Living Our Dream

Salt Lake City, UT, Part I: Temple Square

It was only about an hour's drive from Utah Lake State Park to our next stop at Pony Express RV Resort in North Salt Lake. Pony Express RV is only a few years old, and, although it's fairly expensive ($38 a night with a Good Sam discount and including tax at the weekly rate), it is a very nice RV park

Pony Express RV has full hookups with 30/50 amp electric, plus cable and free Wi-Fi. The roads and pads are paved, and there is nice grass between the sites. Sites are a little close together, but not that bad for a private campground. There are long pull-throughs in the center with back-ins around the perimeter. All sites have a paved parking area for your tow or towed vehicle. The photo below shows our pull-through site at Pony express RV.

The next photo is a view down one of the rows.

The drawback to Pony Express RV is it is located very close to the I-215 bypass, and there is a lot of traffic noise. Most days were quite warm, so we ran the air during the day which drowned out most of the noise.

In our last post about Utah Lake State Park in Provo, we mentioned the Jordan River as being the only outlet for Utah Lake. Well, the Jordan River runs right past Pony Express RV. As we said in our last post, the outflow from the lake is limited to low amounts, so the river isn't very big considering it is draining a 150-square mile lake.

As you may know, Salt Lake City was settled in 1847 by Mormon pioneers led by Brigham Young. We'll have more about some of the early settlers sprinkled throughout this and our next several posts. The leaders of the Mormon Church (officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS for short), served as government leaders in Salt Lake City and in the new territory that was to become Utah.

We arrived in Salt Lake City on July 4th. Since most downtown businesses would be closed on July 5th, we decided that would be a perfect day to visit the city. We found a free, on-street parking spot with a 2-hour limit at the far eastern end of Temple Square.

Temple Square, which is an area one block wide by about three blocks long, is located in the center of the city and contains numerous LDS buildings, many of which are historic. Temple Square is therefore one of the city's most popular tourist attractions. Located here are the LDS office building, a conference center, two separate visitor centers, Salt Lake Temple, the Tabernacle, and more.

Right near our parking spot was Brigham Young Historic Park, which is dedicated to Brigham Young and the pioneers he brought to the area in 1847. One of our favorite flowers is the hollyhock which is used extensively in this and many of the downtown gardens.

 

The hard work of those early pioneers is symbolized in the garden by things like this water wheel...

...and by several sculptures including these stonemasons...

...and these ladies tending their vegetable garden.

   

In addition to all the buildings we mentioned above, the center of the square is a large plaza with gardens, fountains and reflecting pools. There was a walkway to the plaza right across the street from the Brigham Young Historic Park. The heart of Temple Square is the six-spired Salt Lake Temple shown in the distance in the photo below.

The Temple was built over a 40-year period starting in 1853. Only LDS members are permitted in the Temple, but visitors are welcome on the grounds outside and in other buildings in the Square. The next photo is a closer view of the Temple with a reflecting pool in front.

Behind the Temple is the elongated dome of the Tabernacle.

Unlike the Temple which is closed to the public, the Tabernacle welcomes visitors. The Tabernacle was built from 1864 to 1867 as a meeting hall, and it seats 8,000.

The Tabernacle is home to the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir. There are tours, occasional concerts and daily (except Sunday) organ recitals. The Tabernacle organ is said by many to be the finest pipe organ in the world. We were there at just about the right time for the noon recital, so we decided to listen in to part of it.

Although we're not big fans of organ music, we must say the sound of the Tabernacle organ with its 11,623 pipes was impressive. The acoustics of the tabernacle are even more amazing. Before the recital, the organist demonstrated the acoustics by speaking in a normal voice while standing at the podium. His voice was actually clearer than when he used the microphone because there were fewer echos. He also dropped a pin onto the podium from a height of about 12 inches. The "clink" could easily be heard from anywhere in the auditorium without any electronic sound amplification whatsoever.

One of the two LDS visitor centers is to the north of the Tabernacle, and the Assembly Hall is to the south. The Assembly Hall is a place of public worship where visitors are welcome, although the hall is mainly used for conferences and meetings today. The Gothic Revival structure, which was completed in 1880, was built from granite left over from the construction of the Temple. The auditorium seats almost 2,000 plus 100 seats for choir members.

