Short drive day, walmart and drinks outside

It was a cold evening last night around 28 degrees when we got up this morning. It was tough getting out of a warm bed to turn the furnace on at 6:00. Our little portable heater didn’t do the job very well last night. It has warmed up nicely this afternoon enough for cocktails outside.

We drove to Albuquerque today and will spend the next two evenings here. It is nice being somewhat familiar with an area and know where to stay. We have stayed in this RV Park before and enjoyed it. They accept our camping membership so our stay is ½ price. We arrived here at 12:30 this afternoon so it was a short drive day. Once we got setup it was off to wash the car, I should have taken before and after photos, it was a mess. It was then a quick stop at Walmart and back to the RV Park for the evening.  

In the shade but still warm enough to sit outside

Sunday 1/18 and Monday 1/19

Sunday 1/18

Nothing as nice as the day you head out for vacation. Cold, snow, gray skies are to be a thing of the past (hopefully) over the next 9-10 hours of driving south. We hope to be in Concordia Kansas this evening where hopefully the temperatures will not get down much below 30 degrees. I think we may still be too far north at this point to de-winterize the RV but one more day and we should be alright………..

We were at the storage lot at 6:30 this morning after a stop at Quick Trip where are coffees were free because we had to wait 2 minutes for a fresh brew. 

We were on the road by 6:45. The roads were really poor through Minnesota and northern Iowa, slippery, messy and in some areas snow covered. There was a bit of blowing snow as well in Iowa. However everything changed quickly once the sun rose. By the time we got to Omaha it was dry, total lack of snow and in the high 50’s. We continued on with our windows opened enjoying the convertibles, folks in tee shirts and cutoffs, motorcycles and golfers.

By the time we arrived in Concordia KS (5:00pm) it was 70 degrees. We found a great city run campground right along our route. The camp sites are concrete and pull thru (no need to unhook the car with a pull thru site), water and electric. Best part is it’s free.  I didn’t get any pictures when we arrived so I’ll try and get some in the morning.

  

Monday 1/19

It cooled off from the 70 degree afternoon we had yesterday but it never froze last night. We left at 8:30 this morning and we heading to Dalhart Texas where we will spend the night. A quick stop at McDonald's in Liberal KS for lunch and WIFI to post to the blog…….

Sorry I haven't figured a good way to get my pictures from my phone to the blog, I will keep trying when I have time.

We checked into a campground at 5:00 this afternoon. We are in Dalhart Texas. The weather is nice at this time but it's going down to 24 degrees tonight and a high of 63 degrees but very windy. 

Digging out this morning for a 6:30 AM departure tomorrow. I did go down last weekend to see if it would start, it has been sitting since October and with the "cold spell" we had last week I was very worried. However, it fired right up, it's very cold inside and may take a little while to get comfortable once we leave but we can handle that. 

Our unofficial plan will have us in Concordia KS tomorrow evening, the forecast for Concordia is a high of 62 degrees with sunshine. Hopefully by tomorrow the highways will be nice a dry I hate the mess on the roads after a snow fall. 

Saturday January 18th 10:00 AM

Flat Land Finally

It was actually refreshing finally getting far enough east where we didn't have to cross any more mountains. While they are beautiful they can be stressful if your not use to driving in  them. Crossing Colorado on interstate 70 is awesome but you have two big peaks to cross, both 10,000 plus feet. We flat landers have our own  style. Once you get beyond Denver your pretty much on flat land all the way home. Our home anyway.

Even in the middle of Nebraska you can find an archway spanning the freeway.

More Canyon Lands

Some pictures from the Canyon Lands National Park

                                                           Rain over the Canyon Lands

                                                                   Contrasting weather

                                                                            Shafer jeep trail

                                                                         Shafer jeep trail

Shafer jeep trail

Land of color

Broken Arch

Sand Arch

Canyon Lands – Island in the Sky District

Green River Overlook

We left early this morning in hopes of getting a spot in our favorite campground. Campgrounds in National Parks fill early and can be hard to come by. We not only got a site but we got our favorite spot. We were here once before and thought this was the best spot, there are only 12 spaces available in this campground so we feel very fortunate.

 Willow River Campground

Green River Overlook

It is very hot here close to 100 but as they say it’s a dry heat and therefore more tolerable. It has rained off and on today which is very strange as this is the first rain we have had since leaving in early July. The thunder coming up from the canyons sounds awesome. Most of the day was sunshine and beautiful however as you can see in the photos.

Just down from our campsite is the overlook for the green river. The photos do not show the depth and expanse of this area, it is spectacular.

This afternoon we took a hike to one of the few areas here in the park with Indian ruins. The Indians lived in the overhangs on steep cliffs. The trail to the ruins was easy enough till the very end when we had to scale out a ways to reach the ruins.

 Trail to the grainary....don't look down

 The grainary

We then hiked another trail to Upheaval Dome. The trail ends at an overlook in which a fantastically deformed pile of rock lies below within a crater about three miles across and 1,200 feet deep. There is strong evidence that a meteorite impact caused the structure.  

Ely Nevada and Great Basin National Park

                                                          Great Basin National Park

We arrived in Ely late Wednesday afternoon. We had wanted to stay at a casino RV park in town but they were full by the time we got there. Option two was to take a spot at a private park in town. Nothing fancy but we did have full hookups as well as cable TV and fast WIFI. We did see where 18 miles out of town was the site of the Ward Charcoal Ovens. The ovens were built about 1876 to produce charcoal for the smelter serving the gold mines in the area. The ovens were 35 feet high and would be filled with as much as 35 cords of pinon pine before they were fired. So at 7:30 pm we headed out to find the ovens.

 

We left Ely early Thursday morning for an easy drive to Great Basin National Park. The park has five campgrounds that are first come first serve but only one would accommodate our sized RV. We were fortunate to get in right away. We have a great spot with a running creek right outside our bedroom window. It is a very relaxing site.

One of the popular activities of Great Basin is a visit to the Lehman Cave. The cave can only be entered with a guided tour and tickets do sell out. So we went and bought tickets for the 2:00 pm tour. We have been on many cave tours and this was one of the best. 

This morning we headed out for a hike that took us to the Bristlecone Pine grove. The Bristlecone pine trees are some of the oldest living on earth. A bristlecone pine tree found here was determined to be the world’s oldest living tree at 4,950 years old. At lower elevations, where the conditions are less extreme, bristlecone pines grow faster and larger, but they die at the tender age of 300 or 400 years.   
 

 Wheeler Peak 13,000 feet

 Trail to Bristlecone Pine Grove

  Trail to Bristlecone Pine Grove

  Trail to Bristlecone Pine Grove

 Bristlecone Pine

  Bristlecone Pine

 Bristlecone Pine

We left Great Basin National Park this morning for Utah. We have always been drawn to Utah and were anxious to see parts of the state we have not seen before.  Although we enjoyed the California and Oregon coast and its beautiful scenery we feel Utah has the whole package, the entire state is a picture postcard.

We passed an extremely large lake, Sevier Lake, rainfall variations over time have caused this lake to fluctuate between being a dry lakebed and the state’s third largest body of water.  It wasn’t long before we were in the familiar red rock and canyons that we know as Utah. We are currently staying in Green River which is just north of Moab which is base for exploring the Arches and Canyon’s in the area. We will head into Moab in the morning.

 Sevier Lake Western Utah

Western Utah

 Scenery along interstate 70