We made little headway today. I got to watch a NASCAR race. Peggy tidied up. I dumped the tanks. We drank Mimosas. It was okay.

The part of Utah where we are currently camping is a region with an extraordinary amount of spectacular scenery. Within about 90 minutes of our RV park we can see Bryce Canyon, Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, Kodachrome Basin, Red Canyon State Park, Zion National Park, several scenic byways, mountains, lakes, rivers and our destination for today – Cedar Breaks National Monument.
We pulled out of Red Canyon Village RV Park, drove a couple miles west on Scenic Byway 12 and then turned south on US-89. About a half hour of driving brought us to Scenic Byway 14 which immediately starts to climb up the western edge of the Markagunt Plateau and through the Dixie National Forest. At the bottom of the hill the elevation was about 7000 feet but after considerable ascending and turning we soon went past 10,000′ as we turned north on UT-148 and into Cedar Breaks. We passed by Navajo Lake, which sits on a divide, at about 9500′ elevation. This lake is unique because one end of the lake has water exiting that will flow into the Virgin River and the Colorado. On the other end of the lake, there is another exit for the water which ultimately flows into the Paria River on the other side of the mountains but never leaves the valley below, instead percolating into the ground and disappearing.
I am very nearly ancient and at elevations over about 5,000′ my breathing gets labored and my endurance (what little there was) drops to nearly zero. Above 10,000′ my breathing sounds like what I can only describe as the sounds made when trying to operate an ordinary fireplace bellows when it is full of pancake syrup. Peggy says I also exhibit an unhealthy gray skin color until I can find a place to sit where I can gasp for a few minutes. I’m old.
Unfortunately, anyone desiring to see Cedar Breaks will be required to do some strolling unless only interested in parking lot paving. We took a short walk out onto an overlook situated on top of a rock point called Point Supreme. Whoever named this place was definitely squared away because the view is stunning. Cedar Breaks is essentially an enormous amphitheater filled with extraordinary rock formations, sheer cliffs and many colors. The amphitheater is 3 miles in diameter and 2000′ deep. Millions of years of deposition, uplift and erosion have tortured this giant bowl and they have left behind stunning scenery. Watch that first step. There are deer and antelope grazing in the high pastures. There are birds everywhere. There was also an old fat guy creeping around making bizarre wheezing, squeaking and gasping noises near the viewpoints.
We continued north on UT-148 to the Chessman Ridge Overlook at 10,467′ elevation where we stopped for lunch and noisy breathing by at least one of us. The scenery was staggering but we eventually continued on north until turning east on UT-143 for the 30 mile drop down to Panguitch. We had completed this fabulous loop in about four and a half hours but it seems it could have been much longer considering the magnificent scenery and terrain.
We shot a few photos along today’s drive. To see them, click the asterisk *

Boredom ruled the day. Peggy tried to do the wash but the laundry facility here at Red Canyon Village RV Park has a single washing machine and its cleaning abilities are highly suspect. Peggy said after the machine had completed the wash cycles, some patches of the fabrics were still dry. I did some mundane and boring stuff left over from our personal lives. I thought when we left home four years ago, the crappy little details of life would magically disappear because we would be out of touch. What a dope I was.

Yesterday we took UT-12 past the Bryce Canyon National Park and down into Kodachrome Basin. While driving that route, we noted a low-intensity fire burning and emitting light, wispy smoke into the sky at Bryce’s southeast corner. We mentioned our observations to a ranger at Kodachrome Basin who informed us it was a controlled burn and the proper authorities were fully aware of the condition.
Today we drove into Bryce, hoping the light smoke would be gone so we could enjoy the normally crystal-clear skies at this spectacular National Park. We were able to use our geezer pass to enter the park, avoiding the $35 entrance fee ordinary mortals are required to pay if they want to go in. There is really only one road along the edge of the canyon which is actually a miles-long cliff of extraordinary multihued hoodoos and steep cliffs rising along the western edge of the Paunsaugant Plateau. The Paiute Indians that lived here prior to having their land stolen by pioneers and miners thought the hoodoos resembled the petrified remains of giant people turned to stone for being evil. The hoodoos don’t really look like pioneers or miners but they are magnificent.
We initially drove to the far end of the road where we found a viewpoint named Rainbow Point but finding a place to park our truck there was problematic because the BLM personnel monitoring the controlled burn had all driven their pickups to the Rainbow Point parking lot, keeping the park visitors out of luck. We headed back toward the main gate but the road has many pullouts and viewpoints and we took advantage of most of them. We had only gone about 4 miles when we pulled into a viewpoint and hopped out of the truck to get a good look at this stunning park. The wind was pretty stiff and increasing. While gazing at the wonderful cliffs and hoodoos, we noted that the wispy white smoke originally emanating from the controlled burn had substantially increased in volume and opacity. Soon, an enormous gray and brown cloud of smoke was overhead and, from our viewpoint, we could see open flames and exploding trees zooming over a ridge toward the park. The BLM guys parked at Rainbow Point called for air support because pretty soon we could see tiny helicopters flying in the fire area. It appeared that the controlled burn was now uncontrolled.
The smoke started to foul the views but we stopped at Natural Bridge and a few other viewpoints before calling it quits and leaving the park. About this time, a big raven landed on a log railing outside our truck and gave us the stink-eye until we gave him a cracker which promptly disappeared down his gullet. The views were still quite stunning for the first hour but after that everything we looked at was the color of smoke. We tried going out of the park and along a road running north away from the park but the smoke had beat us there and the only thing we spotted, other than gray-brown terrain, was a male pronghorn.
We did get some nice pictures before the smoke put a damper on the show. To see them, click the asterisk *