In front of Assembly Hall is a monument to the many Mormon pioneers who couldn't afford ox-drawn wagons to cross the plains to Salt Lake City. These people made the 1,350-mile trek from Iowa City, IA, to Salt Lake Valley on foot pushing and pulling all their worldly possessions in hand-built wooden push carts.

We made our way back toward the car along South Temple Street where we continued to enjoy the gardens of the plaza as we walked along.

At the eastern end of Temple Square along South Temple is Lion House and Beehive House. Beehive House (the building with the columns to the right in the photo below) was built in 1852 and served as a residence, office and reception hall for Brigham Young. At the time the house was built, Brigham Young was both president of the LDS Church and governor of the Utah Territory. Lion House (the building with the gabled roofs to the left) was completed in 1856 and was a residence for Brigham Young and his family.

The next photo shows Paul in front of Beehive House.

The beehive is a prominent Mormon symbol because the bee is very industrious. The beehive is also the official symbol of Utah today, and it appears on road signs marking state highways. The state motto is "industry."

From Beehive House, it was a short walk back to the car, and with no traffic downtown on the holiday, it was a quick drive back to the motor home. There is a lot more to see in and around Salt Lake City, so stay tuned.

 

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.

Red Canyon, UT

The morning we left Zion River RV Resort in Virgin, UT, our washer/dryer acted up. Margery tried to finish drying a load of wash before we hit the road, but the dryer wouldn't work. Paul checked it out and found the machine wouldn't dry, rinse or spin; but he couldn't find the cause of the problem. Since we didn't have very good cell service in Virgin, we decided to just go on to our next destination in Panguitch, UT, before calling the company for technical assistance.

We arrived at Red Canyon RV Park near Pauguitch around noon. Red Canyon RV is located a few miles from the entrance to Red Canyon, which is part of the Dixie National Forest, and about 15 miles from the entrance to Bryce Canyon National Park. We'll have more about Red Canyon later in this post and more about Bryce in our next post.

Red Canyon RV Park is another Good Sam Park. It is a relatively small campground with about 25 RV sites, about half a dozen tent sites, and several cabins. The roads and RV sites are a mixture of dirt and gravel, and the RV sites have concrete patios. There is nice grass on the tent sites, but the grass between the RV sites is a little sparse. A little over half the RV sites are fairly long pull-throughs, and the rest are relatively short back-ins. Site width is a little narrow, but acceptable. There is free Wi-Fi, and the RV sites have full hookups and cable. We're not sure about the back-in sites because they are generally used for smaller RVs, but the pull-throughs have 30/50 amp electric. The photo below shows our site at Red Canyon RV.

And the next photo shows a view of some of the back-in sites on the left and the pull-throughs on the right.

As soon as we got set up, Paul got on the phone to Westland Sales, which is the company that handles Splendide washer/dryers in the U. S. We had a difficult time getting through and kept getting a recording that said all technicians were busy helping other customers - please leave your name and number and we'll call you back. We left a message on our first call, and then kept trying to call them all day with no success.

While waiting for a callback, Paul kept checking things out to see what he could learn on his own. The easiest way to work on the washer would have been to remove it from the cabinet, but it was too heavy. Instead, Paul slid it forward in the cabinet, and climbed into the closet beside the washer to access the back of the washer through an opening in the wall.

We never did get a call back from Westland Sales; but Paul kept trying to call them and finally got lucky when someone answered the phone just before their quitting time. The technician walked Paul through several diagnostic steps to evaluate additional symptoms. From the symptoms, the tech said it sounded like either the motor or the circuit board was bad. Ka-ching.

The tech emailed a PDF file of the service manual the next day, and following the test procedures in the manual Paul was able to determine it was the circuit board that was bad. Another call to the tech resulted in another recording, but this time we got a call back in less than an hour. Paul placed an order for a new circuit board to be shipped overnight (ka-ching, KA-CHING).

To make a long story short, we got the new board the next day and got it installed. The motor worked properly, but the dryer didn't heat. Paul was able to use the service manual to determine the heater for the dryer was burned out. Apparently, either the heater developed an internal short and blew the circuit board, or vice versa - the circuit board malfunctioned and caused the heater to burn out.

