver mining town in the late 1800's. The museum is located in the original Wells Fargo Stage Coach building.  The museum is small and has a lot of information from the towns short lived haydays. The silver mining days only lasted about 15 years.  The hills surrounding Silver Reef are like swiss cheese from the over mines that were drilled chasing the silver.  Unfortunately you can not get into any of the mines.  All the entrances have been closed off, either barricaded or blasted shut.  Around the museum are the stone walls of some of the structures from the town and a small section of one of the mills where the silver was extracted from the sandstone.  The only other complete structure that remains is the local jail.  It has been moved several times and had several other uses before being coming back to the museum.  The thought of being locked in the small barren building should have been enough to deter most people from any crimes.

After checking out the museum and having lunch at a very good local restaurant we returned to the winery for a wine tasting.  The idea of the Harvest Host program is to support the business that opens their parking to us.  Our plan was to buy a bottle of wine, and enjoy it in the winery.  Nevada Liquor Laws does not allow the winery to serve wine by the bottle or glass.  They are only allowed to do tastings, so we changed our plans to doing a tasting.  While I am sure many people liked their wine, neither Angel or I liked it very much.  What the wine lacked in taste, the location made up for in the view.

Tuesday morning we headed off to Boulder City, Nevada right on the outskirts of Las Vegas.