Travel Day - Virgin, UT

On Saturday, Amber and Bruce went to Red Canyon and did a hike there while I got things hooked up and moved to Virgin, Utah, which is a few miles outside of Zion National Park. I seem to have a pretty good system/routine and was afraid that if extra people were helping out it might distract me and I might miss something, so I thought it would be best if I just did things myself. This drive was the first time Google Maps not knowing I was towing a trailer was a bit of an issue, as the route it wanted me to take was through a tunnel in Zion National Park which had height and width limits that would require a $15 permit for me to go through, where park rangers close the tunnel to two way traffic and I would have had to drive down the center of the lanes. There is also a combined maximum length of 50 feet, which I think is right around my total length, so I decided to back track and take the long way around. I think it went from a two hour drive to three, so not too bad for what ended up being an 150 mile drive. It’s a pretty nice RV park but with close campsites again:

Travel Day - Bryce Canyon City, UT

On Saturday I made the almost five hour, 245 mile drive from Moab to Bryce Canyon City, Utah. A lot of the drive was on an interstate again, which is not ideal when you are towing in a 80 MPH speed limit area, but otherwise was a pretty nice drive. The campground was pretty cramped, but it was right outside the door of Bryce Canyon National Park: It was also nice because the campground was on the shuttle route that went in to town and also through some of the more popular areas of the park, so we didn’t have to drive into the park and worry about parking.

Travel Day - Moab, UT

On Saturday, I made the hour and 45 minute, 100 mile drive to Moab, Utah, after spending almost a month in Colorado! The campground was adequate, but a long way from nice. It is under new ownership since I booked it, and they seemed to have recently renovated the common areas, like bathrooms, office, and pool area, which I guess is nice, but not really important to me. The campsites themselves were tiny though, which I guess isn’t as easily fixed: I did get a rain shower right at sunset that brought a double rainbow, so it wasn’t all bad:

Travel Day - Fruita, CO

On Saturday I made the two hour, 110 mile drive from Carbondale to Fruita, Colorado, which is just outside Grand Junction. I’ve been really impressed with how beautiful western Colorado is, even just from I-70, with mountains visible regularly but also going through many canyons too. The campground is another state park, much smaller than the one I stayed at in Denver, but still very nice and has good campsites too. I can look out either side of my trailer and see mountains, plus it has a tree that shades my trailer, and some shade for the picnic table too:

Castlewood Canyon State Park

On Monday morning I hiked the 6.5 mile figure eight loop through Castlewood Canyon State Park. It was a pretty location, and it had varied elevation throughout which I really liked, instead of the straight up and straight down that the last several hikes had been. The canyon has the remains of a dam that failed in the early 1930s that released enough water to flood downtown Denver, approximately 30 miles away:

Mt. Evans

On Wednesday I went with my aunt and and uncle to Mt. Evans, one of Colorado’s fourteeners, or a mountain peak with an elevation of at least 14,000 feet. The drive to the top requires a reservation, and we got to the entrance a few minutes early, so we walked partially around Echo Lake, which is just outside the entrance to Mt. Evans:

We stopped pretty early in the drive up to have lunch because there was a spot with a nice view: I was about one bite in to my sandwich when a lady pulled in with a very flat tire and asked for help changing it. I haven’t had to change a tire with the emergency jack in a car in a long time, but how hard can it be, right? Well, it was more difficult than I remembered. It didn’t start well when I couldn’t even figure out how to get the jack out of her car, it was probably just friction fit, but I wasn’t going to be the one to yank it out and break something, so I ended up using the jack out of my truck, since it is easy to access. Eventually I got the car jacked up and had the flat tire just about off when the car started rolling forward a bit and the jack tipping. I didn’t have anything that I could use as a wheel chock, so I had to put the lug nuts back on the flat tire, take the car down off the jack, and have her turn it around and back the rear tires up to the curb so it would stay still. I was able to then jack the car up again, get the spare on, and have her on her way. Overall not terrible, but definitely has me thinking about what tools I should keep in my truck versus my trailer to make changing a flat easier.

Last Wednesday was not a good day for me. I was really bummed/frustrated/upset about my truck and the slide in my trailer, so I basically wasted a day on the doors of Rocky Mountain National Park by just sitting in my trailer reading a book. Looking back frustrates me again because I’m usually pretty good about not letting things out of my control bother me.

Travel Day - Denver, CO

On Thursday I made the relatively short 80 mile, two hour drive down to a state park in Denver:

Travel Day - Grand Tetons National Park

On Wednesday I made the drive down to Gros Ventre campground at Grand Tetons National Park for a short stay. It was only 124 miles but the drive took me almost 3.5 hours. It was a lot of scenic backroads with good mountain views, and then one pretty large mountain to go over. Climbing the mountain is no problem, I’ve been really happy with how well my truck has handled the mountains so far, it’s had plenty of power to pull the trailer up them. Going down this mountain was a little more difficult though, it was a 20% grade with lots of twists, so it also had a 25 MPH speed limit. This meant riding the brakes all the way down, and even with a stop about halfway, I still cooked the brakes by the bottom. Oh well, I guess next time I’ll have to take multiple stops.

Whitefish and Kalispell

Last Monday I decided to check out the two larger towns near West Glacier. Whitefish has a beach, and it was in the upper 80s, so thought it might be nice to check it out. I got close enough to see that it was pretty small, and there were way too many people and way too much traffic to get to the beach, so I went to the main street shops and restaurants area instead. Aimless shopping is not really my favorite thing, so I didn’t spend long here before driving around more of Whitefish, and then heading over to Kalispell. This was a pretty large town, and even had a Costco so I was able to pick up a few things. After dinner I went to see the new Thor movie before heading back home for the night.

Two Medicine Lake Boat Ride

On Monday we made our way back over to Two Medicine for our first of four boat rides, first stopping at Goat’s Lick again because there were goats close enough to the road for a good picture:

They were just hanging out enjoying the views of this waterfall:

Since we had 30 minutes to kill before getting on the boat, I did the mile or so Paradise Point trail since the trailhead was right by where we needed to catch the boat. I was almost late getting back because there were deer on the trail that were way to comfortable with humans, and they ended up leading us down the last couple tenths of a mile of the trail: