It rained during the night and into the morning. Yes, it’s nice to be camping in a trailer and not in a tent!
We spent the morning doing nothing, and we did it well. Come afternoon, after a few hours at the public library where the cell coverage was better than camp, we proceeded on to Zion Vineyards winery…
… for a a bit of a pricy wine tasting.
After our tastings, we chose a couple of pricy bottles to purchase…
…one for tonight’s steak dinner and one to enjoy at home.
I’m sure that this Zion Vineyards wine will be an improvement over our Spanish box wine for tonight’s dinner.
But such was not to be. The wife decided she didn’t want good wine for our City Market (Kroger) bacon-wrapped steaks, so the bottles will go into trailer storage, perhaps not to be consumed until we get back to Colorado.
Yes, we had our bacon-wrapped fillets with boxed Spanish wine.
It rained all night and we awoke to puddles on the KOA roads and a ground rife with mud. Our planned hike was put on hold. Instead, we headed off to take a peek at nearby Sand Hollow State Park, which has full-hookup RV sites available for a future trip.
It’s just a big pond, but probably no worse camping than our KOA. Maybe next time, we’ll book a spot here.
While hiking on muddy trails was out, we decided to at least make a drive through the Kolob Canyons section of Zion National Park.
Compared with the valley, there are few people out here and the towering, redrock cenery is spectacular.
Next time we’re out this way, we’ll hope for better (dryer) weather and more hiking.
A typical getaway morning for us. After a delicious breakfast of Nabisco’s finest shredded wheat, Dianne got the inside of the trailer ready to go while I drained holding tanks, unhooked water, sewer and electric and put chairs, tables, grill and all the other outside crap away. Finally, we hooked up the trailer, said goodbye to the snow-dusted hills and hit the road.
With a little bit of effort, we found the KOA at Sam’s Town in Las Vegas.
We paid our fees (this place is not cheap), drove to our site, got our electric, water and sewer hooked up and finally sat back and downed an imported beer (from Colorado).
We have an end site with actual, real grass, a leaning table and four Adirondack chairs — all this for only one arm and a leg.
For dinner, we walked through the neighboring Sam’s Club Casino and discovered a glass-roofed atrium complete with foliage and a towering waterfall.
Here, we had steaks and wine with Therese, one of Dianne’s fellow LifeVantage peddlers, and her husband, Rick, who are also camping here at the KOA. With all of the actual real plants surrounding us, it was like dining al fresco with neither wind nor bugs.
On Thursday, Dianne and Therese ventured down to Sphere…
…where they spent $104 each to watch a 1939 vintage movie.
While they were doing that, I tidied up the trailer and walked some half-mile laps around the RV park. There seems to be an Ekko rally going on now in the park. They’re cute, but for out style of camping, a trailer works better.
My goal was to complete 20 laps, which would make it a ten-mile walk, but Dianne got back to the trailer on lap four, so I quit. I needed to get ready for tonight’s Mexican dinner at Juan’s Flaming Fajitas restaurant in nearby Henderson.
Yes, we ordered fajitas, and yes, they came flaming.
Dianne’s meetings finally ended and I finished the latest Craig Childs book. We had a final Las Vegas dinner with our LifeVantage friends, Rick and Therese, at Smokey Joe’s in the Sam’s Town Casino atrium. [Dianne said the ribs were better at Duke’s in Hanksville.]
Sunday morning, we got up hideously early, drained the trailer, loaded up everything and were eventually ready to depart. A mere three hours after crawling out of bed, we were on the road. Leaving Las Vegas was the absolute highlight of the trip.
We motored from Nevada into Arizona (Virgin River Gorge) and up into Utah. Our destination for the evening was the KOA in Richfield, Utah.
There, we were given a really nice site complete with trees, picnic table and a fire ring, which we will use later tonight.
This KOA is almost like real camping. What we did at the KOA in Las Vegas was definitely NOT camping!
A glass of wine. A flaming campfire. This is camping.
After a no rush Monday morning, we hooked Whitey up to Tighty and drove the familiar I-70 route toward home.
Along the way, we made a scenic pottty stop at the Ghost Rock Overlook…
…and, of course, a bacon-cheesburger lunch stop at Ray’s Tavern in Green River.
Ninety miles later, we arrived home and began unloading – the unfun part of every camping trip.
In three weeks, we’ll be loading up again for yet another camping trip.
And we’re off again, this time taking the Subaru on our annual winter pilgrimage to Zion National Park.
