Oregon-pt.1

Our Anniversary was spent at the Walmart in Hood River after traveling through the Columbia River Gorge. Then past Portland to the charming little town of McMinnville. Our RV park sat next door to the Air Museum where Howard Hughes' plane, the Spruce Goose was housed. Wine or another air museum--I, of course chose wine, it was a tougher call for Terry but in the end he choose the wine tasting for our time here as well. It was cold- people were in winter coats--it is late June!!! The wine tastings, particularly good at Willamette (rhymes with damnit) Valley Wines, were clustered in town and it seemed they all started to taste the same after a couple. We did go to the beautiful Brooks Winery which had a view of Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Hood and 2 others. Anniversary Dinner was spent at Restaurant 411 in town and featured yummy candied bacon and dill pickle soup. Friday afternoon we went to a street festival with lots of locals and talked to a Mother and son from Virginia traveling from Yellowstone to Seattle and another man who had come to UT for the Oregon/UT football game. Saturday morning we left for Cannon Beach and the drive up Hwy 101. There was a parade at Tillamook (home of the Tillamook Dairy a big dairy on the west coast, think Purity Dairy). The 2 hour drive took about 5 hours but once we found the Pacific Ocean it was beautiful--big rocks and a true robin's egg blue.

The Gorge looked like mountains covered with velvet

The Columbia River is big and wide

Lots of wineries dot the shores

McMinnville, OR  (they said it was named after the TN home of Jack Daniels)

Cloudy sunset in McMinnville--notice the winter coat

This was good wine-first introduced to us by Robin and Julia
when they came up here for the football game

Great anniversary dinner (a little late)--43 years!

Brooks Winery had good wine, good people watching and a beautiful view

Flowers too.

Salt Lake City

We took off Sunday for the 5 hour drive from Arches to Salt Lake City. It will be nice to leave behind the sand for pavement. Most of the way was on a 2 lane Hwy 191 and we didn't hit interstate until we were outside Provo--it was a long trek for the driver. Pony Express in North Salt Lake was a terrific stop--centrally located for the sites we wanted to hit for our 1 day tour of Salt Lake. The state capitol, the Mormon Tabernacle and the Great Salt Lake were our main attractions. First, the city was sooo clean and after 2 weeks in the sandy National Parks this was a welcome relief. Downtown was full of darling homes with pretty gardens, lots of men in white shirts and suits and beautiful young ladies in dresses. They all seem to work for the Mormon Church. Ol' Brigham Young built quite the religious complex. Next to the Tabernacle sits the Beehive House and the another big house that housed his 27 wives and 56 children (the numbers change according to where you look but it seems more than 1 wife at a time is a little overwhelming).


Their state capitol sits on a bluff overlooking Salt Lake City

Brigham Young was probably this big for all he did

Great house on the downtown bluff

Very pretty gardens

My mama used to say if I had a pretty little church to go to I would go!

The Tabernacle--only worthy Mormons can enter

We went to a half hour recital in the Tabernacle Organ House --Awesome

 We headed to the Salt Lake which was very big, dense and interesting. This was a great stop. 

This lake used to cover most of Utah and some of CO, Nev, and Arizona

Tuesday we leave for a 2 day drive to the Oregon coast. The first stop is the fairgrounds in Jerome, Idaho -- perfect weather followed us there and we plugged in for 10 bucks--Terry was fascinated by the horses and I tried to get over the smell of horse poop. Next will be a Walmart in Mt. Hood (for our 43rd Anniversary), and a drive through the beautiful velvet mountains of the Columbia River Gorge. Then on Thursday into Portland and Olde Stone Valley Wineries in McMinnville, OR--unexplored territory

Arches and Moab

As the crow flies, Arches is 150 miles from our camp at Lake Powell--by road, 250 miles on a two lane heavily traveled Hwy 191, so we traveled the 5 hours from Lake Powell to a new BLM camp site. We traveled through Winslow, AZ of Eagles fame and because we lost an hour and ran into a lot of road work we pulled into Sand Flats (a misnomer) Recreation area around 4pm on Wednesday afternoon. Let it be said there is a thin layer of dirt on EVERYTHING in the RV and car. We will not recover from this until we leave for Salt Lake City on Sunday. The camp site costs $20 a night --pretty costly for no services-- to park and on top of one of the prettiest mountains in the area. Since we have been here, we have found several BLM Campgrounds--first come first serve that probably cost the same. It was still inexpensive, the only limitation we found for us was that you could only run your generator between 8am and 8pm so we needed to be there 2 hours in the morning, then 2 hours in the evening. It was windy enough at the time that the air conditioner didn't get used much.

We were here 4 nights and had different neighbors each night
 

La Sal Mountain with her snow was the view out the RV

Thursday at Arches we drove the entire park and saw the magnificent arches and windows. We toured the village of Moab which is sort of a tired little dusty town with nothing but restaurants, hotels and adventure centers. Biking, rafting, ATV-ing are huge here. I busted my knee on one of the hikes and judging from the resulting scar I should have gone for stitches but not.

