We got home from the store and I got on my laptop to check my email. I got one from my brother Art. Somebody had found my phone at the grocery store!! Are you kidding me???!!! Instead of turning it in to Customer Service she took it home. She said she didn't trust leaving it with the people at the store. **SIGH** She called the first name in my phone and found out who's phone it was. Art sent me the email with her phone number so I called her and told her who I was. It's amazing to me that she found it on Wednesday when I lost it on Friday. It was sitting at the checkout counter of the grocery store for five days and nobody noticed it. Anyway she asked if I wanted her to return it to the store tomorrow and I said, "That would be great." I went in to the store last night and of course Customer Service was closed and nobody knew anything about a cell phone. I tried calling the person who found the phone and nobody is answering and there's no way to leave a message. **SIGH**
Yesterday we decided to get out and do something. I KNOW!!!! We actually got out!! Packed up a picnic lunch and bottles of water and took off!! We took a drive to Bear Lake which is up in the northeastern corner of the state. It's one of the scenic byways in Utah (there's LOTS of them). Check out this link http://www.byways.org/explore/byways. We did the Logan Canyon Scenic Byway. It started in Logan, Utah and ended at Garden City, Utah at Bear Lake. I remember before we started fulltiming when we were going somewhere it was just to get from point A to point B with no stops in between. This time we took our time and stopped at ALL the places the guide said to stop at.
The scenery was absolutely beautiful!! We haven't even made it to Logan yet!
First stop was the Visitor Center in Logan. We picked up a map of the canyon and another guide of what is a "must see". It was pretty much the same things that I had printed out from the website. The lady at the Visitor Center wasn't exactly friendly. She just sat at her desk and pointed out where the brochures were. No additional information or any of the small talk you usually hear at most Visitor Centers. Didn't even ask me to sign the guest book.
At the Visitor Center in Logan
Next stop was the Nature Center. We had to park across the street and cross the busy two lane highway and then walk a quarter of a mile to get to it. We kept walking and walking on this trail and never did see it. It was so hot we decided to just go back to the truck and continue on.
Next stop was a dam called Second Dam. Don't know where First Dam is. LOL. We thought that would be a great place to stop and have our lunch. Nope. The guide said either stop at the lower dam or continue a little further and park at the upper dam. We wanted to stop at the upper dam but never did see the parking area. Hmmmm, this isn't turning out so good. We continued on and did end up finding a "day use" area to have our lunch. It was right on the Logan River which is running incredibly fast right now due to the snow melt. There were only two picnic tables there. One was filthy dirty and the other one was sitting in the water. Gheeze. We ended up just sitting on the steps and eating our lunch. At least it was shaded and we did have the background noises of birds and the river. The nice thing about the "day use" places in this National Forest (there are a lot of them) is that every one of them has picnic tables and bathrooms. Nice touch.
Logan River
Fortified from our lunch we continued on. Across the road we could see way up on the mountainside our next stop. I don't think so. It was a 1.8 mile hike straight up the side of the mountain to the wind caves. Years of wind and water have worn a triple arch and natural cave into the limestone rock. We thought it would be a lot cooler up in the mountains but it was just to hot to be climbing up there.
Can you see the arches and the cave? Click on any of the pics for a better view
Next stop was the Wood Camp Campground. The wood from this place used to be used for railroad ties, telegraph poles and firewood used in the lime kilns that processed the limestone and mortar used to build the Mormon Temple in Logan. It also used to be a campground for loggers who needed rest and food and water. Not much of anything was left here. There was a trail here that led to what is called the Jardine Juniper. It is said that it's thought to be 1500 years old and one of the oldest living juniper trees on earth! The trail to see it was 5.8 miles one way. Good Grief! That's way more than I want to do.
Next stop was Ricks Spring Cavern. That was for you, Rick. LOL. Had to get a picture of that! It got it's name for the guy who discovered it and also because they thought it was a spring. It's actually a diversion of the Logan River. They found this out when they put dye in the river and it came up there.
From there we went to Tony Grove Lake. There was hardly any writeup about it in the guide at all. It was a seven mile DRIVE off the main highway. This was our favorite spot on the whole trip, I think. There was a level one mile hike around the lake and it was absolutely beautiful up there. Can you believe all the snow on the ground??
Finally, we made it to the Bear Lake Overlook and Visitor Center at 4:30. The Visitor Center was closed. That's okay, we were really only there to take pictures of the lake and pick up some brochures of campgrounds at the lake. They also had a soda machine and we had finished our water long, long ago. Rod got a coke and I got a water.
The area was really hazy for some reason. Some people are saying it's from the fires in Northern California that's causing it. Whatever the reason, the pictures didn't come out very good. Trust me, it's a beautiful lake and HUGE! The pretty blue color comes from the limestone particles in the lake.
We drove down the hill into the city of Garden City and the last stop on our "tour". We headed north to see what RV Parks or campgrounds they had and after just a few miles we saw a sign on the side of the road that said "Welcome to Idaho". Oops, didn't know we were that close. We turned around and headed back south. We found a State Park at the southern end of the lake. It's exactly the kind of place we've been looking for. They have some GREAT pull through spots with a view of the lake right outside our windows. Perfect!! Full hookups for $25 a night. When we got there it was pretty much empty. Could be because it was a Thursday because when we got home I looked it up online and nothing was available on the weekends but several spots were available during the week. Darn. We still don't know where we're going when we leave here in two weeks.
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