Still in Salt Lake

We haven't been doing a whole lot this past week. The cold, cold temps came back. The power was off for 3 days from 8:00 to 5:00 all day. We survived with our generators. We have 2 Honda 2000 generators that we use with a cord (called a parallel port) that runs between them for more power. This week the power is supposed to be off every day between 1:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon. Jeeze, this is getting ridiculous. The camphost saw Rod filling up the generators with the gas can so he took the empty gas can and filled it up for us. Now, that was a nice gesture.


We haven't been able to bbq out much since we've been here either, it's just too cold. It does get kinda crowded with everybody inside too. I'm so glad I bought the DVD player for the kids. At least it keeps them busy in the other room. LOL


Saturday we went to watch Ashton's soccer game. I was really looking forward to that. After spending many, many cold days watching his mother play I couldn't wait to see if he got any of her talent. Time will tell. Five year olds playing soccer is hilarious. It's more like a rugby scrum with everybody fighting over the ball until somebody breaks free and tries to run the ball down the field and hopefully they will score in the other team's goal and not their own. I tried to upload a video with no luck. I'll try again later. At the end of the game there are always rewards for everybody, win or lose (even Reilly).


It's hard work being a spectator in the cold...


The kids spent the day with us after the game and then stayed the night. They love having a sleepover here. Mama and Daddy came to pick them up on Sunday and they went to their other grandparent's house for dinner. We'll see them again on Tuesday when they come over. Todd is going to make dinner for us. How nice is that??

It's so hard to dress yourself when you're only 3 but you just gotta try...




So, that's what's been going on here. Not a whole lot. We'll probably do more of the same for this week too.

Salt Lake City, Utah

Yep, we're back in Salt Lake City again. This is our third time in this RV park. We left Moab Saturday at our usual time of 10:00 and made the five hour drive to Salt Lake City. We drove up Hwy 6 because it was a lot shorter route than we did last summer. We had been told that this drive was beautiful and also to be careful because there are a lot of deer hit by cars on this hwy. Well, the drive wasn't exactly beautiful except at Soldier Summit which is 7500 feet and was still covered in snow. Gorgeous! And as is usual with our wildlife sightings we didn't see one single deer. LOL.


Soldier Summit


We've seen windmills all over the U.S.


We arrived in Salt Lake City at about 4:00 after stopping once for lunch and fuel. Todd & Michele came over with Ashton and Reilly a little while later with dinner! What a nice treat. They stopped at Five Guys for burgers and fries. Michele had told me they were to die for and Rod thought they were just okay but I thought they were pretty darned good. I just LOVE a good burger.

We were informed yesterday that the electricity would be turned off between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm on Wed, Thur and Fri. Three days with no electric all day!! No compensation, no apology, nothing. I understand they're having a lot of problems with electric here but it's unacceptable to just turn it off for 3 days. We have generators but have never used them to power our rig. They just ride along with us in the tool box in the back of truck. Well, today was the day to bring them out. We found out we sure can't run a bunch of stuff with them. After a few times of having them shut off we realized we needed to unplug everything that wasn't being used. Every time I tried to run the A/C it shut off the generators. So, we decided to just leave for the day and headed down to Thanksgiving Point where there is a dinosaur museum. Rod LOVES those things!


He reads every single thing!


Utah Raptor


T-Rex


Giant Sea Turtle


YIKES!


Triceratops



We've decided after thinking about it for a month or so that we're not going to Alaska this summer. We're really disappointed about it but some other things are just too important right now. Rod's 88 year old mom has experienced some health issues recently and then broke her hip on Easter Sunday. She has been living alone in her house and realizes she can't do that anymore. Rod has been in constant contact with her and his sister Sue. We'll be going up to Port Angeles this summer to help get her house ready to sell and she'll be going into an assisted living facility after she rehabs from the hip surgery. We're all praying for a speedy recovery and getting her back on track.

We're still coming to see you John & Brenda!!

Arches and Canyonlands

After doing laundry on Wednesday we came home and hunkered down waiting out the storm. The dust was incredible! Rod took this picture so we could get a before and after view. You can't even see the mountains in the distance.


This is what it's supposed to look like.


