Utah – TooBusyForWork

Almost home

We are at the Elks Lodge in Cameron, MO for the night, and we will be back in Cedar Falls tomorrow in the early afternoon. A lot of driving in 2 weeks!

But first I am going to add some pictures of the trip on I-70 heading to Las Vegas that I forgot about last time. I finally got irritated enough with my iPhone camera that I pulled out my nice Canon point and shoot. That’s where these photos come from. Note I-70 starts in Denver, CO and runs until I-25 in Utah. It goes through spectacular country in both states. In Colorado it is not completely rural, but in Iowa it goes for over 150 miles with only one spot for services. It is VERY remote there.

Note this is not a road I would want to do in the motorhome. Not only does it have a lot of steep grades up and down, but the section in Utah has waves in the pavement that would cause the motorhome to porpoise enough to make me seasick! But it is an absolutely beautiful trip for someone in a passenger vehicle, and I highly recommend it.

Now back to more information about our way home. We spent two nights in Gallup, NM. The first night we arrived late in the afternoon, and we quickly got to Richardson’s Trading Post, an historic trading post started in 1913. It is located in downtown Gallup, and I was on the hunt for an authentic Navajo rug. Richardson’s has a huge rug room with all styles of rugs in lots of sizes. We found one we both really like, and it is packaged up in paper until we get home. More pictures when that happens.

The second day in Gallup (Sunday of Memorial Day weekend), we visited the Hubbell Trading Post National Monument. It is about an hour out of Gallup, and I have been wanted to visit for a number of years. Fabulous place. Comments with each picture.

The trading post was built over a number of years as the stonework shows

I like the water spouts and the stone work here

We did buy some things at the store for future birthdays, so no more details there. I didn’t go into their rug room either because after one rug and the ukulele and the HUGE motorhome bill, my pockets were empty.. Kevin said it was smaller than Richardson’s, but that may have been to salve my feelings.

There are other historic sites nearby. The town of Ganado was built up due to the trading post. Hubbell invited the Presbyterian Church Mission Society to set up shop here in the early 1900s. The Presbyterian Church here is lovely.

There is also a nearby mission of the Catholic Church, the historic St. Anne’s. It is still an active parish, so we didn’t do anything but look at the interesting exterior.

So that is pretty much it until we get home tomorrow. We will unpack and I will make a sweet potato casserole on Saturday for a potluck at church on Sunday. Our current pastor is leaving, so there is a big party planned. Next week has some dentist and doctor appointments plus we are taking the Subaru in to get the hail damage repaired. We are also getting our roof replaced! Busy week.

Sorry if you are getting tired of “oops, no posts”

Yeah, I just got rather tied up and distracted about bunches of things. Sadly it wasn’t as warm in Iowa as it was in California and Nevada, so the sandals had to come off for a while.

We did make it to “The Lutherie” in the Des Moines area to get the ukulele crack repaired. He did a fabulous job. I am now religious about case humidifiers. I have even gotten a hard shell case which will keep the moisture inside better. The luthier recommended the sound hole humidifier shown at the bottom of the uke, so I got one of those too. No More Cracks!

Once we got home we were quickly engulfed in grandkids’s end of year activities. All three of the local grandkids had music concerts, and most had two of them! And then came a severe but luckily pretty isolated hail storm.

It came straight from the west and put holes in our siding on that side. We also need a new roof since it was damaged too. We spent quite a bit of time contacting roofers and getting estimates for the roofing and the siding. We definitely weren’t alone either. The roofing company signs were going up the next day, and some roofs are already repaired. Ours will be later in June.

Pella is a small town that was settled by Dutch immigrants. It has a strong Dutch heritage still, and the Pella Tulip Festival is usually the weekend after Mother’s Day. We had friends who visited it earlier, and they warned us the tulips were in full bloom two weeks early. We chose to take a day trip, and I am glad we did. My FB page has a full dump of the pictures , but here is a sample. The windmill is an authentic re-creation, and it is the home of a local museum. The tulips were magical. There are thousands and thousands just in the town square, and more thousands in the parking strips nearby.

