Provo, UT

For our next stop we had about a four-hour drive where we cut across the mountains from Panguitch to I-15, then headed north to Provo, UT. We stayed at Utah Lake State Park, which like most state parks, has widely-spaced sites. The roads and pads are paved, and the sites are grass. There are 30-amp electric and water hookups, but no sewer.

Most of the sites are back-ins, but there are a few pull-throughs that are parallel to the road like the ones on the left in the photo below.

Although you can't see the lake from the campground, there are nice views of the snow-capped Wasatch Range to the east.

The campground was fairly quiet. There was no traffic noise, and only a few very distant trains that you could barely hear. Even on the busy July 4th weekend the campground wasn't that noisy. The campground wasn't full, but we ended up across from a very large group that took up two sites. On their two sites there were 6 vehicles, 2 boats, 4 tents, and at one point there were at least 20 people. Even so, they weren't that noisy. There were no loud radios, no barking dogs and no late-night parties around the campfire. Of course, it helped that it was hot and we ran the air conditioner during the day.

We scheduled a 5-day stop at Utah Lake State Park without any real plans for sightseeing. It just seemed like a good place to sit out the busy holiday weekend and relax.

We started off our stay on our first full day there with a late lunch at Burgers Supreme. In addition to numerous varieties of burgers, Burgers Supreme has a fairly complete sandwich menu that includes several types of chicken, gyros, hot dogs, steak, BLT, and more.

We were both in the mood for a good burger, so Paul had a green-chili cheeseburger, and Margery had a blue-cheese bacon burger. Both were yummy, as were the sides of onion rings and fries. Below, Margery is dipping into 'fry sauce' which is unique to Utah. Invented over 45 years ago, it is offered in nearly every eatery in the state.

 

During our stay, Paul worked on a couple of minor projects like making a door to cover the new opening he had to cut in the closet wall to work on the washer/dryer and installing a second support strut on one of our outside storage bay doors. The door originally came with only one strut, and the door was just heavy enough that it would sometimes blow closed in windy weather. Since we could find nothing in the rules about not washing vehicles, Paul gave both the car and the motor home much needed baths. We also made a Walmart run to restock our groceries.

On one of our days at Utah Lake State Park we decided to walk over and take a look at the lake. At an area of over 150 square miles, Utah Lake is the second largest natural freshwater lake west of the Great Lakes. Lake Tahoe is the largest in the west at 191 square miles. The Utah Lake has only one outlet - the Jordan River that flows into the Great Salt Lake. Although Utah Lake is considered a freshwater lake, the water is slightly salty. The outflow from the lake is restricted, and therefore much water is lost to evaporation resulting in the slight salinity.

The lake was a very popular boating destination, especially since it was a holiday weekend. The parking lot was filled with trucks and boat trailers, and many more were using the numerous boat launches.

Although there were a few jet skis, most of the boats were larger inboard/outboards with families on board. Sometimes there were even several generations with an older couple, a younger couple, and numerous kids.

There is a large harbor/launch area protected by a breakwater. We walked all the way to the end of the breakwater to watch a steady line of boats heading out into and back from the lake. It was windy, and the lake itself was fairly choppy, but that didn't seem to deter the boaters. There was plenty of wake-boarding and tubing going on.

We had a nice, relaxing stay at Utah Lake State Park. With the 4th of July on Sunday, most people had Monday off. Normally, we would have stayed until Tuesday and watched everyone else leave. However, our next stop was north of Salt Lake City at a new, relatively expensive campground. We decided we could economize, at least a little, by getting a weekly rate. Because of some of our future reservations, getting a weekly rate in North Salt Lake City meant we would have to leave Utah Lake on Sunday.

It was a short drive of only about an hour to our next stop, so we took our time in the morning. Unfortunately, when we tried to dump on our way out of the campground, we discovered the dump station was plugged up. There was a Flying J nearby, but since they are now charging $10 to dump and since it was out of the way, we decided to just wait until we got to our next destination. We don't like to travel with the extra weight of the gray water and black water, but the campground we were headed to in Salt Lake City had full hookups and was only an hour away.

Our next few posts will tell you about what we discovered in Salt Lake City, so stay tuned.