Not The Painter

May 15, 2024 – Day 61 Antelope Island State Park, Syracuse, Utah – Vernal / Dinosaurland KOA Holiday, Vernal, UT Today was just a driving day, only a few interesting things happened and they weren’t that interesting. We had worried about driving over the 7 mile causeway and getting Clifford covered in bugs just like the Jeep got covered. It’s easy enough to reach the windshield in the Jeep to clean it. It’s a different story with Clifford’s big big windshield. We saw a lot of pretty scenery, it was steep in places, steep and curvy in other places. We drove slowly and made it through ok, of course. Eventually…

May 10-14 – Day 56-60 Antelope Island State Park, Syracuse UT May 10, 2024 We stopped by the Visitors’ Center for the all important fine mesh bug nets. You see, Antelope Island is a special birding place. That’s because the Great Salt Lake is full of brine shrimp. And then there are the brine shrimp flies. The birds eat both the shrimp and flies. Plus the mosquitos which are large enough a traditional mesh bug net will keep them off you. But then you have the biting gnats which totally ignore DEET. (susan here: it’s probably more of a lure than anything else.) So for the next several days we’d…

May 9, 2024 – Day 55 Wendover KOA Journey, West Wendover Nevada – Antelope Island State Park, Syracuse, Utah We pulled out of Nevada and were quickly driving across the very salty flats that happened to have a paved road through the middle of them. We soon came across this sculpture, The Tree of Utah. It has been said that the artist, Karl Momen, not Moron, was moved to create the 87-foot-tall (27 m) tree after having a vision of a tree while driving across the desolate Bonneville Salt Flats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor:_The_Tree_of_Utah The salt flats went on forever. Then we went up over a rise and down and just like that…

May 7&8, 2024 – Day 52 & 54 New Frontier RV Park, Winnemucca, NV – Wendover KOA Journey, West Wendover NV May 7, 2024 We had a pretty easy day planned. You’ve heard that before! High winds were forecast so Paul decided to skip the easy ham radio thingee in town (remember, he still wanted to get Nevada in the books) and that we should just hit the road. Both of us have had a few drives where the winds were high. It’s exhausting and neither of us wanted another round of that. We had lunch at a rest area and were greeted with this odd sign. We checked, all…

May 6, 2024 – Inn Town Campground, Nevada City, CA – New Frontier RV Park, Winnemucca, NV Ok, Donner Party jokes aside, the linked wikipedia page is a fascinating read. We’ve only skimmed it but it really shows the hardships all the westward bound settlers faced. But why reference the Donner Party? Today we drive over the Donner Pass. This is, up to now, the highest point of our journey. Donner Pass is “only” 7,056 feet high. That’s seem easy, we were higher than that a few days ago. But not in Clifford the Big Red Dog towing the 4,500lb Jeep. We decided it would be wise to unhook the…

May 4 & 5, 2024 – Day 50 & 51 Sequoia RV Park, Dunlap California – Inn Town Campground, Nevada City, CA This will be a short blog. We drove up to Nevada City, CA. We met some old friends for dinner. We slept. Got up, went grocery shopping and did some laundry. Then we met these same old friends for dinner at their place. Slept some more. But we guess you want some details, right? May 4, 2024 We drove from the middle of California to, uhh, the middle of California. Texas is the wide state, California is the tall state. At least they decorate their overpasses. Actually, a…

May 1,2 & 3 2024 – Sequoia RV Park, Dunlap California We’ve spent 3 days at this campground exploring all that Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park have to offer. It will just be 1 giant blog entry not 3. April 20, 2024 Bonus content! We missed a few photos from the drive to Dunlap. We passed through the little town of Visalia, CA. It was very tight driving through it but somehow we managed. We saw this fun mural as we made our way across town. The road up from Orange Grove to the campground was very steep in places and curvy and steep in other places.…

April 30, 2024 Mountain Valley RV Park Skylark, Tehachapi, California – Sequoia RV Park, Dunlap California Just a travel day today, but a travel day with Okie Pies! We pulled out of the Mountain Valley RV Park without fanfare except Susan spotted a life bird, the Western Kingbird when Paul was unhooking the power. She said, “Look, on that tree, a Western Kingbird.” and Paul saw it just before it flew off. But that’s a grab. Back to pretty scenery. We drove by another Keene. This was Keene, CA. Keene is always fun to find. We hope to some day visit all of them. We’ve seen Keene and Keene Valley…

April 29, 2024 Leapin’ Lizards RV Ranch, Ocotillo Wells, California – Mountain Valley RV Park Skylark, Tehachapi, California Today was the day we didn’t get to where we expected to be. 15,000 miles under our belt in this RV plus another 8500 miles or so with the travel trailer and you’d think that we wouldn’t be surprised by anything. Right? You would be wrong. Today’s surprise was we didn’t make it to our planned destination. It was only going to be about 250 miles to someplace we can’t remember around Bakersfield, CA. It wasn’t a destination, just a place to park and sleep, that’s why we can’t remember the details…

April 26, 27 & 28 2024 – Leapin’ Lizards RV Ranch, Ocotillo Wells, California Yep. It’s a three day entry. We’re in Ocotillo Wells because it is midway between four places we want to visit; 1) the onions field is Brawley where Anastasia and John do their office jobs for part of the year, 2) Salvation Mountain, East Jesus and Slab City, 3) The Sono Bono Wildlife Refuge on the Salton Sea, and 4) the 200″ Hale Telescope at Palomar Mountain. So let’s get started. April 26, 2024 Onions We stopped by the Hall of the Onion King and Queen in Brawley, CA they gave us the Royal tour of…