Last of Utah, for now (07/10/24)

 Leaving the heat of Salt Lake City, we headed to nearby Uinta National Forest. We had a spot in mind where we thought we could park- the only issue is we took the wrong road to get there. Partway down the “Left Fork Hobble Creek Rd” we dropped the camper and continued in the Bronco, to check it out. It wasn’t long before we knew we could never make it. So, it was off to the Right Fork Hobble Creek Rd, which got us to the spot we wanted.

It wasn’t as cool here as we were hoping, but we did hike one trail in the national forest- Monks Hollow- a 4.5 mile loop with 900 ft of gain. Unfortunately I started really feeling the heat too much, which didn’t make for a fun trip during the last mile or so.

Resting up the following day we drove over to Strawberry Reservoir.  It is a beautiful lake, but we could have left our swim suits at home. The water temperature was on the frigid side. Oh Well, the Bronco has air conditioning and it was a fun drive.

Both Paul and I commented that his whole area is very green and healthy looking.

Scrambling for a place to be on July 4th can be stressful, but we had already made arrangements to visit our friends Dave and Nancy, in Helper Utah. It was less than two hours from our location, so the drive was easy.

Dave and Nancy used to be RV friends but they are off the road now, and bought a house in the small town of Helper.

Naturally, there are many projects that need to be done, and Paul was ready to jump in with both feet. Unfortunately on one of those jumps he impaled himself on a rusty tomato cage, which, after some calculations(when was his last tetanus shot???) resulted in an Urgent Care visit to get a shot.

On the plus side, we really enjoyed reading the “ pain chart” in the exam room. The nurse said he put it in there because people always said their pain was a “10”   and he would say…well you are conscious. sooooo… then they would say a “9” and he would say, so, like being mauled by a grizzly bear?  Eventually he would get them down to a reasonable description of their pain level.

We had an awesome July 4 with Dave and Nancy, and some of their friends, and took off the following day for our next destination.

Everyone we have talked to who has been to Dinosaur National Monument, on the border of Utah and Colorado, says it is a “must do” so we headed there to do it. We were originally planning on finding dispersed camping, but in keeping with this summer’s seesaw theme, we ended up booking a KOA that had a cancelation. Temperatures were in the mid 90s during the day. The day we arrived, at 3:30, we decided there was no point in sweltering while listening to the air conditioner, so we headed to the visitor center.

We spent an hour or so gazing at dinosaur bones. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure they are important, but they don’t hold much interest for me.

We decided we were better off being on the water, so we booked a one day rafting trip down the Green River for the following day. We were a group of 4 boats, and we shared our boat with a family of 4.

Charlotte and her brother Adrian were the lead paddlers who were responsible for following what our Trip Leader, Sanders, told them to do. The kids did a good job. All we had to do is paddle when they did. Charlotte (age roughly 12) was sitting in front of me, and we chatted quite a bit.

My biggest stress was that she said she had a premonition that she would fall in- so I was holding on to the boat for dear life the whole time, just in case she did. She didn’t.

Our final day in the area was spent hiking and exploring by Bronco. Reading some of the signs at the turnouts on the road can be interesting and entertaining. This area of Utah was explored by Spanish explorers who “discovered” this area for Europe. 

The expedition was called the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition, and many things are named after them…Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Escalante State Park, the town of Escalante, etc.

But that wasn’t his name! His name was Fray Velez, and he was FROM Escalante. Too funny- I never knew that.

What we discovered that day is Mormon Crickets. If you don’t know what they are, they are actually not crickets, but a type of Katydid. I don’t care what their name is, they were pretty gross. They covered the roadway- thousands of them.

Turns out they are cannibals, so when a “friend” gets run over by a car, they all chow down, but guess what happens when the next car comes along? 

I was just happy they don’t fly!

Our hike took us out on a ridgeline, Harper’s Corner, that got narrower as we went along. The end section had fences to make sure no one fell off. Here we could see both the Green River, and the Yampa river.

The views were pretty spectacular.

Hike done we headed down the dirt road that we had seen from the ridgeline. It led to an area at the confluence of the two rivers. Here we could see the confluence of the Green and Yampa River.

The Road to Lake City - Part 1 (8-20-22)

 I’ve been sitting here for 15 minutes, trying to organize my thoughts into blog posts that at least somewhat make sense.  I have changed the name of the post 3 times.  Here is my dilemma-  when Paul and I charted a course, so to speak, back to Lake City CO, we made sure there were things to see and do along the way.  In the middle of our trek we stopped for several days at a place I have wanted to go for a long time- Colorado National Monument.  But it needs it’s own post as far as I am concerned.  So, here we are with Part 1 of the Road to Lake City:

From the Dixie National Forest, we headed straight into Manti-La Sal National Forest.  And as I found out recently, if you want to sound like a local, you say “Man-Tie” not “Man-tee”.  Who knew?

We drove up into the national forest from the small town of Ephraim Utah, headed to a very small national forest campground.  We perhaps should have checked ahead to see whether the truck camper would make it down the entrance road.  It did, but not without some anxiety on our part.

 

The one car we encountered had no choice but to bury his car in the bushes, or back up (when we were leaving, I went ahead in the Jeep to make sure the coast was clear). It took some work but we fit the camper into one of the larger sites. The perk was that the deer would feed on the bushes under our slide- pretty cool.

We had one day to explore, so we drove the Jeep in a 36 mile loop around the top of the mountains.  We were surprised to see informational plaques along the way.

In 1912, the Great Basin (research) Station was established atop this hill with the purpose of studying the national forest watershed, including the effects of grazing and climate on the forest. The station has lodging, laboratories, and greenhouses.  The families of the scientists would move up here with them for the summers, making it essentially a small town.

It is still in use today, and more than 47 scientists have published papers with their findings. and supposedly you can tour it, but the gate was locked when we were there.

Of course, much of the research involves water- and the information discovered here has had a positive impact on ranching and water usage.  One favorite bit was that they discovered that the day of snowmelt varies from year to year, but knowing when it takes place helps a rancher figure out when to plant seeds, and when they will ripen into feed.

We stopped at the top where we had a view of the town, and ate our picnic lunch before moving on.

The second half of the loop was completely different.  There were no plaques, and the road was not quite as nice. In fact, we almost turned back at one point, but managed to persevere.

We c

We came across a sign  that said “Ephraim tunnel” and pointed to a side road.  Well, Paul never wants to miss a chance to see a tunnel, so off we went.  It turns out it was one of many tunnels that funneled the water from the mountain down to the town of Ephraim.

One of the cool things we realized is that Paul’s great grandparents were from the nearby town of Manti, Utah.

After our short visit there, we headed to the small town of Helper Utah, to visit our friends Dave and Nancy, who are there for the summer.  We stopped at a farmers market and grabbed some fruit and veggies that were literally being walked in from the fields while we were there.

Dave and Nancy have made a lot of friends in this small town, and we were introduced to several of them as we walked around town.  After eating dinner at a local pizza place we headed to this gas station.

Now, obviously most people head to a gas station to get fuel. Not us, not this time.  We came here for the carrot cake. Yep, this place has the best carrot cake Paul has ever had- excepting his own (my aunt Tish’s) recipe of course.

It didn’t hurt that you could buy extra frosting- which he did.

We took our cake back and ate it at the RV park.

It wasn’t long before we were back on the road, headed to Lake City- next stop: Colorado National Monument.

On the Move (09-12-21)

 

Rather than stressing over finding reservations for Labor Day weekend, we decided to head to our friends Tom and Dianne’s house. We were soon joined by our friends Liz and Randy and the 6 of us had a fun filled weekend. Fun for the guys is having projects to work on, so they spent time moving wood and trimming trees, while we girls chatted, and cooked.

Tom and Dianne came off the road of fulltiming to return to homesteading, and their yard is full of fresh vegetables and egg laying chickens.  The dinner that Dianne cooked for us was amazingly tasty and fresh.

Of course, when it was our turn to cook we made our traditional Mexican meal.  It’s always a great time at their place, although we did decide that our day focuses an awful lot on food!

Moving on from TD Homestead, we stopped briefly in Green River Utah, before heading to Capitol Reef National Park. Our main purpose in Green River was to catch up with our friends Dave and Nancy, who are staying in nearby Helper UT.

