First real trip of the year

The wet, cold weather finally abated so last weekend we took the rig somewhere other than our street for the first time this year: Diamond Fork Campground, just an hour and 15 minutes southeast of Salt Lake.  It’s easy to get to – for anyone familiar with Route 6 and the path to Moab, the turnoff for the campground is just 2 ½ miles past the big wind turbines in Spanish Fork Canyon. (Those things creep me out up close.)

It was a well maintained campground, clean, and with a great kid's hiking path (OK for adults, too) with educational/interpretive signs.  Our site was A1 (Note to self: A12 also looked good) so we were near the entrance, but it was quiet and away from some of the more crowded sites in the middle. 

Our camping spot

View out the back window at dusk.

Right after arrival we hiked a trail we'd read was very popular called Three Forks. It’s popular because after about two miles you come to some hot pots.  It was a little too warm for us to hop in the hot pots, but what a beautiful hike along the really fast flowing Diamond Fork River with lots of shade.  Only thing wrong was that I forgot my camera, so I couldn’t get a photo of the small Niagara Falls near the hot pots.

Next day we drove further up Diamond Fork Canyon and hiked Sawmill Trail.  Again, beautiful, and this time we got some photos.

Jim and a bear climbing a tree.

Sawmill Trail.

T Minus 90 from yesterday

Retirement Date is July 29.  First planned trip is through Wyoming, Nebraska and then to Ohio. In the meantime, we’ve been trying to get the rig ready but have been a tad hampered by cold weather.

For example, here’s the rig when we optimistically brought it home after a warm spell in March.

And here’s a photo of our front yard just yesterday.

Nevertheless, we’ve flushed out the antifreeze we put in the water system last fall and re-packed most of our gear.  We’ve also been involved in a major home downsizing, including getting rid of items we didn’t even know we owned.  Examples: a mixer neither Jim nor I claim to have ever seen; specialty tools whose purpose we can’t imagine; and about 20 cords and parts for land line phones when we no longer have a land line.

So we are getting our house ready to leave, (our daughter, son-in-law and grand daughter are moving in and will watch it while we're gone), finishing up the current careers and should be on the road in August.

And, one year ago this weekend we drove our new-to-us motorhome from California to Utah.

Going to bed

The week before Thanksgiving we put the rig to bed for the winter.  Jim took it to Camping World where they blew air into the water pipes to get the water out, put in anti freeze, and then drained most of the anti freeze.  Any water that’s left has anti freeze in it and supposedly won’t freeze when the temps get low.   Then, Jim and I put a cover on the rig, which was kind of akin to putting a thin cozy on a huge toaster. It was a good thing we did all this, because the following Tuesday while Jim and I were in Ohio celebrating T-Day week with family, SLC got about a foot of snow ... and it stayed very, very cold for two weeks.  Jim is thinking that every few weeks he wants to start up the rig, run the generator, and try everything out just to make sure it’s all running and he did that last week.  Other than part of the cover ripping, so far so good.

      Top photo:  Jim and the back of the rig.  

       Bottom photo:  Jim and the front of the rig

          What we came home to after Thanksgiving in the balmy midwest.

Two miles high; one thousand lakes

We hiked by only 14 of them, but per my hiking book the Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah have more than one thousand lakes and ponds.  Our campground, Lake Washington  -- named for what else, the lake you can see behind our motorhome below -- was at ten thousand feet, more than twice as high as Salt Lake City. That kind of altitude means it gets cold early in the season so most of the other nearby campgrounds (there are dozens in the Uinta's) closed this weekend.  And the leaves were already turning. It's fall.



Our campsite.

View out the back of the rig.

One of the lakes.  What a view.







A weekend in Hades is not all that bad

We spent Labor Day weekend at Hades Campground in the Uinta National Forest. There are dozens of campgrounds in the Uintas and probably hundreds of trails. It is amazing that so much wilderness is close to a metropolitan area.

We didn't start looking for a site until 2 weeks before the holiday, so there was not much choice of campgrounds, let alone individual campsites. I called the Kamas Ranger District and got names of a few places that might still have spots, and then Jim made reservations. He picked Hades -- about 40 miles southeast of Kamas and about 80 miles from Salt Lake -- because the reservation page said it was only partly in the shade and we wanted to use the solar panels on our rig.  And, one web site described Hades Campground as “stunning.” After being there, I’d call it “unkempt.”  There was trash (including half a page of instructions about how to co-exist with bears) in our site, plus the campground was next to a funky dude ranch called “Defa’s” and the only trail from the campsite was stopped by a fence because Defa's is private property. Some sites on the river that would have made for a prettier experience.

Friday night we walked up the road near the campgrounds and saw deer. The next day we walked to a campground higher up the road called Iron Mine and took a shorter hike that night, so we probably did about 7 miles, but most of it was on the road with pick up trucks and other big vehicles rattling by.

After all that bitchin' and moaning we really do like new places, so I'm glad we went.

We left a day early, stopped at a park in Heber where I made lunch, and were soon home. And we still had one full day of holiday left. I liked that, too.

I need to get a good camera so I can take really good close ups.

View from the back of the rig. 

Along the Duchesne River

Sunset at the campground.