It was Friday afternoon when Paul determined the heater was bad. By the time he got a callback from Westland Sales, it was after their UPS pickup time. It was important to get the heater shipped Friday so we could get it on Monday because we were scheduled to leave Tuesday. Our next destination was a state park where it would have been difficult for us to receive a UPS shipment. The tech somehow arranged to get the new heater to UPS even though UPS had already made their pickup for the day. When the heater arrived on Monday, Paul got to work installing it. He used the bed as a workbench to disassemble the blower to install the new heater.

Our washer/dryer is now back to normal. We are thankful to the tech at Westland Sales who walked Paul through the diagnosis and made the extra effort to get the parts to us in time.

Over the weekend while we were waiting for the heater for the dryer to arrive, we did some sightseeing. As we said, Red Canyon was just a couple of miles up the road. We remembered passing through when we went to Bryce back in 2007, but since we were staying farther away at that time, we didn't have time to stop. This time we were staying much closer so we drove up for a look.

Red Canyon is very similar to Bryce Canyon except on a smaller scale. State Route 12 goes right past the canyon and offers spectacular views of the red cliffs and hoodoos.

Hoodoo is the name given to the spire-like rock formations that are created by erosion. A unique set of conditions in this area make this type of erosion possible. Cold nights and warmer days during the winter in both Red and Bryce Canyons cause a little of the plentiful snow (Bryce gets an average of 8 feet a year) to melt and run into cracks in the rock during the day and re-freeze at night. The thawing and freezing causes the cracks in the rock to grow. Heavy summer rains create gullies by washing away the broken rock and by dissolving some of the calcite that binds rock particles together. Over time, the gullies widen leaving fins of rock protected by harder layers of capstone. The fins are further eroded into pillars called hoodoos. The capstones will frequently allow lower layers which are softer to erode at a faster rate creating undercuts leaving the rocks and spires precariously balanced.

The road at Bryce Canyon travels along the rim, while the road at Red Canyon is at the base of the rocks. For most of the hikes at Bryce you have to hike down into the canyon, and since most of the hikes are rather long, it makes hiking back up at the end more difficult. Since the trails at Red Canyon start at the bottom, many of them have a relatively small amount of elevation change. There are also several shorter hikes at Red Canyon.

We stopped at the visitor center, got information on the hikes, and decided to start with a .3-mile loop past the base of the two hoodoos in the photo above. The next photo shows us near the start of the trail.

We were amazed at how brightly colored some of the rocks are. The color almost hurts your eyes in the sun.

Paul noticed two smaller hoodoos, and in an effort to get a photo from the sunny side, he convinced Margery to follow him a short distance on another, somewhat longer loop that branched off from the trail we were on. The next photo shows the smaller hoodoos. If you use your imagination they look like two people talking to each other. The guy on the right has his mouth open.

 

From the hoodoos, we could see a bench a little farther along with a nice view back down the new trail we were following. The trails at Red Canyon have a number of well-placed benches to allow visitors to stop and enjoy the view.

That view convinced us to continue on the new trail to an ever higher vantage point.

The new trail we were on went past the Pink Cliffs. In the next photo you can see the color of the rocks is more pink than orange. You can also see the trail is still going up, but the rise was fairly gentle so we continued.

At the base of the Pink Cliffs we came across another small hoodoo that looked like Charlie Brown in an inner tube.

From Charlie Brown the trail started to descend again. The trail was narrow, a little steeper than the uphill side, and was covered with loose gravel.

Soon, Paul heard scraping and crunching of gravel behind him. He turned around to see Margery going down almost in slow motion. After checking to make sure she was OK (she is lying there giggling, not grimacing), he whipped out the camera. After collecting herself, Paul helped her up, she dusted herself off, and we continued on our way. We're still laughing about it.

Our trail joined back onto the hoodoo loop we were on originally, and we got to see the two big hoodoos from another angle as we headed back to the car.

We drove about a quarter mile down Route 12 and stopped at the next pull-off. We investigated one of the hiking trails there and found more beautiful views.

However, the trail got very steep very quickly, so we decided to call it a day and head back to the motor home. In our next post we'll tell you about our visit to Bryce Canyon National Park, so stay tuned.

Zion National Park Part I: East Zion

We left Las Vegas and headed north on I-15 toward Zion National Park. We went to Zion back in 2007 before Margery had her knee surgery, and we wanted to go back now that she can enjoy hiking. Last time, we stayed on the eastern side of Zion where we could easily get to both Zion and Bryce National Parks from the same campground. This time, we couldn't get reservations on the east side, so we stayed on the west side at Zion River RV Resort in Virgin, UT.