For Mother’s Day I told Kevin I wanted a roasted chicken and sweet potatoes. I made the spatchcocked chicken and he did the potatoes. He also bought an adorable little tiny cake. Since I started the Mounjaro for my diabetes, I have very little appetite and small meals are the rule. We ate the chicken for 3 days LOL!

One of the things I am now determined to add to the house are window well covers. In our community, deep window wells are used as access alternatives for the basement living spaces. We have occasionally discovered mice who fell in, but sadly we are discovering baby bunnies now. We found two in the last few weeks. Both were rescued and placed back in the flower garden where they have a hole.

Oh, and I live in a very manicured suburban area without any mature trees. We were one of the first houses here, and ours is just 8 years old. We have planted trees, and neighbors have also as the other homes were built and purchased, but it will be a long time before we get any significant number of big trees. But we do get wildlife! The first year we were here, our cameras picked up a wandering mink, and we have seen possums, raccoons, rabbits, and at least 3 different cats. The deer was a first for us though.

All kind of other things are happening too. A heart murmur was discovered at Kevin’s annual physical, so he has appointments scheduled at Mayo Clinic in Rochester to further characterize the aortic stenosis the caused the murmur. He might need surgery, he might not, but we both felt more comfortable going to Mayo for a significant issue like that. I had my annual MRI to follow up on the DCIS breast cancer and lumpectomy, and a biopsy resulted showing a small area of hyperplasia. Not cancer, but it moves me into an even high risk status of future cancer. So I have an appointment at Mayo too! Lucky it is only a couple of hours away, and it is a common option for people from my small city (50,000). Sigh.

We did finally get news the motorhome was fixed, and we went to Vegas to pick it up after all the initial medical appointments. We spent one night in Fort Morgan, CO and the next night in Cedar City, UT. This is what we woke up to in Cedar City.

We were better prepared than most of the motel customers, but Kevin did go buy us some lightweight jackets the night before.

I am not thrilled with Velocity Truck Center in North Las Vegas. They did fix the engine issue, but they knocked an electrical wire out of its socket that I had to pay to get repaired (hard to prove it was all working before, but it was!). As usual with electrical issues, it took a lot more time to isolate the problem than to fix it. Then after a couple of nights at the North Las Vegas Elks Lodge again, we headed to Needles, CA for a night on our way to south of Williams, AZ where we boondocked last night and tonight. This area is full of OHV trails! We had a great ride today.

Here is a video of the smoother part of the area.

http://May 22, 2026 https://youtu.be/3bBrOCMV-zI

And another one of a bit rougher OHV section.

http://A bit rougher trail south of Williams, AZ https://youtu.be/lWPNxrN1fNw

We are gradually heading back to Iowa. We will be staying in Gallup, NM the next 2 nights hopefully to look at some Navajo rugs.

I did already make one big purchase though. I bought a new super nice Pono ukulele. It is all acacia wood with the standard goodies upscale ukuleles have – geared tuners, ebony fretboard, bone saddle and bridge. It sounds divine, and I am not yet worthy! I am an advanced beginner, and this is at least an intermediate instrument, so now I have to buckle down to be worth of it. It will be fun!

A sad Great Salt Lake

Ummm. Looks like I didn’t publish this! Better late than never.

We had a lovely trip to the Salt Lake City area, and Antelope Island State Park was just as lovely as ever. As I expected, the campground was almost empty. There are around 60 campsites – some dry camping, some with FHUs, and even 3 really nice little cabins. I think the most we ever saw occupied were 9 sites, and that included the 3 camp host sites! This is what we saw as we looked out of our site.

We just hung around the camper on Friday when we arrived. Saturday we went shopping for more fabric for the oven mitt class I am teaching in October. Nice shop called Sew-N-Save with a great selection of fabric. We had lunch at the little Thai cafe in Syracuse. As before, we enjoyed the food and had plenty for dinner on Sunday.