We are quite old and feeble so our day started out with leisurely showers, breakfast and lunch but we finally seemed to believe that our labored breathing at 7000′ was only terrible if we went hiking. To avoid gray-faced gasping, we decided to take a drive, minimizing our effort but enjoying the scenery. We piled into the pickup and headed east on Utah’s Scenic Byway 12, an extraordinary road for pure, magnificent terrain, geological formations and the colorful effects of millennia of erosion.
This highway stretches from near Panguitch, through the Bryce Canyon country, the Dixie National Forest, the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument and ends when it hits UT-24 near Capitol Reef National Park. It has been declared a National Scenic Byway and An All-American Road, a distinction only afforded to very few roads in the U.S. There is no mistake regarding UT-12.
We left the Red Canyon RV Park and headed east on Scenic Byway 12. In about 5 miles we entered Red Canyon, a Utah State Park that resembles a tiny Bryce Canyon. Many hoodoos, gorgeous rock pillars, massive rim rocks and soils and rock of many colors abound. Fanciful formations take on the appearances of giants, stacks of pancakes, badlands and trolls. Instead of turning into Bryce Canyon, we continued east on 12 and drove down into the area near Kodachrome Basin State Park. Partway there we passed two male pronghorn right next to the road that were engaged in an epic battle to determine which had the biggest testicles and was going to be taking care of the harem of females. No eunuchs were spotted. The drive on UT-12 is truly remarkable and gorgeous scenery awaits around every curve.
We turned around for our return trip at Kodachrome Basin and headed back through the tiny Utah town of Tropic where we passed a herd of sheep and goats that had apparently escaped from confinement and were happily gorging themselves on fruit and grass they found in the nice, irrigated downtown area.
We took a few pictures of the area. Click the asterisk to see them *

Today was another travel day. We gathered up our junk and departed the Lakeside RV Park in Provo. The park had full hookups but very skinny spaces such that you could spit out the window and hit the neighbor’s slide-out. Also, their wifi was junk.
Today was our longest scheduled drive on our entire trip west but we were so afraid of the durability properties of the Chinese Tow-Max tires on our trailer that we started the trip with a diversion to a Les Schwab Tire Store in Provo. The manager was as unimpressed with the previous set of tires as we were; we have had a 50% blowout or tread separation rate with the Tow-Max tires despite none of them being worn down to 50% tread life. The manager and I went over to the desk where he started a furious procedure to credit us for blown tires, bought back the two that remained and gave us four, 14-ply steel belted radials to replace our 10-ply bias tires. By the time he was done with the computer, we got out of there about $400 richer than we thought we would.
After about an hour and a half at the tire store, we started our drive from Provo toward Red Canyon near Bryce. For the first 150 miles we drove south on I-15 with the stunning Wasatch Range on our left. A bit after leaving the Provo area, we encountered stiff headwinds as we crossed through many mountain passes of around 6000 feet elevation. We turned off I-15 south of Beaver and headed east over some very steep roads over the mountains to Panguitch. Panguitch was a dusty little burg when my family had a fuel pump failure here back in 1961. Fortunately, at that time there was a good mechanic there and we were soon on our way although it involved an overnight motel stay.
Panguitch is much bigger today with some artsy-fartsy shops, not less than 3 gas stations, nice hotels and spiffy-looking restaurants. We kept up our eastward progress toward Bryce Canyon until we pulled into the Red Canyon Village, Cabins and RV Park having covered something over 200 miles today. We were assigned the RV space on the end of the row so our satellite antenna works perfectly, they have cable TV (we get about a million channels between the satellite and cable), there are full hookups, they have tolerable wifi and the owner gave us a discounted weekly rate so we will be here for seven days. In our assigned space, nobody can block our fabulous view of Red Canyon, a Utah state park bordering Bryce Canyon National Park. A week here should be stunning and, after our last few days, we will be happy if nothing goes wrong. We did note that we are camped at a 7000′ elevation and neither of us can go very far without making funny wheezing and hissing sounds. Fortunately, sitting and admiring gorgeous landscapes works for us better than standing.
There’s a couple pix. Click the asterisk *

