


Thursday, April 23, 2015

1,000 miles from home

Yesterday, we did another 151 miles (242 kms) and when I sat down to calculate the remaining distance to our home at Cabri, Saskatchewan the GPS told me that it was exactly 1,000 miles (1,600 kms).

Speaking of miles, Sherman's odometer clicked over to 80,000 miles (128,000 kms) yesterday. And, he'll be 20 years old this year! He's still lookin' pretty good, isn't he?

And, he did a great job climbing some steep hills yesterday. We spent the day between 7,000 and 9,000 feet in altitude, and he didn't have any problems at all. Here are some pics from our day's drive...

A herd of deer at the side of the road.

Lots of nice views.

The road at this section could have been in better shape!

But this part was nice.

Somewhere in Utah...

Lots of truck traffic going through this pass.

Ruth, putting her feet up.

The last steep section.

That last steep section was through a part of National Forest, but we only found one suitable spot for overnighting, and we actually passed it by hoping to find something even better...which we didn't! Oh well. So we ended up in the town of Duchesne.

They have a huge new RV parking section at their fairgrounds. Maybe 100 sites, and they were all empty except for two that had long term campers on them. All of the electrical and sewage hookups had locks on them. But, no signs or anything as to how to occupy one of them. Strange.

We figured that we'd keep driving, and on the way out of town they had a really nice city run welcome center, so I stopped in to ask about the fairgrounds camping. Obviously we don't need any hookups, we were just looking for somewhere to park.

The girl explained that the fairgrounds camping is only available during an event at the fair. So they've got this brand new camping area that is hardly ever used. Doesn't make any sense. She said that was so that the area RV parks don't lose any business. They've also banned all RV parking by city ordinance. 

Apparently this whole stretch between Duchesne and Vernal, Utah is like that because of oilfield workers who thought they could just park their RV's anywhere. 

We ended up at the nearby Starvation Reservoir State Park. They have a beautiful full hookup area, with prices ranging from $18 to $28 a night. Or, they have several primitive camping areas for $12 a night. But, there was nobody around to tell us where these areas were. The entrance booth was self serve only, and no maps. We finally found one of the $12 areas, and probably spent $10 on fuel trying to so so. Really poorly organized.

And then to top it all off, the $12 primitive area that we ended up in was not maintained at all. Firepits full of trash, and even a lot of trash simply lying around And the road in was absolutely terrible. For a state park campground, this was one of the worst we've ever seen. There was nobody else around, and if we weren't tired we wouldn't have even stayed.

I'm going to send them an email. 

Having said all of that, the spot we chose was really pretty. Actually had a short five minute storm blow through last night.

But we woke up to a beautiful blue sky!

Another driving day...we're going to be in Wyoming this afternoon.

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  1. Another good travel day, too bad about your campsite though.

    1. The campsite itself wasn't bad but it wasn't worth the $12 that they were asking, especially at this time of year.

  2. Wait a minute, I thought that Sherman was your home... ;c)

    1. Technically he is but during the summer our home base is at the park. :-)

  3. Glad you bypassed the busy (and not particularly scenic) Salt Lake City area!

    1. We had absolutely no desire to go anywhere near Salt Lake City!

  4. Just a thought, maybe just like at Cabri, the seasonal caretakers havent arrived yet at Starvation. Lame that they charge the full $12 though---such parks are often free on the off season.

    1. Yes, but at Cabri when we aren't there the gates get locked so no one can camp there. If the campsites are open then they have to have someone there to keep the area clean and collect the money. What really ticked us off was that there was no map of the park available and the different campgrounds within the park are all spread around. We actually had to return to the main road and take another road to one of the primitive campgrounds which I just happened to see a sign for when we entered the park but had know way of knowing at the time. It was just very frustrating and yes, at that time of year the primitive sites should have been free or $5 but no more than that.

