Dead Horse Point State Park and Canyonlands NP

Dead Horse got its name from a terrible practice. Early cowboys would gather wild horses and corral them with natural brush and tree limbs on a sharp point above the Colorado River. They would pick the ones they liked and leave the others to die in the corral. Yikes. No one knows the reason. 
Dead Horse has the iconic view of the Colorado River horseshoe bend.  

Four miles away is Canyonlands National Park. Canyonlands is north of Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon. They all connect. Stunning! My iPhone does not do the view justice. 

Kate was happy she could go with us on this trip!

 Utah has been a great stop. We were headed to Monument Valley but did not realize it was on the Navajo Reservation along with Antelope Canyon which is closed due to high Covid-19 rates on the reservation. So...we will head to Colorado instead and will get home a few days earlier. 

BTW we have already hit 5,000 miles - so I guess this closer to 6,000 mile trip. Google maps isn’t 100% accurate! 

Arches National Park - Moab, Utah

Sandstone, underground salt bed, ice, extreme temperatures and rain all combine to make some spectacular rock formations and arches. We hiked and hiked and we are worn out! 

Arches was pretty crowded but we could always find a parking spot at a trailhead. I can’t imagine it in mid summer! 

Some rock formations had perfect names... three gossips. Can’t you just picture three women gossiping? 

Balanced rock

Landscape arch

And tons more! This is supposedly the most iconic arch in the national park- “delicate arch”. After hiking about 10 miles,  We were soooo not interested in a mile hike uphill and a mile back! So this is from far away! 

 

Double arch

Sand dune arch


Broken arch


Pine tree arch


Cool sculpture at a local park - 

This and That

Don’t speed through Wendover. We saw at least one person pulled over every time we went out! I don’t know how people handle casinos. We walked in and walked right out   because of the cigarette smoke. No thank you. Guess I will never win that big jackpot! 

Leaving Salt Lake we started to see a bunch of fall colors. 

And then we got to the desert... there is so much of the country is like this!

Then snow in the mountains! 

We passed through Price, Utah. My fathers side great grandmother Janet Thompson Marker is buried in Price and then passed  the coal mining community of Sunnyside, Utah were my fathers mother Abby was born. Dry, desert and active coal plants 

People traveling by RV are a community and have been very nice. Last night Mark was taking a shower in the trailer and I decided to go parks shower. A lady was coming out and said there is a man in there and I don’t like the unisex showers. So I am going to sit right here and my husband is going to sit outside until your done. I told her that wasn’t  necessary but she insisted. She said “we have to look out for each other”. 

Bonneville Salt Flats and Wendover,Nevada

Back in tourist mode! Visited the Bonneville Salt Flats. Had some fun with the camera, drove really fast (didn’t break any speed records), sat amazed at the 30,000 acres of packed salt and watched an incredible sunset. 

You could see the salt flats track. They must smooth it for races. It is pretty bumpy! 

Wendover Will was placed in 1950 to greet gamblers to this casino town. 

Visited the historic Wendover Army Air Base used during WWII to train flight crews on heavy bombers. The Enola Gay And Bock’s Car crews trained in Wendover and started their trip to Japan from Wendover. The Enola Gay dropped the first bomb and Bock’s Car the second. 

The old control lines.  I think technology has improved!

They produced the most skilled arial gunnery servicemen with their unique training facility. 

Enola Gay’s hangar. 

Old WWII hospital. Trivia- I gave birth to both girls in an old WWII hospital that looked much like this! 

Barracks 

We hiked up a hill to see the claimed “curvature of the earth”. Long hike for .... I don’t...  know can you see the earth’s curvature?  Me not so much. 

As we were hiking Mark asked “what would we do if we found a body?”  I was more thinking about snakes. Then I found these. 

A view from the climb looking down at where we parked. 

Greeted by a few antelope- 

Caldwell/Boise Idaho and a Covid 62nd Birthday Celebration!

First, I have never hated aging (ok in truthfulness 30 was a bit hard) but since then I have embraced getting older - especially this one! 62, Social Security, plus my state of Texas retirement means I am done working!  So we celebrated today!  First with some bubbly and champagne Jell-O-Shots found at a Idaho winery (go figure)...  they were super tasty!  We had a redneck lunch on our trucks tailgate with a hibiscus mimosa and later Mark made me a steak dinner back at the trailer.   

Side note Boise has crazy traffic. Pretty place but NOT someplace that I would even consider for a place to live! 

Pretty wineries with relatively inexpensive wines. 

I got to spend the evening with a good friend from Austin that lives in Boise. It was great to catch up with Linda Gibson. 

Wide spot in road, wild fires, dust and Milky Way!

The high winds I talked about yesterday have wreaked havoc on beautiful Oregon. Trees down everywhere, roads closed due to wild fires and fires way to close to our friends farmhouse. Prayers! 

View of Mount Hood with smoke 

We thought these were clouds. Nope - smoke from the fires near Mount Jefferson. 

We stayed at a wide spot in the road called Riley, Oregon. Nothing but dust, some ducks on a pond behind our camper, and a view of the Milky Way. Not sure it is very clear in my pic. 

We woke up to 30 degrees and frozen water pipes. We turned on the furnace and water in about 5 minutes. But lesson learned. Another lesson - make reservations at really popular places!  We didn’t for Moab and everything is completely booked. We did get someplace about 40 minutes from arches national park. It will be an inconvenience but at least we have a place to hook up and have air conditioning for Kate.