We didn’t do too much today. We went shopping at Trader Joe’s and bought some batteries for our tire gauge and a funnel at O’Reilly’s.
Provo’s downtown, at least the section we saw, is quite pretty. On the west side of us is Utah Lake and east of us is a gorgeous range of rocky mountains. I suppose they are part of the Wasatch Range but I’m not sure and I am too lazy to check it out.
By the way, Lakeside RV’s wifi is shit.
See a couple of Provo pix by clicking the asterisk *

Today was a travel day. We left the Fort Bridger RV Park and jumped back onto I-80 westbound. Peggy had noted one of our trailer tires looked funny to her a couple days ago but I checked it out and thought it was okay. After all, we had driven across quite a bit of Wyoming with the allegedly funny-looking tire without problems.
We passed through quite a bit of pretty Wyoming territory on our way into Utah although we didn’t seem to be descending out of elevations up around 7000 feet. Soon, we passed into Utah and the terrain slowly changed into red rock canyons and hoodoos and plain evidence that erosion is a powerful geological force. Right as we were getting ready to make the long descent into Salt Lake City we passed a massive low-boy tractor-trailer rig hauling a gigantic Kohler generator about the size of an ordinary bedroom. The incline became steeper and I looked in the mirror and saw the low-boy, now in the fast lane, accelerating downhill and blasting his air horns. I thought perhaps he had lost his brakes but I was wrong. As the truck came alongside our slower truck, we noted the driver was gesticulating wildly and also continuing to blast the horn.
It was then that I realized his truck and oversize load were just fine and that he was trying to signal us that something was awry with our truck or fifth wheel. All at the same time, I looked in the mirrors, applied the brakes and Peggy stated “We have a blowout!” My assessment of tire soundness I had made just a few days before was now in tatters. I wrestled the now misbehaving trailer over the texture strip next to the fog line that goes dut-dut-dut-dut-dut when you run over it and eventually to a stop. Our left trailer wheels were about 4 inches inside the fog line and our right wheels were at the very edge of the paving, in the marbles. What was formerly the tread part of the tire was tightly wrapped around the axle and brake assembly and portions of the sidewall dangled from the trailer rim like dreadlocks. There was no visible place where we could get off the road further and recently passed territory indicated there were no such locations for fraidy-cat drivers to get out of the speeding, downhill traffic. Cell phone service was zilch.
Like frightened deer, we started getting out lug wrenches and car jacks and levers and blocks to begin the tire change. Each time a truck went by at about 80, the trailer would sway in the draft. Our first task was to get the steel-belted carcass out from around the axle. The shredded tire parts were tenacious adversaries because the steel belting was now sticking out of the destroyed carcass and the ends were as pointy as cactus. Both Peggy and I donned gloves and after about 15 minutes of painful yelps and fervent cursing, we got the carcass loose and tossed the formerly difficult and prickly enemy into the ditch. Then, convinced I had loosened all six lug nuts, I climbed under the trailer and started jacking the trailer up. After about 5 minutes of labored breathing and discomfort, Peggy began to remove the loosened lugnuts. Unfortunately, in my senility I had only loosened five of the six nuts and the last one wasn’t coming loose until we put the wheel back on the ground to crack the last nut loose. I was gasping for air in the 7000 foot altitude and, since I am an old porker, jacking the trailer up again resulted in me making old steam engine noises.
I finally got our 12-ton hydraulic jack pumped all the way up and found that it was only about a quarter inch from lifting the trailer high enough to get the spare tire onto the hub. Peggy started hauling wood blocks from the truck and I blocked up the axle, pulled the jack, put blocks under the jack and pumped it up for the third time. Then we started making efforts to get the spare onto the lug studs and, considering it is a ten-ply tire and only weighs about 80 pounds with its steel wheel, we were able to get the cursed bastard with the help of some interesting applications of leverage. We were doing all this while skating about on the gravel marbles on the roadside which made application of force sometimes difficult. More cursing was involved.
After many senior moments and considerable heavy breathing, we finally were able to get all six lugnuts on and fairly tight. I then dropped the jack supporting the trailer and removed the wood block supporting the jack before re-inserting the jack and pumping it up for the fourth time to remove the wood support blocks Peggy had hauled over to make up for our jack with a penis that is about a quarter inch too short. It was then that we noted the spare looked a bit limp and could benefit from some inflation. We then broke out the air hoses and the air compressor and a portable generator to power up the compressor. After some more wheezing and bewildered looks, we got everything running and put some air in the spare. Two days ago we noted our electronic tire pressure gauge now was merely a container for storing a dead battery so we eyeballed the inflation.
After even more heavy breathing and completely covered in road edge grit, we put back all the tools, brushed ourselves off to the greatest extent possible and resumed our trip. I’m glad my trailer brake wiring was still intact despite being intimately entombed in a tire carcass because as soon as we got rolling, we dove down a long 6% downgrade for many miles as we drove into Salt Lake City. Once in Salt Lake, we turned south on I-15 and drove another 30 miles into Provo. We soon pulled into the Lakeside RV Park where the wifi is great and there are full hookups but the spaces are razor thin and, if the glass wasn’t in the way, I would be able to hold conversations with my neighbor without leaving the trailer or raising my voice. It looks like we will be making a visit to Les Schwab Tires, where I purchased the tires on our trailer that, so far, have a 50% blowout rate. Fortunately, there is one of Les’s stores just a couple miles from our RV park.
The miserable state of our tires can be seen, along with a beautiful roadside bluff, can be seen by clicking the asterisk *