In the afternoon we decided to drive out towards Greer Ranch, an historic homesite on the island. We have been in the builds a dozen times, so we didn’t stop there, but we drove the dirt road south of the ranch to see how far we could get. The lake is so, so, so low! We ended up driving almost to the end of the island. Of course, the island is no longer an island; it has become a peninsula on the south end, and the road ended up about a mile from where the salt flats began that connect it to the mainland. And of course we saw bison! The nursery herd has broken up into a number of smaller herds scattered on the east side of the island. In this picture you can see the green that indicates seeps or springs. This side of the island has a lot of both which is, of course, why the bison prefer this side. Also notice the fence in the salt flat edge of the island. This is fairly new. When the island really was an island, the bison stayed put. The lake has now gotten so low that there was concern they would just walk away. So up went a bison proof fence around the east and south end of the state park. So sad.

On the way back to the west side where we were camped, we were lucky to see one of the fabulous reflections the lake is known for. Pretty nice!

Sunday I had a great time visiting my old church (First Presbyterian Salt Lake City). It is a big gothic church in the downtown area, and it is undergoing a resurgence with a new pastor. The church has been know for its music program for years, and we were lucky enough to be there on jazz Sunday. Have you ever heard jazz played on a massive pipe organ? I got to! Larry Blackburn is the organist, and he adapted a version of “When the Saints.” Never thought it could be done, but Larry (as usual) knocked it out of the park. I got to see a number of old friends, and Kevin and I went to lunch with a couple of them. We got back to the motorhome, and we both took a nap.

This is what our view was this morning as we got ready to leave. We drove through the city pretty easily, and we are now in Green River State Park. Tomorrow we spend the night at a private campground in Delta, CO before heading to the Taylor Park UTV rally.

In Oregon

My post-surgery exam showed everything was good, so we headed out of Iowa on Wednesday morning. First night we stayed at Lake Manawa State Park just inside the Iowa border with Nebraska. It is an old oxbow lake with a pretty new campground we have stayed in before. Moderately priced with widely separated sites, it was a good overnight stop. Thursday night we stayed in the Cabela’s campground in Sydney, NE. It is still too hot to think about going without air conditioning! But by Friday early afternoon we were in Wyoming at the USFS Vedauwoo Recreation Area. This is another favorite spot, and we spent two nights there. We even got the same campsite we had two years ago. Here’s a video showing our site.

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Here is a video from the RZR showing what the dispersed camping area is like. Note this is the weekend before the Independence Day holiday, so it was already getting crowded.

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There were lots of flowers, but almost all of my pictures came out blurry. Obviously I wasn’t holding still well enough. I did get a nice picture of wild roses and a cute little ground squirrel that posed for me.

We drove through a number of areas that had been logged, and the resulting meadows were a riot of color. I wish my little iPhone could capture the colors better.

We crossed a little stream on one of our adventures, and the water looked lovely and refreshing. There was a small bridge designed for UTVs to cross, and we paused to take a nice look.

Most of the times our maps don’t let us down, but this time they did! We had quite an adventure running out of trails that were posted open, and even losing one trail completely due to lack of use. Oh well, the RZR backs up pretty easily!

After two nights at Vedauwoo, we continued down I-80 to the Mirror Lake Highway (WY/UT 150) south of Evanston, WY. Thirty miles from the interstate we stayed at a large dispersed area where cross country skiers start their winter treks. It is known as the “Yurt” because the state puts up a big yurt here in snow season. We stayed two nights here too, meeting up with old friends from the RVForum.net who happened to be camping 30 miles away in a USFS campground. Steve made steaks and potatoes on the grill, and we had garlic bread and a Cesear salad to go with it. I made a nice peach cobbler for dessert, so we were all pretty stuffed.

We spent Tuesday night at the Elks Lodge in Mountain Home, ID. Nice people at the bar, and the camp area was very quiet. Wednesday we spent at the Fairgrounds in John Day, OR. We had reserved a site that was plenty long for us, but it was overhung with very low branches so we didn’t fit. Kevin found a camp host who got us moved to another site where the roof wouldn’t be rubbing branches. Starlink was pretty awful though due to the trees. Oh how spoiled we have become with fast internet (just about) everywhere!

Tonight we had landed for the holiday weekend at Big Pines RV Park just south of Crescent, OR. The Central Oregon SXS Club is having some group rides, and we are going to join them. It seems like they do more gravel roads than trails, but the country is pretty so we will survive. It is raining now, and a big thunderstorm is just barely passing us by (so far). It ought to help keep the dust down tomorrow!