The back-in sites around the perimeter at Zion River RV Resort are a little narrow and a little short. We started out with a back-in site, which wasn't very level. It was an extra-cost river view site, but there is a 6 to 8-foot high berm along the river so you can't really see the river from your RV. We asked to move to a pull-through site, which are a little wider and a lot longer than the back-ins so we would have more room. The back-ins are all gravel, but the pull-throughs are paved with grass between the sites. There are full hookups with 30/50 amp electric, free Wi-Fi and cable. The photo below shows our site at Zion River RV.

And the next photo shows is a view down the road from our site.

Zion River State Park could be considered a great destination park. They have regularly scheduled activities throughout the week including Candy Bar Bingo, Wine and Cheese for the adults, Dutch Oven dinner demonstrations, as well as special events like a horse shoe tournament, luau, pioneer days, and more.

Zion National Park is divided into two main sections - East Zion and Zion Canyon. Zion Canyon is the most popular area of the park. In fact, it is so popular you can't drive private vehicles up the canyon during summer. You must take the shuttles, which run frequently and are actually fairly convenient. Zion Canyon is lined with huge sandstone monoliths, while East Zion has mainly more rounded formations that are made up of cross-bedded sandstone that were originally desert dunes. There are more hiking trails in Zion Canyon, but we kind of like the less-crowded atmosphere in East Zion, and we like the colorfully-striped, rounded dunes.

Although Zion River RV Resort, a Good Sam Park, was expensive at $53 a night, it was a good thing we ended up on the west side of the national park instead of the east side like we originally wanted. When we got there we found out Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway that connects Zion Canyon with East Zion and the east entrance was closed during the day Mondays through Fridays during the time we were there. They are totally rebuilding the switchback section of the road. We planned to spend most of our time on the western side, but we definitely wanted to spend at least one day in the eastern side.

Note: starting June 27, and continuing through the summer, the closures of Zion-Mt.Carmel Highway are rescheduled for nights (8:00 PM to 8:00 AM) rather than days. Check the national park web site for updates if you are planning to go.

We arrived at Zion River RV Resort on Saturday, and we planned to chill out around the motor home on Sunday and watch the NASCAR race. However, since the road to East Zion would be closed on Monday, we changed our plans and went there on Sunday.

As we said, East Zion has a completely different look from Zion Canyon in the main part of the park. The next photo is looking back at some of the Navajo sandstone monoliths in Zion Canyon as we climbed the switchbacks to East Zion.

 

After the switchbacks, we drove through the 1.1-mile long tunnel to East Zion. Contrast those high sandstone cliffs in the photo above with the more rounded, dune-like appearance of the sandstone on the eastern side of the tunnel.

 

Zion Canyon was settled by Mormons back in the mid 1800s. Early pioneers gave most of the rock formations in Zion Canyon their names; but before the tunnel was built in 1930, very few people could get to East Zion. Therefore, very few of the formations in East Zion have names. One exception is Checkerboard Mesa. It gets its name from the crisscross pattern on its surface. The horizontal lines are the result of cross-bedding created by changing winds depositing sand on the dunes in different directions. The vertical lines are cracks that are a result of stress caused by freezing and thawing and from water erosion.

Checkerboard Mesa is located almost at the eastern entrance of the park, so from there we headed back to the west. We stopped along the way at a couple of pull-offs for photos.

 

Our target hike for the day was Canyon Overlook Trail. The trail head is about 200 feet on the east side of the tunnel portal, and the parking area is a couple hundred yards up the road from the tunnel. Canyon Overlook is only about one mile round trip, but it is a moderately difficult hike because of all the ups and downs and because of the steep drop-offs along the trail. The next photo shows us at the top of the first climb of about 50 feet.

 

We saw lots of lizards scurrying across the trail. Most of them were in a big hurry to get out of sight, but the one in the photo below climbed up on a rock and posed for us.

In some places the trail is very narrow, and in one place the drop-off was so steep there was no place to cut a trail, so they built catwalk.

At the other end of the catwalk was a nice, cool, wide overhang that comes at just about the right place in the hike going both directions. The shade was refreshing. Seeps along the back of the overhang provided moisture for maidenhair ferns.

