September 2016

We made pretty good time today driving most of the way across the mountains and valleys of Northern Nevada along Interstate 80. We started from Elko, where it was still raining a little bit and ended up in Fernley, where it was quite a bit warmer and mostly sunny.

The trip was a bit tedious for me as the driver and for Damsel as the co-pilot, since there were areas of gusty winds along the route. That makes me tense and my arms and shoulders get fatigued and sore after a while. However, after arriving at Desert Rose, setting up camp and having late lunch and a beer, all is good with both of us.

Damsel took quite a few photos along an otherwise boring highway: there were a few interesting rock formations, an interstate tunnel pair, several casino/gas stops and a truck with a happy load.

Tomorrow, we will be traveling to an undisclosed location in the Sacramento Valley. Our route will take us over Donner Pass (still on I-80) and thence via gold rush country to our destination where we will spend several days with family in a long-overdue reunion. Blogging may be light for a week or so.

We actually had a pretty good drive today, albeit not as scenic as the past few days. One of the most interesting things we saw today along Interstate 80 was the Morton Salt Facility and the famous Bonneville Salt Flats before we left Utah.

Here in Nevada, along I-80, the scenery was interesting with broad valleys and mountains typical of the Great Basin Area. We had some minor gusty winds along the way and when arriving in Elko, we had a cloudburst from a thunderstorm in progress.

Damsel and I parked the RV at a Smith’s Supermarket and went inside just before the cloudburst. When we emerged from the store, the ground was wet but it had stopped raining.

At the campground, the showers were intermittent enough that I didn’t have to connect the shore power, cable and city water in the rain. Note the front wheels in the image above are again off the ground due to the slope of our campsite. We saw other class A RVs in the park with the same situation.

Tomorrow, we have more I-80 traveling west, ultimately arriving in Fernley, NV, which is a small mountain town southeast of Reno. The forecast for our journey is for partly sunny skies and a slight chance of rain. It should be a nice trip.

We landed in Provo on our fourth night out after a day of fantastic scenery, but a difficult drive with windy conditions and up and down winding mountain roads for part of the trip. It was worth the effort though and we’re relaxing in a very nice RV park located in a wooded area near the Provo River and Utah Lake.

Damsel took over 400 photos today of the National Park this morning and of the various rock formations, mountains, rivers, livestock (did not notice any wildlife) and of a traffic jam on US 6 where the two lane road was restricted to one lane with a signal system for alternating between northbound and southbound traffic.

Tomorrow should be an easier drive along I-15 northbound and thence via I-80 westbound. Our next stop will be Elko, Nevada. Although the drive should be easier, it will be a fairly long 4.5 hours of driving – we prefer less than four per day because the tired and cranky kicks in with the longer drives. But the vast distances between towns in Northern Nevada dictates that the drive be a bit longer than we like.

Day three finds us camping in Torrey, Utah which is about ten miles west of the entrance to Capitol Reef National Park. Today, like the first days of our excursion, we passed some incredible Western American scenery. We started near Lake Powell and climbed through southern and central Utah reaching a summit of almost 8400 feet above mean sea level.

Tomorrow, we will break camp, spend some time at the Capitol Reef National Park (neither of us have been here before) and then proceed northbound towards the Salt Lake City area where we have more camping planned. It is certain to be another spectacular scenery day for us.

Thoughts on the fifteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks

I was going to post something to commemorate the 9/11 attacks as usual, but since we are on the road, I did not have much time to come up with a suitable tribute. However, our long-time internet pal in Hawaii, Kini, says it best. His post tells it like it is when it comes to who are really the enemies of freedom. (Besides the Democrats, that is.)