Thursday Howard and Linda had to work at their camphosting job so we picked up some pizzas and salad and headed up to their place in Arches. On the way up we decided to stop at the trail that goes up to Delicate Arch. We had done it last year and knew it was just a quick hike up to it. Well, we got on the wrong trail. We were about halfway in when we realized this wasn't the same trail. This one was 3 miles long and went right up to the arch. The other one is only a mile and you see the arch in the distance. We knew we didn't have time to do this hike with pizzas still in the truck so we came back down. I think we'll need to come back to this park again next year because we really want to do that hike and some other hikes in the park also.

We saw these guys while we were driving up. Unbelievable!!


We also stopped to look at some Ute Indian petroglyphs


The pizza


Rod is digging into the salad first


We left before it got dark this time and it was incredibly beautiful driving down the park road during the sunset.


Today we joined everybody at Brad & Suzanne's trailer where Brad had prepared breakfast tacos. YUMMY!! We had such a good time visiting with everybody while we were here in Moab. We sat around for awhile but Howard and Linda really had to leave because there was a missing hiker in the park and they wanted to help out with that. He had been missing since the night before. When we left he still hadn't been located.

Howard and Linda heading off to work


Our plan for the day was to go to Canyonlands National Park, Island in the Sky. We said our good-byes to Howard & Linda and Brad & Suzanne and headed out that way. It's 18 miles down to the gate at Arches and then another 30 or so miles to the entrance to Canyonlands. The scenery is absolutely amazing. Huge rock formations are everywhere.



We got to Canyonlands and all I have to say is WOW!! It's unbelievably beautiful. It reminded me a lot of the Grand Canyon but on a much smaller scale. Some of the places Rod couldn't go to the edge because his legs got wobbly looking down the shear cliffs. This is Mesa Arch which sits right on the edge of the cliff.


Heights don't bother me...


This was taken from under the arch


Even this little guy wasn't scared


Tomorrow we're headed out of here to Salt Lake City for a month to visit family. I'll leave you with some more amazing pictures from Canyonlands, Island in the Sky.

Moab, Utah

We left Grants and drove 200 miles to Cortez, Colorado. We drove up the same highway we did last year but this time we had no blowouts. YAY!! In fact, the whole drive was uneventful and really boring. We actually pulled out of the campground before 10:00 (it was 9:53). LOL. We arrived at the campground that Rod had called and it was pretty disgusting. We drove on down the road where we saw a KOA. Not exactly one of our favorite places to stay (too expensive) but they had room and it was decent. Sites were very close together but nobody was parked on one side of us. It was only for one night so it wasn't too bad. This gives us a new state to add to our map too.

We left the KOA and headed for Moab, Utah for a few days. It was a much prettier drive than going through New Mexico Indian land.




We got set up and then called Howard & Linda who are camphosting at Arches National Park. Howard & Linda were instrumental in our decision of buying the right kind of 5th wheel to fulltime in. We are so grateful to them for their guidance. We had not seen them since we were all at the Daytona Rally in 2006. We had SUCH a good time with them last night. Suzanne & Brad (who are readers of our blog) were also in the area and camping at Arches. We chose not to camp there because there are no hookups whatsoever. No electric, no water, no sewer. Not even a place to take a shower. It's a beautiful campground though if you can get by without those amenities. They joined us at Howard & Linda's little cabin and I have to tell you, I haven't laughed that much in a long, long time. In fact we were having such a good time that the camera never left the kitchen table so no pictures. Suzanne brought over appetizer stuff and Linda prepared an impromptu dinner of burgers, salad and baked potatoes. We had nothing to contribute because we weren't planning on staying so long. We are camped in town at Moab Rim Campground and it's quite a long and twisting road in and out of Arches. We left about 9:30 and had to drive on those twisty roads in the pitch black of night. We actually met some cars going up to the campground.