What can be said about Monument Valley that hasn’t been said?

Wow, wow, and wow. We are absolutely overcome with the beauty of Monument Valley. I have wandered around a lot of red rock country, but just never made it here before. We got here on Monday and just rested up. Here is looking out the door of our motorhome at Gouldings RV Park.

We also went to the Mitten viewpoint. On the 31 of March (Monday) the West Mitten shadow shows up perfectly aligned with the East Mitten. We were ready to take pictures, but at the last minute the clouds covered the sun and the shadow was lost. We did get some preliminary pictures though.

On Tuesday we took full day tour with a Gouldings Navajo guide named Marvin. It was cold and windy, so we were glad we had a regular enclosed van for the tour. Most of the 3 hour tours were in open vehicles!

We started the trip by visiting the lesser traveled Mystery Valley and having lunch cooked over a fire mostly by his wife. Oh, and we got stuck in sand! It took Marvin, Kevin, and Rick (the other person on our tour) to push the van while I put it in low and gunned it. They really shouldn’t send guides out in an 2 wheel drive van when all the signs say 4WD required! After lunch we visited Monument Valley. Instead of posting pictures chronologically, I am going to arrange the pictures more by type of scenery.

Arches. There were lots of arches.

And then there were the remnants of the ancestral Puebloan people (previously called Anasazi).

They were a small people based on the size of their hands

Notice the craftsmanship still present in the ruins. Square corners and a combination of large and small stones to keep the walls straight.

And then there is just the raw. beauty of the place.

We stopped at a hogan in Mystery Valley where an older woman explained the process of weaving beginning with the sheep shearing (manual because no electricity!), washing, carding, spinning, and weaving. She had some beautiful things for sale, but it was out of my budget. Maybe I will have to save up for the next time we come.

We didn’t see much wildlife; this is a hard country. We did see this hawk.

We had dinner on Monday at Gouldings Inn Restaurant (Navajo tacos for both of us) and breakfast at the same place (French toast combo) today. Food was good, and service was quite adequate despite a number of reviews saying the opposite. We had wanted to visit the various museums, but my back is still giving me fits. I have another radioablation on my medial nerve scheduled for 23 April, and I can hardly wait.

We have had some wild weather while we have been here. Monday it was windy with a big dust storm, overcast, and cool. Tuesday it was cold and windy with more dust. Wednesday we got rain, snow, cold, clouds, and sun. Today wasn’t as bad though it did rain a bit and snowed a bit more.

Tomorrow we go to Page to register the new RZR then head to Grants for Saturday, assuming the weather is ok.

Out of Quartzsite for this year

We left Quartzsite on Monday, 23 March, planning on gradually working our way home to Iowa. This is the picture Kevin took on Sunday night of the sunset. It was taken through a long lens, and then it had be reduced in quality some, but it is an impressive sunset view from our campsite.

We first went to Lake Havasu City, spending 4 nights at the Elks Lodge there. I went to a “Staycation” with the Havasu Quilters guild Monday through Wednesday. The problem was that I was still very, very sore from my back spasms. I didn’t get nearly as much done as I intended. I finally sewed up the quilt block for March’s Block of the Month, but I am not very happy with it. It is not only not my best work, it isn’t even my average work. Oh well, it will do though. I made some little scrubbers for gifts from a kit I have been hauling around for a couple of years. They will be cute in a gift package of a mug and hot chocolate mix (the fabric is hot chocolate related). I also finished all the 8 star blocks I needed for my Christmas quilt, but I didn’t get much more accomplished. All day Monday back would spasm for 30-60 seconds while I just tried to breathe through it. It really sucked. Tuesday was better with no spasms, just soreness. Wednesday the pain was bad. The staycation is normally a treat with lots of good companionship, good food, and lots of sewing time.

After LHC, we headed north to Monticello, UT. We spent one night at the NavajoLand RV Park in Tuba City, AZ on the way. It was decent but not really set up for a rig our size. In Monticello we are staying at the Western RV Park. It is another older campground where we barely fit, but they obviously just redid their sewer system with a lot of fresh gravel on all the sites.

