Rockin’ R Cabin property Lines

Our official cabin address is:

11590 W. Cedar Road, Orderville UT 84755

You can look that up on Google Maps and it will get you pretty close. At least on our street. We are Lot E-24 Little Ponderosa Subdivision on the Kane County Recorder property maps.

GPS coordinates: 37.282604, -112.896664

Cabin fever is already here. It’s only January 1, 2017 and the requests for cabin reservations are coming in. Look at your calendars and plan a special cabin weekend. And don’t forget midweek dates. They are almost always available. And out of courtesy for others, if you find you cannot use your date please let us know in advance. Roland and Nellie Lee

Thanks to Ben Rogers for installing our new french doors on the back of the cabin. It brings so much more light in and makes the deck access easier.

Thanks to Ben Rogers for installing the neat windows in the kids cabin, which dresses up the look and lets us see the view.

We snuck back up to the cabin again, hoping to get the walls and roof on the treehouse before had to go down to Escalante for our canyoneering trip with

All of you with cabin fever, take note. Nellie and I with a few of our grandkids opened up the cabin this week, filled the water bottles, and uncovered Mr. Bear. We are officially open for business. Everything looks great. The days are warm but the nights are cooold (28 degrees). The new cabin rules for this year are:

1. No electronic devices during the day. Approved activities are: hiking, Lincoln logs, games, crafts, painting rocks, reading books, nature study, building forts, and playing outside. Devices okay at night if parents approve.

2. We are asking for families to contribute $20 per visit to help with upkeep. If you can’t afford it, it’s free.

3. Have lots of fun!!

Diggy and Becca are the first grandkids in the Tree House this year. The treehouse looks good, but the ladder needs some repairs.

Plenty of Big horn sheep this year in Zion

Max demonstrates an approved activity – Frisbee!

Grandma Lee, Max, Diggy, Becca, and Birdie try out our new walking sticks

Grandma and Max play Stratego in the outdoor playroom. March 2014

We hauled one of our big flat stones down from the cabin and had Kenworthy Monuments sandblast  a big “Rockin R” in it. Nellie and I somehow managed to get it off the truck and mounted at the entrance to our cabin property. We think it looks snazzy!

New sandblasted entrance sign to the cabin

Two bighorn sheep we nearly ran into

We were lucky enough to have several close encounters of the wild kind this trip.  Here’s a brief list of some of the wild things we saw:

Bighorn Sheep – And lots of them! And close up!  We saw several just off the road the first time through the park. The second time, they were IN the road and we had to stop and wait for them.  We tried to roll down the window so Keanon could take a picture of the one looking in his window, but it was a little too close for comfort and he didn’t get the shot off.

Another shot of the bighorn sheep

Angry Birds – Actually they were wild turkeys.  The cool thing was that there were 2 or 3 baby ones trailing along behind the mama.  Again right in front of us so we had to stop and let them go by.  They went into the bushes right by the turn onto Cedar Rd.

Mr. Fox – Again, crossing the road.

A Bobcat!
Actually that one was kind of funny. We were riding the bus back from our hike in the river. Since there were so many animals out, our bus driver was pointing out each time he saw something and we would all look, which was happening regularly as we went down the road. As we neared the grotto, I saw it first, over near the trail by the river and shouted out: “A bobcat!”. Of course everyone on the bus looked where I was pointing. Then everyone laughed as they realized it was indeed a bobcat, but not THAT kind of bobcat. Rather a distant cousin to the skip-loader taking a rest from its trail reconstruction duties. Haha made you look!

Stellar’s Jay

Stellar’s Jay

I saw this one on my walk over by the Oden’s property. Perhaps this is no big deal and maybe you all have seen these before. But I thought it looked so cool that I remembered to look it up and find out what it was after we got home.  It had an all blue body and a black crested head.

Mule Deer (with and without racks) – We saw lots of deer in the park, including several bucks. We were there later in the evening and the court of the patriarchs was pretty quiet so there seemed to be lots of animals about.

Lizards

Blue Bellied Lizard

Poor lizards. Kids and lizards make for lots of lizards running around without tails. I hope this blue belly was just pretending to be asleep so the kids would go away, but I haven’t seen many lizards sunning their undersides before…

And more… Butterflies, ROUSes, Ostriches, Mice, etc.

I am worn out after a hard day of cleaning up our construction mess!

We were all excited to get back to the treehouse and see how it had weathered the winter. Surprisingly, it was still standing. Only a little bit of warping on the plywood that held up the snow all winter.

The first thing we did was de-constructed. We ripped down the roof, walls, railings, and all the other temporary stuff we threw up last season to try and keep it somewhat safe and dry until we could come back to it. Then we tore off the thin makeshift floor so we could finish putting the rest of the support beams in. Next we put the floor back, this time with more solid 3/4″ plywood and nailed it in well.

Keanon posing by the updated treehouse

Then we raised a north wall, a south wall, and redid the whole west side railing to be more sturdy. It was starting to be a really solid frame we could build stuff onto. We added another tree bolt to support the roof, and shored up the climbing wall (partially). At that point we started to run out of time and crucial pieces of lumber again. We had enough to get most of a lean-to roof framed up and two interior walls before it was time to start cleaning up our mess until we could return again. Our next scheduled trip isn’t until October, so we are sad that we couldn’t get it to a more complete state this time. Maybe we can figure out a way to sneak down this summer and move it along a little bit.

We definitely had a fun time imagining and building it though. Kayson kept saying “Dad, thanks so much, this has been sooo fun!” — which of course makes it all worthwhile.

We came back the week after Memorial Day weekend and it was a much quieter place. Not to mention the weather was much (20-30 degrees!) warmer.  We brought our hammocks and this time Kayson, Keanon and I got to try sleeping out in them.  The 3 trees by the tetherball pole made a nice place for a hammocky triangle.  We all slept warm and had great views of the stars, although the bright moon hid some of them until later in the night.