03.-09.12.2007: Lake Mead NRA - Valley Of Fire - Coyote Buttes - Petrified Forest NP We drove to Callville Bay and went for a shower. It's been a long time since we had an actual shower rather than using the sink in Winnie to get clean and wash our hair! Then we drove through Lake Mead NRA and into Valley of Fire State Park. It was a beautiful sunny day for a change! The next day we drove to St George in Utah and made an appointment to get our valves adjusted which you have to do with new engines. We were told it would take 1.5 hours but we told them it wouldn't take that long and would be less than an hour. We made an appointment for 8am the next morning and parked out in the street for the night. The next morning we took Winnie in and it only took 45 minutes to get the valves adjusted. But they still charged us for 1.5 hours. Kirsten saw red and the manager had to be called. They told us that it was a fixed rate but we argued that we hadn't been told about any fixed rates and had told them that it would take less than an hour. The manager offered us a $20 discount but Kirsten kept arguing and mentioned words like "fraud" and "fucking rip-off" which the manager didn't like at all and was about to take back the offer of a discount. So Helen had to take hold of Kirsten and tell her that we would pay the discounted price. But Kirsten was fuming for the rest of the day!! Then we realized that there had been a time change as we drove across the border from Nevada into Utah and that we had turned up one hour late for our appointment!!! The day was saved later on when we went to the BLM office in Kanab and asked about permits for the Wave. We were told that there wasn't a lottery at the moment and that there were two permits available for the next day if we went to the office in Kanab town centre and picked them up!!! So we managed to get permits for the Wave three times in a row and Kirsten was a happy bunny again! We drove down the gravel road and through some muddy washes and parked up at the parking area for the Wave for the night. We set off early the next morning and did just over 6 hours of walking. First we went to the Wave and there was actually water there which we have never had before. Then we scrambled up a very steep slope to get up to Top Rock. Kirsten had to shout down to other hikers in the Wave to ask them where the Arch was. We knew it was high up but we couldn't see it because we were sideways on to it and it wasn't easy to get to. But we finally found it! Then came the problem of having to get back down the steep slope, back to the Wave. Helen did her usual trick and slid down on her arse!! She only just managed to stop herself from sliding all the way down and ended up with a bleeding thumb and a lot of scratched nails where she had tried to stop herself from breaking the speed record for the descent!! Fortunately there was snow up on the slope so she could use some of it to stop her thumb from bleeding! On the way back to Winnie we took another detour and there was another very steep climb up to Lace Rock which is quite a fascinating formation and well worth the effort. We got back to Winnie at 3pm quite exhausted and then drove back out along the gravel road and went to Whitehouse campground for the night. On Friday, it rained most of the day and we also had strong winds for the drive through into Arizona. On Saturday we went through a big snow storm. We had to stop to get the snow off the windscreen wipers so that we could see out of the windshield. We were covered in snow! It's been a long time since we have driven through so much snow. Fortunately, it wasn't really sticking to the roads and by the time we got down to Petrified Forest National Park, we hit a sunny patch and decided to spend the last 2.5 hours that the park was open to drive through it. We didn't have much time and ended up doing two, one mile walks in only 20 minutes each so that we could actually get to see lots of petrified wood. It was bitterly cold, so it helped that we had to rush!! The park is only small but it was very interesting. We couldn't see everything in the short time we had so we decided we would return after going to a campground to pick up our mail that is being forwarded there. The temperature dropped to minus 5°C overnight and we weren't much warmer inside Winnie because we had ice on the inside of the windows!! So we headed for a campground for the day so we could use our electric heater, have showers and get some washing done.