The reason we are in Monticello is because Kevin bought a new side by side! The shop is in Grand Junction, CO, and we drove the truck with the old RZR in the back from Monticello to there. Why? Because when we leave here tomorrow we are headed back to Monument Valley, UT and then to AZ to complete all the paperwork. We had planned on picking it up after we left Monument Valley, but they had rebates that expire tomorrow. But first a bit about the trip up to Moab on the way to I-70. I don’t think we had ever driven the road headed north, though we have done it southbound a few times. It is a glorious drive. There was haze and we had a schedule to meet so only a couple of pictures, and those were through the windshield. The first was the lovely La Sal mountains south of Moab. Lots of snow on their peaks.

And then we started getting to the fabulous rocky outcroppings as we got nearer to Moab. I loved this one the most, and I named it “Haystack.”

And here is Kevin in the brand new rig! It is a Polaris RZR 900 Trail Sport. We got a very good trade in, rebates, and additional deals because they had a bunch of 2024 rigs still in stock. It is a 900cc engine with 75hp and real doors that don’t require contortions to get in the rig. Even the seats are more comfortable. Now he gets to keep the UPS driver busy bringing all the accessories to make it street legal and comfortable. Things like roofs, windshields (front and back), mirrors, and storage boxes are all aftermarket. Kevin has a great time shopping for them, and putting them all on will keep him busy when we get home. I can hardly wait until we can take it out on the trails!

We leave tomorrow for Monument Valley. I will post as we finish that portion of the trip.

Edited to add: We had an absolutely fabulous late lunch at Bella Thai in Moab. It is probably the best Thai food I have ever had! I wanted to make sure I had it in the post because I look back a such info later on.

Late posting again

I have no idea why I sometimes just can’t get in the mood to post. It might be because I am also active on Facebook and post some things there. But I can’t use FB as a search tool to show where I’ve been and what I have seen, so here I am back to it again.

We were, as usual, really busy at the FMCA convention. I taught a class on collapsable storage containers that went really well. Everybody got finished, and that’s a major accomplishment by itself. It helped that everyone knew how to use their sewing machines! Here was a sample I made.

We had thought about just gradually and slowly heading back home, but we decided to pretty much just head straight back with only a bit of detours. We spent Thursday, 22 September, in Caldwell, ID at the Elks Lodge. Nice place. Then we stayed at dry camping spot at Stanton Crossing, ID for 3 nights. There was a nice museum there we visited too. Nice change from all the crowds in Oregon. From there we went to northern Utah on the southern part of the Uintah Moutains and a nice boondock site along the Mirror Lake highway. We did some riding and generally kept relaxing. On Friday, 30 August, we were in Laramie at the Walmart. Saturday we stayed at Cabelas in Kearney, NE. Sunday we stayed at an Elks Club in Des Moines. On Monday, Labor Day, we made it home, though it was late enough in the day we just stayed in the motorhome at the local campground (Big Woods Lake) again. It is so easy to just put the motorhome in a spot and unpack gradually!

I really haven’t done much sewing this entire summer. I did finish a couple of quilts that were mostly pieced in the motorhome. The triangle one only needed binding, but the Hunter Star needed quilting and binding. Much easier to quilt on the sitdown Sweet 16!

Now we are off again. We left this morning for Red Bay, AL for our yearly motorhome service, to fix a few nagging issues, and to get a bit of remodeling done We stayed in the Walmart parking lot in Bowling Green, MO, between Hannibal and St. Louis. About 270 miles from home so a nice day’s drive.

Antelope Island views then north

I forgot to post any pictures from Antelope Island, so here you go! The bison herd on Antelope Island is famous. The bulls were looking pretty beat up since mating season was just finishing.

And no set of pictures for Antelope Island is complete without a gorgeous sunset view. The sunset was just orange/red from the smoke haze. Beautiful, but it makes it tough to breathe.

We did get to Island Park, ID and found a great boondocking site on Sunday, 21 July. We stayed there through Thursday night. We obviously took some RZR rides, but we also enjoyed meeting some friends who were work camping in the area, one in West Yellowstone and one at Henry’s Lake State Park. We discovered the osprey nest on a dead end trail we took by accident. Nice accident! There were two young birds. When I snapped this picture (from a long way away!), one adult bird had just flown off to get more food for the hungry teens.

