May 19, 2024 — Day 65 KOA/Dinosaurland Vernal UT — Steinaker State Park, Vernal, UT Today was moving day. We left the KOA in town and headed out to Steinaker State Park. It was an uneventful 9 miles IF you ignore the rut that the RV drove over as Susan left the KOA. They use shallow channels on each side of road. It makes for bumpy coming and going. This one sent water in the cups for the herbs splashing about. And the Cherry tomatoes took a header when the door opened. They scattered all over the floor like little red marbles. This state park is so much nicer than…

May 18, 2024 – Day 64 Vernal / Dinosaurland KOA Holiday, Vernal, UT Today we headed off to the museum. The one we should have gone to yesterday instead of visiting Flaming Gorge. But you know maybe not. We could now read about the geologic strata having already seen them. Yeah, so we did it on purpose—we’re not changing our story. But first, a “thorough the windshield” shot of the Zion Bank aka “The Parcel Post Bank” aka “the Bank that was sent by Mail”. It’s like a real life version of Johnny Cash’s song, One Piece at a Time. Maybe he got the idea for the song from the…

May 17, 2024 – Day 63 Vernal / Dinosaurland KOA Holiday, Vernal, UT Today we headed north to see the Flaming Gorge area, which is in the very large Ashley National Forest. The drive there was incredibly scenic. We passed lots of different geologic strata. There were descriptive signs all along the highway that named the layers and told what sea creatures, and later land creatures, lived here hundreds of million of years ago. Here’s a photo from the return journey, heading back down. We’ll go into detail later, when we visit the museum downtown. We kind of wished we went there first. We would have better understand what we…

May 16, 2024 – Day 62 Vernal / Dinosaurland KOA Holiday, Vernal, UT That picture pretty much sums up the day: doing laundry, getting groceries and catching up on blogs. Sometimes you have to take a day away from adventure to do “life maintenance.”

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…