Saturday morning, we got up and going from our cute little RV Park. Henry was pretty low on diesel, so I routed us to West Wendover to a ’Mudflap’ participating Maverick station. Yesterday we drove roughly 365 miles, and today would be about 375 miles. The terrain is very uppy-downy, so Henry is getting pretty crummy fuel economy.
Most of our day was spent on back highways, but while on I-84 we saw a couple of wildlife overpasses. I guess they train their critters around here.
In one of our uppys, the juniper forest was really pretty.
In the downy, the valley was very brown.
As we approached West Wendover, looking to the east was either a mirage, or white salt flats, or the outskirts of Great Salt Lake? I don’t know, but the flat ground to the east was white.
We fueled up and turned south on a state highway. We were all alone most of the day.
It was a very peaceful relaxing drive with no traffic, so I started taking pictures of the various wildlife warning signs. Fluffy sheep? That’s a new one.
There were a lot of advertisements for deer….we saw signs for leaping deer, major deer, deer with flashing lights, deer with flags, migratory deer. And we saw ZERO deer. So much for advertising.
We decided this is a jackalope.
We saw sign for elk, with the critter facing both left like this one, and right. They must migrate.
Cows were advertised, and we did actually see some.
And apparently they also have frisky bulls, but we didn’t see any.
I think there were more signs that I missed. We did see horses out in the wilderness, just randomly wandering. Like WAAAY out in the wilderness. Maybe they really were wild? 🤷♀️ Utah welcomed us, and subsequently warned us of cows.
It’s a bad photo, but there was a big field of solar panels, so I guess they grow those here in Utah, too. 🤭
We made it to I-15 and stopped for fuel in Cedar City. The fuelometer said we had five miles til empty. WHAT?! I was nervous all day watching that darn thing compared to the distance remaining to travel. Sometimes we needed to go farther than we had fuel for! 😬 But then we’d do some flat or downhill, and gain some miles. Whew! We made it, for our second fuel stop of the day. Yea, we took the scenic, which probably wasn’t as fuel efficient as the interstate. But it was scenic, AND we didn’t have to drive through the metropolis of Ogden/Salt Lake City/Provo, which we very much dislike. They drive WAAY too fast in congested traffic for a big rig like us country folk!
We made it to the cutoff to Sand Hollow, just before St. George. That plateau over there is where we’ll be riding Kawi for the next couple of days.
We were surprised when we pulled into the BLM camping area, that there were only a couple of rigs here. But then we figured out why. The terrain has changed greatly since March. There are a lot of washouts, gullies, and VERY soft sand! Then we remembered that in one of the offroad videos we like to follow, they mentioned that some of the trails have changed a bit due to a big monsoon this summer. Yep – this place was obviously the gully for the wash! We went down one road, headed to where we stayed in March, and we got stuck. Uh-oh!! So we stopped and unloaded Kawi from the trailer. Then Kenny put Henry in 4 Low, and locked-in, and pulled Nitro out to this road to safety. Then he took Kawi for a reconnaissance mission to find a suitable place. We needed a spot that was flat and firm, and that didn’t require going up or down a cliff to get into. These ”cliffs” by the side of the road don’t look like much, and they aren’t for Kawi. But for Nitro, they are a little more sporty than we’re willing to put him through!
We found a spot, right parallel to the road, where some gravel had washed down from the mountain, so that helped give the ground a little more firmness. It wasn’t completely level, but the sand wasn’t real firm where Henry was, so he couldn’t do a lot of juggling around. We tried to set and level the trailer once, and it wouldn’t do it, so had to hook it back to Henry and drive up on some blocks on the passenger side.
It finally leveled, and we’re good. It will be a dusty spot, since we are right on the side of the road, but we didn’t have a lot of choices. It was getting late and the sun was behind the mountain. It’ll be OK. At least the mountain will give us shade in the evening to help cool us down, since it supposed to be in the upper 80’s during the day while we’re here.
Yep – here’ the forecast. We plan to leave here on Tuesday. Good think we have a generator and air conditioning to cool the joint down in the evening.
On Sunday OCTOBER 2, we had a relaxing morning just hanging out. We had a few sprinkles of rain, and some thunder, but nothing really even got wet because it dried so fast. When it got too warm, around noon, we loaded up into Kawi and went for a drive. The roads and trails are way different than they were in March! You can’t see it in this resolution, but Henry and Nitro are down there, all alone, at the base of the hill in between the two cloud shadows in the middle of the picture. Really!
There is a lot more rock exposed on some trails, and there is a lot more sand in other places.
We went to an area where we enjoyed climbing around before. We found the ”toll booth”. Last time, I videoed Kenny and Kawi climbing right up it. This time I tried to be brave and ride along. I took video, and here was the view for a split second. Then we kind of jumped to the side a bit, thunked, stopped, and had to roll back down. Hmmmm. Then we were stuck and couldn’t move forward or backward. I got out to see what was going on.
Ah ha! The gullywashers had burrowed a ditch at the bottom of the wall, which made a moat at the base. Somebody had placed a big rock there, (which admittedly neither of us saw as we approached). We must have kicked it out as we tried to climb he wall, and then it was in our way when we came back down. It’s tight maneuvering here because there’s a wall behind us too, expecially since we kind of jumped a bit to the driver’s side.
This give a little better idea of what we were doing. Note- the advertising on the wall is for an even that is coming up this week. The trails may get real busy starting tomorrow.
We finally got turned around and out, and tootled around awhile until we saw some other peeps doing some wall climbing. So we stopped to watch for awhile. This FourRunner was in really nice shape and climbed right up this vertical wall. They were from Olympia Washington!
Kawi got to go up a few less stressful hills.
We made it to The Top of the World, and we’re pretty sure we saw one of the guys from Off Camber Industries go zooming by in his Kawi. That was fun. He was with another 4-5 Kawi’s! Usually they are an elusive species out here among the Razors and Can-Ams, but they are getting more popular.
The dunes don’t look so menacing from this height, and there is a lot more green plant life down there than six months ago. Those dunes are bigger than they look. There’s a light spot about in the middle of the picture, with a dark spot just below it? That is two side-x-sides sitting on the top of the dune, and a couple more down to the left of that. They’re just little specs!
On our way back to camp, I wanted to go down the Bobsled trail. I took video of some of it, and it was really fun. It is named correctly because there were tight banked turns like this for quite a ways! 🎶Jamaica has a bobsled team! 🎶
HA! I ran our Nebo tracker for today’s side-x-side adventure. Here’s our track: We went all kinds of speeds. The blue is slo-mo-jo, and white is braapin fast.
Here is camp. We’ve seen several more rigs come in this evening, but most of them had a really hard time. Toy haulers and motorhomes got stuck, trucks pulling them out and hauling their trailers for them. And some big rigs just mobbing through the sand and cliffs, drivin like they stole it! As I write this, I think there is a motorhome stuck just down the road to the right of this picture, where they must be spending the night. 🤷♀️ They were down the road for a few hours, then coming back out just as it was getting dark, and…. woops!
We watched this thunder cloud off in the distance, and we’re glad it didn’t come our way.
Oh! I checked with our Florida neighbor yesterday morning, and he said that he walked around our house and everything looks fine. YAY! He said there still wasn’t any power, but the temperatures have been ”cooler” (like in the low 80’s with lows in the upper 60’s at night) so sleeping hasn’t been too uncomfortable.
I checked on our address today, and our power is still out. Kenny read something that said FPL estimates that power likely won’t be restored throughout the system until maybe October 9.
Tomorrow we’ll do some more exploring around Sand Hollow. After all, it will be too hot to just sit here. 😀