The nice thing about winter in Zion is that we can drive where we want and not have to take these damn shuttle busses around.
First stop on the drive was for lunch at Mom’s Café in Salina, Utah.
We first stopped here years ago and were unimpressed with the menu at the time.This year, we opted for conventional road food.I enjoyed a double bacon cheeseburger that was pretty damn good.
We turned down U.S. 89 and entered the park on the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway.A herd of bighorn sheep greeted us at a roadside potty stop.
It was late afternoon by the time we approached the Virgin River Canyon with the nearby cliffs blushing in the late afternoon sunlight.
We turned up the canyon to the lodge where we got keys to our cabin where we would bunk for the next four nights.
We had two full-size beds, a gas fireplace, a small desk and unlike a few years ago, the cabins now have decent Wi-Fi coverage.
Best of all, the view from our cabin was delightful.
Our first hike on this trip was one we’ve done on previous winter visits to Zion. We would walk to the three Emerald Pools. The trailhead lies across the river from the lodge.
It’s a relatively easy hike with most of the route on a paved trail.
There are three pools. We began with Lower Emerald Pool, which had a bit of snow and ice around it.
Next came Middle Emerald Pool, it’s surface mirroring the cliffs across the river.
And finally, we reached Upper Emerald Pool.
That night at dinner, I kept hoping that Jesus would stop by and turn this into wine, but that didn’t happen.
All good things must finally come to an end. We had two routes we could take to get home. One would have involved around 350 miles of freeway driving. The other would take us on a scenic drive through familiar Southeast Utah backcountry.
We, of course, chose the backcountry. Our first stop was in the town of Mt. Carmel Junction where we had breakfast at the Thunderbird Restaurant. Over the years, I’ve stopped here with every one of my wives and handful of girlfriends, but never together.
We next turned down Scenic Byway 12 and headed for a quick visit of Bryce Canyon.
From there, we continued on through Escalante to Boulder…
…where we turned down the Burr Trail…
…which we followed to the Notom-Bullfrog Road in Capitol Reef National Park.
We continued south to the marina town of Bullfrog in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
From there, it was on Stan’s gas station and “Burger Shak” in Hanksville for fuel and milkshakes.
From there, continued on to I-70, which we followed through the San Rafael Reef…
Part two of our autumn “vacation” began about three hours late. Dianne was in Dallas attending a LifeVantage meeting, and her flight back to civilization arrived three hours late in the Grand Valley.
I picked her up at the Grand Junction International Airport, we rushed home by way of Jimmy Johns, ate our sandwiches, loaded the car and headed to Richfield, Utah, where we had reservations at the beautiful Super 8 Motel there.
Heading in a westward direction, we were treated to a stunning Utah sunset.
Super 8 Motels provide their guests with free breakfast.
Of course, this was NOT the Super 8 breakfast. We drove down Main Street to the Black Bear Diner and ate there. Much better.
Back on the road, we left Utah, skirted through North Las Vegas and headed for Death Valley.
Taking advantage of discounts offered by Xanterra, we booked two nights at The Ranch at Death Valley.
We were bunking in a duplex cottage suite…
…with a separate living room and bedroom
…and a great front porch to enjoy by day…
…and night.
I really, really like this place. We originally had a two night stay booked, but Dianne allowed me to add a third.
We wandered around the Ranch, checking out its open-air museum of artifacts from the Death Valley borax production days…
…and its fine dining options.
With the government shutdown, many of the places we wanted to explore were not open. We did find a few interesting sites to check out, however, including…
…the remains of the Harmony Borax Works…
…the view of Bad Water from Dante’s View overlook…
…and Zabriskie Point at sunset.
We also explored the Inn at Death Valley, the more upscale Xanterra property located nearby…
…where we had dinner reservations…
…with prickly pear margaritas…
…followed by steaks and wine.
After three nights at the Ranch, we set off for Nevada, Our route followed the eastern escarpment of the Sierra through California, passing by Mt. Whitney, highest peak in the Lower 48 states. I’ve climbed it a couple of times.
In Bishop, we stopped at Erick Schat’s Bakery for lunch.
This place has long been a mandatory stop for a loaf or two of their excellent cheese bread.
Continuing north, we passed Mono Lake…
…and continued into Carson City where we are staying in a Bed without Breakfast house next door to Dianne’s sister’s home.
We’ll be going from 190 feet below sea level to 4,687 feet above. I hope we survive the thin air.