There was quite a bit of water, and we saw lots of lilies.

We also took one day into Yellowstone. We got into the park by 7:00 am. It was cool enough some of the animals like these elk were still close to the road. The other advantage of early, cool mornings is the steam rising from the thermal features is much more visible.

These three elk were just as we got into the park

We saw a number of the primary animals – bison, bald eagle, osprey, elk, deer, and a fat, happy black bear.

We spent Friday, 26 July, at the Y Knot Winery campground, Glenn’s Ferry, ID. It was still smoky, something that had been increasing since the last couple of days at Island Park. The next day was a killer. We had reservations in Burns, OR, but the AQI was over 600! A lot of eastern Oregon seems to be on fire, and there was a big one just outside Burns. The haze was thick, and the air smelled of smoke. We just kept going until we got to Bend, OR where we stopped at an Elks Lodge again. The drive was mostly 2 lane roads with lots of curves. I was tired when we got set up!

The next day wasn’t any better, but we wanted to keep heading west to get out of the smoke. We drove from Bend to Springfield, OR, just outside Eugene, OR. I had a UPS delivery sent there, and I needed to pick it up before our chapter rally. The road from 5 miles south of Sisters pretty much all the way to Springfield was the slowest I have driven the motorhome. It was only 120 miles, but it took over 4 hours. The traffic was very heavy, there was lots of construction, and the mountain roads very winding. Ugh. We hadn’t started until 10:30, because we thought it wouldn’t take long. I was awfully tired when we finally got to the Elks Lodge where we stopped for the night. We have definitely gotten a lot out of our Elk’s Lodge membership! It is nice to have a safe spot to pull into while traveling. Many are dry camping for $5-$10 which is just fine for us. Some have electricity which is nice on hot days, and those are $20-$30 a night, still worthwhile.

I was so tired of the bad air quality, so we headed for the coast instead of staying in Springfield a few days like we had intended. We are currently at the Elk’s Lodge campground in Florence, OR 1 mile off Hwy 101. Beautiful place for $35 a night with electricity and water. We could only get 2 nights here, but they also have dry camping where we hope to spend the next nights before our FMCA rally in Coos Bay. I intend on hitting the local fabric shop for some more fat quarters and interfacing for class samples. I am teaching a class on collapsable fabric storage containers, and it is easier to show students some of the steps than describe them. I have the kits cut for the students, but I will partially make some more as examples.

Now to clean up!

North Rim Part 2

Ok, I will just come out and say the North Rim of the Grand Canyon beats the South Rim, hands down! I don’t know that I will ever visit the South Rim again.

We took 4 July to just drive around the area and see a few sights before our tour group got together. Here are some highlights.

On 5 July we met our tour group. We started off with an evening ride to a fire tour about 10 miles away. It was very, very, very dusty! There were about 45 or so rigs on this trip, and it seemed to take forever at the stop we made. The fire tower only allowed four people at a time, and it seemed a LOT of people wanted to climb it.

On Saturday we divided into two groups of 30ish rigs to do a ride. Our leader was fairly good, but not completely clear on directions. He also complained about the speed we were making but he stopped for a LONG time at each stop. I know it takes a while for folks to pee and drink water, but it doesn’t take 45 minutes! The ride was beautiful, but it made the previous dusty ride look clean. So much dust! I am just not used to a super dusty ride like that. In our club in Quartzsite we mostly ride on rocks, not dusty locations, and I have seldom riden with so many people, and then it wasn’t on dusty roads. But the views were good.

I did bump up the saturation on this to see the shades

On Sunday we only did a part of the ride with the tour group since we had already seen their last stop. At last I could breathe! We had a fabulous lunch all by ourselves in a beautiful grove of pines. There is a lot of virgin forest here.

