Re: Utah Day 1

On Thu, 8 May 2025 15:44:38 -0500,
  sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:

 On 5/8/2025 8:35 AM, Ted Heise wrote:

On Sat, 3 May 2025 17:04:46 -0500,
   sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:

  We stayed the first part of the Utah trip in the town of
  Cannonville, UT at an RJourney park...

I'm curious if you intentionally passed on camping at
Kodachrome St Park?  It is maybe close to 30 minutes beyond
the highway, so that could sure be a factor.

 
 Funny you mention that.  Our next hiking day was to Kodachrome. 
 We checked out all the camping spots there that day.  We didn't
 look into it when we were deciding where to stay, but one of
 the controlling factors for us was access to water.  We were in
 early April, and lots of places just did not have it turned on
 yet.  None that were in Colorado near the border did until May
 1.  We saw the RJourney place, liked the looks of it, fees were
 good, and they had heated water lines.  I didn't have a heated
 hose with, so for the first two nights we just used the tank. 
 It warmed up after that enough I could stay hooked up.
 
 Trying not to spoil my report, I will say that we were
 completely impressed with not only this state park, but their
 camping spots looked fantastic.  Yeah, some were a little close
 to the thru drive, but they all had plenty of room, apart from
 each other, and most had shade of some sort.  It looked like a
 real good place to stay if you could get reservations.  I got a
 feeling the sites that take reservations must fill up in a
 hurry.  The place had lots of people there when we looked at it
 in early April.

We stayed at Kodachrome in mid March last year, and the place was
quite a lot less than half full.  The dates were Mar 16-19, so
even over a weekend.  Like you said, most of the spots there are
nicely separated from others.  Water was on then, though we did
have our hose freeze one night.

At any rate, I highly recommend that place, though it sounds like
you had a good place as well.  Definitely being not so far off the
highway is a plus for getting to other things.

I'm a little jealous of your visit to the Escalante Grand
Staircase.  That's very much on my list, but we didn't have
time to see much of it when we were there a year ago.  We did
get distant views from Bryce and Kodachrome, but distant.
 
Thanks for the reports and the pics!

 
 We went back to the Staircase in the next day report coming for
 more off-roading.  The route we took I would have to say that
 if you could only do one drive out there, this one would be it. 
 A little bit of everything, and an all day affair.  I don't
 think you could do this one in the Acadia, but I was shocked at
 times to see how far people got in with cars and even people
 pulling campers.  I thought of Bill many times on the trip when
 I would see boondockers.  I got a feeling some of them had to
 be towed out.

Good to know.  We tried the "road" to Grosvenor Arch in the
Acadia, and got maybe 3/4 of the way there before I chickened out
and turned back.  The car did pretty well, but there were narrow
hill stretches that could have been a problem if we'd encountered
any oncoming traffic,  What finally stopped me was a pretty wet,
muddy stretch that looked high risk for getting stuck--especially
if we'd had to stop for anything.

--
Ted Heise      <theise@panix.com>       West Lafayette, IN, USA