2020-11 Kanab Utah, A Western Town for a whole month

2020-11

Kanab Utah

Welcome to Kanab Utah
"Little Hollywood"

Campsite: Crocodile Staging area. BLM, Johnson Canyon Rd. Free camping in open dirt parking lot. Beautiful canyon, approx. 12 miles from Kanab.

Campground: Crazy Horse Rv Park. Kanab Ut. $475 per month (30 amp site). $50 deposit for electric. 3 Blocks from the main street in town. Good Verizon signal, Good over-the-air TV. Owners of this park also own Rv parks in Show-Lo and Yuma.

Distance Traveled: 75 miles

Kanab Utah

a couple fun vehicles on a lot along main route into Kanab

The journey continues in this most unusual time and period in history. My summer goal has been to get to the Grand Tetons somewhere around the July time frame. Initially, I chose that location because they have a number of dispersed campsites and it’s an area I particularly enjoy, both scenery wise and lots of wildlife viewing. However, watching the news and realizing it has become or may be a hot spot for Covid 19, I am considering changing those plans.

Kanab Utah, a pretty cool western town
home to many western movies and Tv shows

I’ve arrived in Utah, a state that has been diligent about trying to control the Corona virus outbreak, including asking people traveling through the state to fill out an online form requesting info as they travel through. Utah is a stunning state with so many interesting places to visit, and although some of the national parks are partially opening, there are many other secondary sites to enjoy.

I arrived in Kanab and stayed overnight at a BLM staging area called Crocodile Staging Area. After going into town (on a Sunday) I walked around the 5 or 6 blocks of town, enjoying the western town very much. I’ve come through this area a couple of times and each time I’m blown away by what a nice community it is. One year, I arrived in time for their 4^th of July celebration. It was a typical small town parade with fire trucks shooting spurts of water at the crowd and candy being thrown out to the kids. The parade made up for it’s size by going through town a second time.

With plans to head to Escalante and staying for a month, a town smaller than Kanab I kept thinking, why not stay here, in Kanab Utah. After checking out a couple of the Rv parks, all within walking distance of town, I decided to rent a spot at Crazy Horse Rv Pk for a month. The price, $475, plus electric is very reasonable.

 a B&B in Kanab

Historic museum/house

a few restaurants open, with outdoor seating,
lots of space between tables

Kanab has quite an extensive city park, with roller blade,
swimming pool and baseball ,,,, so much more

First off, the temperatures for the week will be only around 70-75 daytime and down to the mid 30’s at night. With lots of sunny blue blue skies. Boondocking, that would mean a lot of propane being used to keep the furnace running. So here I am at Crazy Horse Rv and getting to test out what it’s like to be “plugged in” to electric for a month. The first thing I’ve been able to take advantage of having the hot water heater on electric all the time and I have a choice of using the propane furnace or using the Heat-pump (electric). Well that’s been a nice feature rarely found in an Rv, having two sources for heat. I can tell you, the heat pump works rather nicely. Very even heat.

a road worthy of exploring

Now, while I stayed at the Crocodile Staging area, on Johnson Canyon Road, I wanted to visit the Hollywood Western town set that I had visited over 10 years ago. Well, as you’ll see by the pictures I’ve taken, not much is left of the site. Keeping in mind these stage sets were built to last only as long as the movie needed them for. And although this site was used for may western movies, it was basically just a prop. And that prop has just about completely disintegrated.

So yes, once again, only for my readers, I climbed over a gated fence into a field to get to the site. With ragged weeds nipping at my legs and dodging cow patties along the way, I arrived at the Western movie set. While taking as many pictures as I could, a stray dog walked up behind me, shook his body, having just been in a stream of water and covered me in a welcoming spray of water droplets. Friendly fellow, didn’t bark once and followed me around as I explored what was left of the site.

yes, I had to climb over that fence
only for you my readers 

I really need to find the pictures
I took 10 years ago, such a shame to see it falling apart

The town of Kanab is known as Little Hollywood as many western movies and a few Tv series were all filmed here. Between the 1930’3 and the 1990’s over 300 movies and TV shows were filmed here. Recently it’s been popular for shooting Ads. Parry Lodge was as is still today a popular hotel where allt he movie stars stayed while filming in the area. The Little Hollywood Museum provides a free viewing of all the memorabilia and a few of the original sets for such movies as Desperate Hours, One Litlle Indian and Outlay Josey Wales. Www.littlehollywoodmuseum.org

Kane County where the town of Kanab resides has only had 3 Covid 19 cases so far. Adding a bit of assurance for staying in this area. And one more note on Kanab, it is one of the small towns in the U.S.A. that is vibrant, well taken care of, only a very few empty shops (I saw one).  Lots of amenities for the locals and visitors.  But no Big box stores, almost all local businesses. Nice to see that.

More Photos:

Kanab Utah

Kanab Utah (part 2)