Kevin showing just how big these Virgin Ponderosa pines really are

We were supposed to travel next to Marysvale, UT, but the fires there were on the west side of town heading east. I figured the smoke would be just as bad for me as the dust had been, so we cancelled our reservations. Hopefully we can get back there another time. On Monday, 8 July, we went to a cheap campground in Fredonia, UT, the Wagon Wheel RV Park. It was FHU for on,y $30 a night, so we didn’t complain. We got all our laundry done and stocked up on groceries in nearby Colorado City. We then had to decide what to do next since the fires interfered with our trip to Marysvale. We decided to just go back to the North Rim!

There are bison in the North Rim, but we hadn’t seen any until our last day there. We finally saw one just standing around (kind of boring) and another have a nice dust bath in a Buffalo wallow. Guess which one I am posting?

We generally just relaxed a lot, riding only another couple of days. The views were so lovely, the campsite so quiet, and the weather so temperate we just chilled reading books and such. We ate at Jacob’s Lake restaurant and the Kaibab Lodge, and both were excellent.

On Monday, 15 July, we started to head north. We spent one night at the Saint George Elks Lodge, and we were the only ones there! Then again, it was 105! Awful, but the views were nice. Tuesday we went to the Cedar City RV Resort, a nice place. We had reservations to see “Much Ado About Nothing”at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, and it was a hoot, Shakespeare’s comedies are belly laughing funny and definitely not “high brow” stuff. We had intended to visit a small Renaissance Faire going on, but it was just too miserably hot since they didn’t open until 11:00 am. We did visit the Frontier Homestead State Park Museum, but I gave out from the heat before I got to all the outdoor exhibits. Nice museum though!

Did I mention it was HOT? After the 105 degrees in St. George and the 99 degrees in Cedar City, we decided to prolong the pain by spending time at Antelope Island State Park, UT. The island is in the Great Salt Lake, and it was one of our favorite spots when we lived in SLC. We also wanted to see friends in the area. Antelope Island was also really hot, 10 degrees above average, but what is “average” anymore? There was also a LOT of haze from smoke. We did get a bunch of shopping done, and we spent time with friends, so it was worth it. But we aren’t going to stay 3 nights like we planned. We decided to head to Island Park tomorrow morning. Temps are forecast to be in the mid to upper 80s, and we can handle that. Crossing my fingers!

North Rim, Part 1

After a fabulous trip in the Uintas, we needed to move on. Because the holiday is this week, we couldn’t find a really nice place to spend a couple of days. Everything was reserved! We ended up at a Love’s Travel Stop in Salina, UT, just off I-70. Good things: it was close for travel, clean, concrete patio, and amazingly quiet. Not so good things: expensive for a bare pull through with no trees, no landscaping, just concrete and black top. It met the need though. We did lots of laundry, got groceries, and we generally caught up with things. Not my favorite kind of place though, and it will be on my “if nothing else is available” list.

We drove the rest of the way to the North Rim on Monday. We found an amazing boondock site just off FS 22 which branches off AZ 67, the Grand Canyon HWY. Two miles up a gravel road led to a huge site surrounded by aspens and pines with a few fairly level spots.

We have since put up the Clam shelter since there are a lot of flies and a few mosquitos. Monday night we had dinner at the Kaibab Lodge, and it was fabulous! They normally offer a buffet, but it was pretty quiet so they just had a few menu items for choices. Everything was done beautifully, and it tasted great. We had a nice talk with the cook. He stays at the lodge in the summer and in Yuma during the winter. He full-times in a 27’ travel trailer.

On Tuesday we drove to Hurricane, UT to pick up the RZR we had left for an oil change on Monday. We had a bunch of engine work done before we left Iowa, and it needed an out of cycle oil change. It was a bit before the 50 hours recommended, but we would have been over the hours if we had waited until we left. I also picked up some new fabric for a quilt top I am hoping to finish during this trip.

Today we drove to the North Rim visitor center. Lots and lots fewer visitors than the South Rim! I was so proud of myself walking for 200 yards or so with a brief stop in the middle. I could not walk 50’ before my nerve ablation, so life definitely looking up. After all the driving, we both took a nap! We had pizza for dinner, made on the Blackstone. Sausage, onions, and mushrooms made a fabulous topping.

For the next four days we will be doing a bunch of UTV riding, so more to come!