Speaking of a narrow trail, the raven in the next photo is taking a drink from a puddle on the trail that came from a seep higher up the hill. Not only was the trail only about a foot wide, it was also wet.

The next photo is taken almost at the end of the trail. You can see the rounded sandstone from the eastern side in the foreground and the higher sandstone cliffs of Zion Canyon way off in the distance.

And finally, we were rewarded with a view of the lower Zion Canyon. At the bottom left and center of the photo, you can see some of the switchbacks we came up on the other side of the tunnel.

After taking in the view for a while we headed back toward the car and back to the motor home. We were glad we found out about the road closure in time to get over to the eastern side of the park during the weekend when the road was open. Our next outing will be to Kolob Canyons located in the northern part of the park.

Moab, UT

We left Lake Walcott in Rupert, ID, and started to amble eastward. We were heading back east because we will be wintering in Florida again. We know winter is still a long way off, but we want to have plenty of time to enjoy more one and two-week stops along the way. We also have a few specific places in mind we would like to visit.

One of those specific stops was Moab, UT, and Arches National Park. We were there last year, and we decided we both like Moab in general and Arches National Park specifically. There is such a variety to the rock formations - sharp, jagged rocks; big, blocky rock walls; smooth, rounded rocks; tall spires; balanced rocks; red rocks; gray rocks; and tan rocks.

Moab is about 8 or 9 hours from Rupert, ID, so we found a little city park in Spanish Fork, UT south of Salt Lake City where we would stay 3 days. We planned to stop at the nearby Wal-Mart to stock up before heading to Moab, which has no Wal-Mart. We knew Canyon View RV Park was nothing fancy, but they had a very reasonable rate of $12 a night. It would be a nice boost to our camping budget since we are spending a lot of time in high-priced tourist areas this summer.

Canyon View Campground is a parking lot adjacent to Canyon View Park that has had water and electric hookups added. The spaces are a little short and a little narrow, but the campground was almost empty when we were there so crowding wasn't an issue. There are picnic tables in little clearings carved out of the trees behind the sites, so we had a little grass for Molly.

The temperature was 92 degrees when we arrived in Spanish Fork and there wasn't a breath of air. Being on black asphalt when it was that hot wasn't a good idea, because the campground only has 30 amp electric, which meant we could only run one air conditioner. Molly doesn't seem to do as well in the heat now that she is 14.  Although it was hot in the rig during the day, at least having the AC running constantly pulled the humidity out of the air so it was bearable.

Since there was hardly a breath of air when we arrived, we were curious about the small wind farm in the valley just beyond the intersection of the main highway and the road that runs past the campground. There was so little wind, only two or three of the generators were turning when we first drove by, and those few were turning very slowly.

Well, after the sun set, we found out why they had the wind farm. When we went to bed, it was a little breezy so we rolled up the awning. By 2:00 AM, the wind was so strong it woke us. We put down our internet dish so it wouldn't be damaged by the gusts. Apparently, after the sun goes down, the cooler air begins to blow down out of the mountains. The wind blew 30 to 40 mph (with higher gusts) two of the three nights we were there. The last night was a little calmer, but it was still pretty windy.

Although we were happy Canyon View Campground had a dump station, it isn't very conveniently located. It is at the end of the parking lot so you can't pull straight through. You have to sort of parallel park at the end of the lot to get lined up. Also, the curb at the end of the lot is curved making it hard to get close without scraping your tires. On top of all that, the parking lot isn't level at the dump station so we had to use our jacks to level the motor home so the tanks would drain. However, Paul's experiences made the whole dumping exercise seamless. After dumping, we hooked up the car and were on our way to Moab.

Of all the places we visited, Margery felt more "cheated" at Arches because of her bad knees than anywhere else. Although you can certainly hike in places like the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Bryce; you can also see most of the major sights within a few hundred feet of a vehicle. You can also see many of the features of Arches a short distance from the road, but there was something different about Arches that seemed to call us into the landscape.

By the time we got there last July, Margery's knees had deteriorated to the point where walking through Wal-Mart was difficult so anything more than about a quarter mile or anything on uneven terrain was pretty much out of the question. Now that she had her knee surgery and can walk so much better, we planned for our route to go through Moab so we could hike to a few of the special places in Arches we missed last year.