Green River is known for their watermelons and Nancy asked us to bring her one. At the farm stand, they ask you when you want it to be ripe, and they pick one for you accordingly. When we opened it later, we discovered it looked and tasted more like a honeydew melon.

The town of Helper is one of those interesting old towns that works to keep their history alive, including some of their old buildings, which are still in use today. 

We strolled down Main St. looking at buildings and reading historic plaques. After a while we were approached by a woman who said that she could see we are obviously tourists, and she gave us a couple of brochures about the town. We asked how she knew we were tourists and she said “I’ve been following you down the street”.  In a big city that would be creepy, in a small town, it was awesome.

Helper actually got its name from a train engine. Back in the day, when trains came through town, they needed to add extra engines in order to make it over nearby Soldier Summit- and this is where those engines, called helpers, were attached.

After lunch we took a drive out to some mining ruins (always a fun time for Paul) where we enjoyed speculating about what each building was used for.

 

Paul and I have been to Green River twice, but for the life of us we couldn’t remember if we had ever been to the small museum in town.  I had to read through my blog to discover that in fact, we had not.

The museum was small but interesting, detailing not only John Powell and his expeditions on the Colorado River, but also others who came after him and made their living running  and exploring all of the nearby rivers.

Leaving Green River, we headed towards Capitol Reef National Park. Our path took us through the San Rafael Reef, created by a volcanic bubble which caused an uplift.

In the 1970s, it took 4.2 million dollars to create 8 miles of highway.

Within 30 minutes the scenery completely changed and we were now driving through green rolling hills. I really enjoy driving through Utah- the state is gorgeous, and its difficult to get bored.

Happy Holidays (01-04-18)

Yep, that’s just what we had, happy holidays!

Over the last 6 weeks, we have had lots of people come and go, here at the PPP.  Some came for a few days, some stayed the whole 6 weeks, and some came, left, and came back!  Some people brought their rigs and some chose the B&B option and stayed in the house.

Thanksgiving was the first holiday on the horizon…

…and apparently I didn’t get my camera out during the meal because I can’t find any pictures of it!

It was awesome that the weather was warm enough for us to laze by the pool !

We sure kept ourselves very busy. In addition to Teryx rides, swimming, eating, hot tubbing and shopping, we managed to fit in a few games of Farkle.

After Thanksgiving, Paul and I made a trip to Phoenix, in part to buy some necessities at Costco. I love the way the lake looks at sunrise, even though I am not happy being on the road when the sun rises!

Before we knew it, the Christmas crowd arrived- including our daughter Jessica.

Actually, we were lucky enough to have Jess with us for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I love it when Jess is here at the same time as my friend Carol, since I usually end up with some great pictures of her! Thanks, Carol Dwyer!

When people are staying for more than a day or so we don’t eat all of our meals together, but we are usually happier if we can laugh our way through a group dinner….whether it’s inside…

or out…

What’s that old saying- “many hands make light work”?

With our friends, everyone pitches in and no one is afraid to take over the kitchen, making it very easy to feed so many people!

After a group breakfast Christmas morning we all took some time to relax and to video chat with far away family members..

The day after Christmas is our annual “girls’ day out” which we spend shopping and eating at one of our favorite restaurants.

Lest you think the guys were bored, sitting around waiting for us to return, don’t worry. They took the Teryx out into the desert and spent the afternoon target shooting.

Not coincidently, Girl’s Day Out takes place on Julie’s birthday, and that night we were happy to toast the birthday girl with our margaritas (even though I didn’t quite get her in this picture, haha).

We do like to have a good time, and New Year’s Eve was no exception! Does it say something about our age that we are all happy the “midnight” takes place at 10 pm here in Mountain Standard Time?

Our last night together as a group coincided with the Super Moon, which you can see rising up over our house.

The following day there was a well orchestrated Porter Shuffle, as most of the rigs left, and the remaining ones repositioned themselves.

Being busy with the holidays, we weren’t working on too many projects, but we did manage to get one done.



Soon after Thanksgiving, the weather turned much colder and it wasn’t worth trying to keep the pool warm. Our “pool guy” has been telling us that we really need to drain it and put in fresh water.  The water is so hard here that over time, the minerals build up, and ours was off the charts.

So, sadly, we turned off the heater and freshened the water. We hope to start heating it again when we get back in February.