Our weather really turned last night. It was so windy that I decided to stow our satellite dish. The park has free wifi and cable so it wasn't a big deal. We rocked all night long in the wind and most of today. We decided to go into town and do laundry and pick up a few things at the grocery store. We ran into Suzanne & Brad there. They asked if we were going up to the campground but we decided against it. We were in the middle of an incredible dust storm. The dust here in Moab is reddish orange and it completely covered everything. Then the rains came. What a mess!! Our rig is covered in the red mud. We were planning on leaving here tomorrow but a snow storm is predicted for tomorrow and Friday so AGAIN we'll be staying for two extra days. We have mountains to go over to get to Salt Lake City and don't need to be driving through snow. Saturday is supposed to be clear and beautiful so we'll leave then.

HAPPY EASTER!!

I see that cartoon every year and every year it makes me laugh.

We haven't been doing much this last week. We have moved a few times. Tuesday we left The Ranch and drove to Bernardo, New Mexico where we planned to stay for two days. Well, guess what?? The wind came up again so we ended up staying an extra day. We can't travel safely with 40-50 mile per hour wind gusts. So, we were at the Kiva RV Park & Horse Motel (lol, yes that's right) for 3 days. There's nothing to speak of here as far as amenities but we don't use those things anyway. We just laid low and waited for the weather to pass.


Our site


Friday we drove a whole 120 miles northwest and ended up at the Bar S RV Park in Grants, New Mexico. There is a lot to do in this area but it's way too cold. We even got snow yesterday and last night. Good grief, isn't it spring?? I think we left Texas a month too early. We stayed in this area last year when we drove through but we stayed at the Sky City Casino RV Park. We thought it was a good deal at $25 a night. That was before we became members of Passport America. It's a discount camping membership program where you pay a yearly fee and get half price at lots of different RV Parks. The park we're in now is $12.75 a night. This being Easter weekend it's very full too. More wind was predicted today so yesterday Rod went to the office and asked if we could stay another night. No problem. Yes, AGAIN we have to stay an extra day because of the wind. At least we're in a position that we can stay if we need to. We did go to the casino last night but came home a few dollars poorer. Great dinner, though.

The train tracks are about 100 yards away and the trains come through what seems like every 10 minutes. It's actually every 30 minutes day and night. Last year the residents complained to the city about the train whistle so the city put in a new crossing gate and lights so now the trains don't blow their whistles when coming through. Actually, they have the option to blow the whistle or not and sometimes they still do. We are pretty well insulated so we don't hear it that much.

So tomorrow we're heading out again. We'll be driving west on I-40 to Gallup and then up Highway 491 through the Navajo Indian Reservation to Cortez, Colorado. Hopefully, this year we'll make it. Remember last year? We had a blowout on Mother's Day on this same highway.

Roswell, New Mexico

The street lamps in town



Remember Roswell? It's supposed to be the BIG cover up by the government about an alien spaceship that crashed out on somebody's ranch. The city has been cashing in on that since it happened back in 1947. I thought the museum would be better than it was. Kinda disappointing. I think it took us all of one hour to complete it and that was with Rod reading most everything. There was some grouchy old man (I think he was a museum volunteer) who was yelling at the kids to keep quiet and watching them with an eagle eye. Very distracting. The museum itself was really just a bunch of newspaper accounts and signed depositions by people who either witnessed the crash or talked to someone who witnessed it. LOL I'll let the pictures do their own talking. If you click on any of the pictures they will be bigger and easier to read.







I guess we didn't have any contact with aliens because we didn't feel any different when we left....




I've had a few requests about how we like the campground we're staying in right now. It's okay for a resort type campground. It's privately owned by Escapee members and if you're a member you can rent out a site that's been vacated by one of the owners. Our rate is $14 a night plus tax plus electric. The electric rate is nine cents per kilowatt hour. When you check in they give you a paper with your meter number on it so you can check it when you get to your site. Nobody has ever done that before. That was a nice touch. We were also given a brochure when we checked in with some interesting facts. When threatened by hail you may hear a thundering boom. Huge air cannons go off automatically and break up hail to protect the nearby pecan orchards. Pecans are an important crop in New Mexico. I didn't know that!

It's called The Ranch because, well, it's out in the middle of a working cattle ranch. We never did see any cows but there was definitely evidence that they were around. Big cows....


Can you see us way out there??




The sites are very long and very wide. We don't have use of the little shed on our site as it belongs to the owner of our lot but we don't need it anyway.



Tomorrow is a travel day (YAY!!!) to Bernardo for a few days.