At Moab, we stayed at Moab Rim RV Campark. Moab Rim is a member of Passport America and has no restrictions on your stay during July and August. Moab Rim is a nice RV park with wide, gravel roads, gravel pads, paved patios, decent space between sites, and some sites have 50 amp electric. The last item was important after our stay at Canyon View with only 30 amp electric since we knew Moab can be very hot in July and August (hence no restrictions on Passport America in those months). As you can see by the photo of our site below, there were rugged, red rock walls behind the campground.

From the campground, there is a nice view of the La Sal Mountains to the east and of some slickrock (slickrock is smooth sandstone) across the valley on the other side of the road. Unfortunately, Moab Rim is just far enough outside town to be in a somewhat commercial/industrial area with repair, rental, and construction businesses along the road. The view of the slickrock was marred by a storage lot across the road where there were a couple of old RVs, several cars, an old pontoon boat, and where truckers would drop off trailers for a few days. The road that runs in front of the campground is U. S . Route 191, which is a major north-south route through Moab so there was a fair amount of traffic noise even inside the rig with the air conditioner running.

Moab Rim is still a nice campground, especially for the half-price Passport America price of $14 (plus $2 for 50 amp) plus tax, and the owners seem to be investing in improvements. The concrete patios look new, there are newly-planted trees between the sites, and they were installing an irrigation system for the new trees when we were there.

The Colorado River crosses the valley where Moab lies just to the north of town. To the northeast (upstream), the river flows from Colorado. To the southwest, it flows through Canyonlands National Park. Scenic Route 128 follows the Colorado upstream. It is along this stretch of the river that local outfitters lead rafting and float trips. The water is swift in spots, but you wouldn't really call it white water rafting. The river flows through a deep canyon with a beautiful variety of rocks along the walls.

A few miles up the Colorado is Red Cliffs Lodge. The lodge looks like a nice facility with its own restaurant, a winery, horseback riding, meeting rooms, and plenty of outdoor activities. The photo below is a view of some of the guest rooms from the porch of the office.

The reason we stopped at Red Cliffs Lodge is they have a free Movie History Museum. Hundreds of movies, TV commercials, print ads, and music videos have been made in the Moab area; and the museum has posters, photos, and props from many of these plus a history of some of the ranchers and local residents. John Ford, who directed many John Wayne movies, made so many movies around Moab it came to be known as John Ford country. In the photo below, Margery is reading about the history of some of the local ranchers.

A little way past Red Cliffs Lodge is a turn off toward the La Sal Mountains. A few miles down that road are rock formations known as (from left to right) the Priest and Nuns, the Rectory, and Castle Rock. Castle Rock was once used for a Chevrolet commercial where a car was lifted to the top of the tall spire by a helicopter.

Below is a closer view of the Priest and Nuns (left) and the Rectory. With a little imagination, you can see the priest and at least one of the nuns.

From these rock formations, the road begins to climb into the La Sal Mountains.

We stopped at an pull-off to look back down Castle Valley where we could still see Castle Rock and the Rectory.

 

The La Sal Loop Road travels through the northern edge of the La Sal Mountains then returns to the highway to the south of the campground where we were staying. As we approached the highway, we could see the rock wall that runs behind the campground.

Since we had driven along the Colorado upstream both this year and during our visit last year, we decided another thing we wanted to do was to take a drive along the Colorado River downstream from Moab. The river enters a canyon shortly beyond the turnoff from the main highway just like it does upstream of Moab.

Along the way, the road passes several hiking and primitive camping areas and several rocks containing Indian petroglyphs. Unfortunately, most of the petroglyphs in this area have been exposed to the weather and are pretty faded. There is also a very unusual vertical arch called Jug Handle arch.

After about 17 miles, we arrived at a potash plant where various salts are extracted with water from deep beneath the earth and refined for use in fertilizer. A little beyond the potash plant, we could see the red cliffs of Dead Horse Point State Park.

The paved roads ends about 1.5 miles beyond the potash plant and joins the unpaved 4 x 4 White Rim Trail and Shafer Trail in Canyonlands National Park. Our Vue doesn't have very high ground clearance, so we decided against trying it and returned to the cool motor home instead.

With the Colorado River, interesting rock formations, and the La Sal Mountains, there is a lot of beautiful scenery in the Moab area. But it was Arches National Park that drew us back to Moab so Arches will be our next adventure.