We thought it weird that we had not seen arches like this in any of the other parks

I think people gathered at the arches to commune with God

Turret Arch

Salt Valley was real green because of the unusually rainy spring 



There are over 2,000 arches throughout the park

Balance Rock looked like it was about to fall

Fins in this park are large, thin walls of rock

Look closely --this rock formation is called the Parade of Elephants

Love how they explain

The 3 Gossips and Sheep Rock

 

Friday we took the Ranger guided hike of Fiery Furnace (2 miles round trip over pretty rigorous terrain). Ranger Monica was full of information and we added to our lexicon--cryptobiotic soil. This is the crusty bacteria that grows on top of the sand to allow plants to grow --it is the difference between this place and arid deserts like the Mojave. They have had a lot of rain so everything is still real green. During the hike through the Fiery Furnace,  Ranger Monica gave us a note card and a pencil and told us to write down thoughts -- I wrote Scat (I saw some large animal poop, twice), pools (there were very pretty pools holding water and was probably the reason for the large animals through the canyons), and something else I don't remember. I asked Terry what he wrote: God gives us beautiful land and the responsibility to take care of it. I like his thoughts better. 

Fiery Furnace was truly different

Fitz holding up the arch

This fooled you into thinking Fiery Furnace would be an easy hike
 

Sunset at the Sand Flats Recreation was really the best we've seen in a while. We met a cute couple from Durango, Co that were camping there too. They were a couple of years out of Fort Lewis College in Durango and bicyclers-think Lance Armstrong. They were fun to talk to.

View from Sand Flats



4 wheelers, motor cyclists and bikers heaven

Moon and Sun up at the same time

We love our sunsets
 

Saturday we had the choice between going to Canyonlands National Park about an hour away or go white water rafting. About 30 years ago the Barksdale's neighbors, Bernie and Dale Schwid (who were about 30 years older than us) were on vacation and were said to be rafting on the Colorado River. Both of us said "how cool" so now we have a chance to be like the very admirable Schwid's --we took it. Our trip was OK--we took the mid-day trip 11-4, the water was up so it was more drifting down the river than rafting the rapids but we had a few opportunities to get wet. We had Mel as our guide and a family from Missouri (parents and 4 boys--17,15,13 and 10 years old) traveled with us so we had a lovely day.

We had a great Colorado River Ride

Lake Powell

3 hours from our BLM at Zion sits Lake Powell, a man-made lake created in 1963 on the Colorado River with the building of Glen Canyon Dam. All the houseboating magazines use this beautiful lake as their cover pic. It is 226 miles long and the second biggest man-made lake in America with Lake Mead created by the Hoover Dam as the biggest. This has always been on my bucket list and it did not disappoint. We stayed at Wahweap RV at Lake Powell Resort --on absolutely beautiful land. High rent district after our BLM! A 2 hour boat tour on the lake was truly awesome. It started out a little rough in that the captain started off with all the things they would normally do but because the usual boat they use for our tour had broken down we wouldn't be able to do. However, we had a lovely tour through Antelope and Glen Canyons. Every thing here is HUGE--6 lanes at the boat launch, a brown rocky beach a quarter of a mile from the parking lot, a large marina and resort. We are here before?!the crowd. 

The Marina is huge and this doesn't include the dock where you do the rentals
--a lot of these boats are time share because in Arizona you are not allowed to spend more
than 30 days a year on your own boat?!?

The beach area is as pretty as a post card-the water will continue to rise (about 14ft.) over the summer

The boat launch

The canyons were full of people out on the hot day

Glen Canyon Dam was built in the late 50's for hydroelectric power and flood control

The mighty Colorado is really important to the west, providing much of the
water to the farmers in the southwest

Bryce Canyon

Saturday we left out for the 2 hour drive to Bryce Canyon National Park. It was downright chilly when we got there--it is about 20 degrees cooler in this canyon than at Zion. There is an 80 year old tunnel through the mountains (Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel) which gives a shortcut to Bryce Canyon. This road is lined with ranches and prairie land. Hoodoos, fins, and spires are new words to our lexicon. These make up Bryce Canyon Amphitheater which is like a mini Grand Canyon in grandeur. We hiked the Rim Trail (2 1/2 miles, again the Fitbit loved it) and saw the most magnificent rock forms. On the way back the long horned goat were on tourist duty and posed for pictures.

Located in the middle of southern Utah, Bryce will be hard to get to but worth it.

This is a Hoodoo--a tall, thin totem pole of rock topped by hard eroded stone
\ that protects the column from the elements

4 or 5 Hoodoos equal a Fin

Many Fins put together make for this gorgeous amphitheater

The trails we walked along the rim of the amphitheater were easy

This fella (his family was nearby too) held up traffic but posed for pictures

Our BLM parking place turned out to be a real winner. It was the first time we stayed out for 3 days and even though the reviews on the Park Advisor App were positive we have a pretty big rig to do this. The wind was really blowing, especially on our last night there. On Saturday night we had a lot less neighbors than on Thursday night --around 30 different campers-- no tent campers made it through the wind on Saturday night. 3 nights on the land and we only filled our gray water tank to half and we took nightly showers, the downside was that we had no cell or TV service because we were so far into the boonies. We just brought out the cards and books. Success!

On  North Creek we parked near the road but past us on the creek there were several
Class "C" campers and tent campers

This Hemp RV showed up on Friday down the road

Wonderful Sunset