# 398 Temple view RV park

I had planned on going to Wilmington for the purposes of planting the terrace that I had laid out back when Bill came over with his backhoe. It was created but I haven't seen it since he finished it and Dominic created the structural terraces with pressure-treated lumber.

I also wanted to see if could make the well water pump work. Our plan for the season was to be in Idaho and indulge in all the hot springs. There are 30 to 60 hot springs all over the state. It seems to me Idaho is an extension of the huge Caldera under Yellowstone next door. We were planning on going there next. I looked at the weather and to my surprise, the overnight temperatures in Idaho were in the mid 20’s even now in April. It seemed best to go to Wilmington now, first, and let Idaho warm up a bit more.

I started looking for an RV place where India would be comfortable while I was away for about a week. I looked at places in the vicinity of Saint George Utah. We had stayed at a place called Sand Creek hollow state park a few years back. I thought this would be a perfect place because it was a full hookup. They had zero vacancy so again it was just a process of looking here and looking there. I found a number of places that might have worked but they seem to be 20 to 30 minutes from everything and not many stores or restaurants nearby. With some effort, I found a place in St. George called Temple View. It had full hookups, it was available and they did monthly pricing. It seemed like it would be a perfectly good place to be for a while so that I could go back and take care of all those details at Savannah's new house.

We started asking about prices and if we rented a site for a whole month, it would be half the price of weekly so whether we needed a whole month or not wasn't that important. I would probably be gone for about a week and a half in Wilmington and the rest of the time we would just explore and enjoy the area. We went by and they told us that they could put us in the temporary section for now and we went ahead and made a reservation for the entire month of May. The place they put us wasn't bad it's just that it was a gravel parking lot.

I mentioned to the staff several times that whenever we went to our more permanent site we would like to be on the perimeter of the park. Site 1 through 20 would be ideal because they backed right up to a big alfalfa field. I knew that Bert would go in there and hide in the big tall grass. They said they would take that into consideration but they couldn't promise anything. I must have mentioned it four times over the next week and they must have heard me because we ended up just where I would want to be.

After these first 20 sites, everything else was very congested like awning to awning right on top of each other or just out in the big gravel parking lot. The place had about 400 sites. Some of them were what are known as park models. They look like skinny little trailers but they are never meant to move and I don't know why but that's what they call them.

Everybody has a different view of what retirement should look like but this is what a lot of people do. They sell their house and they get a tiny little park model and they're happy as a clam. Their life's not for me but that's what they do. There was a fair amount of those along one long corridor maybe 50 in a row. They were all settled in and never leaving. Then there were just a whole lot of transient people that come and go. The only problem is it was just a glorified parking lot and that's why I wanted to be backed up against the field. India could be safe, happy, and have all her needs met while I was gone and then whenever I got back it would be getting warmer.

We enjoyed hiking near a place called the quarry trail. We did that quite a few times. The first time it seemed a little bit like don't fall off the cliff and we were pretty spooked. After a while, we got used to it got comfortable with it, and enjoyed the view.

Just as a spoiler alert Utah is very heavily Mormon and so this town is also. The reason they call it temple view is because of that a very large Saint George Mormon temple and you had a pretty nice view of it gee what a creative name.

I looked into the whole religion a little bit just out of curiosity and I was just wondering can anybody pop by? They made it pretty clear that if you are a Mormon of course you can go to the temple. If you have somehow been invited and pre-approved by a Mormon person, I suppose you can go but otherwise no one is allowed in. They said if you want this kind of experience you need to go to a Seventh-day Adventist as they allow just walk-ins. The whole conversation turned me off.

One of the things that people do in Saint George is they go towards Zion and we kind of wanted to do that as well. We had done some boondocking near Zion a few years ago and wanted to revisit that idea. I was sitting in our little place at Temple View one day and a couple pulled in with their RV and backed into the spot beside us. There had been a lot of Asian hate going on and of course, that really bugged me and I couldn't help but notice they were Asian. I thought that I would be an ambassador of planet Earth and just say hello and welcome them to our little parking lot. They were very nice and they had a little one-year-old that was racing back and forth one end of the RV the other having the time of its life. I introduced myself and said hi if you guys want to hang out a little bit tomorrow, we can talk and they said that would be great.

I asked them about themselves and they said they were full-timing for a period but they had a home in Seattle. They were just enjoying seeing the country. I said I've got a lot of great campsite finding information that I use and if you'd like I can share. It’s cool information on how to find places and they said they'll be great. We met and I got to know got to know them better. The guy’s name was Ben and his bride's name was Qui, Qui.

I was so pleased that we became fast friends. They mentioned that they were going to Zion and I said that's fine we're going up to Sheep's bridge, the BLM boondock if you want to join us. They said they would like to try that so we agreed to meet there on Wednesday.