Today we spent most of the day in a hellish pursuit of reservations at RV parks for the near future. It is always a pain in the neck but we are reluctant to travel without them because it is disappointing to arrive at some RV park after a long drive only to find the park has no room and the driving is not over. For instance, we wanted to visit Capitol Reef National Park in Utah but a call to the three RV parks in Torrey indicated some group of upscale motor home campers had bought out every space available. There are no other parks in the park’s vicinity within 50 miles or more. Maybe we will visit Capitol Reef on some other trip through this area.
Our other task for the day was to fuel up the truck. Although we have been in Fort Bridger before, we have never driven east from our park and, fortunately, we had to go that way to get diesel. East of our park is a section of stunning badlands called the Uintas that we had clumsily never noticed before. We also spotted an abundance of wildlife on our 4 mile trip to the gas station. There were some bison, a deer, two sandhill cranes and a bunny. I guess we will have to return here on our next journey because we are scheduled to depart Wyoming and head into Utah tomorrow.

We split from the Sleeping Bear RV Park in Lander and continued our westward trek. The Sleeping Bear turned out to be nicer than we thought it would be. The spaces were skinny but everything worked. There were no train nor highway noises to fill our evenings. They even filled our propane bottle right on site. Lander also turned out to be a hidden gem – the downtown was nice, Sinks Canyon State Park is right at the city’s edge and the Ford dealer had the windshield jets I suddenly needed because the factory jets are cheesy and fail if you look at them funny.
Right in front of the Sleeping Bear runs WY-28 which is the very road we needed to continue west. We skirted the big mountains right next to Lander but started to climb nevertheless. On our road atlas, it shows the pass we would have to cross as being South Pass, located right on the continental divide, and the elevation at the pass being 7550 feet. Something is a little fishy because we ended up climbing up to 8500 feet a long time before crossing the much lower pass. Like a dope, I thought the pass was the minimum elevation required to go from one side of the mountains to the other.
Fortunately, WY-28 passes through expansive mountain prairies and small sections of badlands where there are rock and soil formations as pretty as Bryce, but much smaller and a different color. The crags of the Wind River Range became visible once over the divide. We crossed the Green River which was actually green. We could look through the water and see the rocks on the stream bed. There were a couple tiny communities where some people could be spotted but mostly the road was lonely with nothing but nature in sight. And some pronghorn.
After about 180 miles above 6000 feet of elevation, we pulled into the Jim Bridger RV Park in Fort Bridger. We have been here before. It looks about the same but different folks are on the desk. They have full hookups, pretty big spaces and wifi but they ain’t cheap.
Peggy got some pictures as we sped across this landscape. Check them out by clicking the asterisk *