We departed Logan this morning and headed west on UT-30 over the ridge again and back to I-15. We turned south on I-15 through the entire Salt Lake City metropolis. We passed through many smaller cities with names I don’t remember but, after about 2 hours, we turned off at Spanish Fork through a little pass and soon were southbound on US-89. We were pretty jazzed about going so far so quickly, primarily through the excellent conditions on the Utah highways. It is quite evident that they should pass a handheld phone law here because the only dangerous folks we saw on the roads today were happily yakking away while motorists in adjacent lanes swerved wildly to avoid collisions due to the loquacious one’s driving antics. The rest of the folks on the road were okay except a lumber truck driver who was in the #2 lane with roof trusses aboard who kept trying to stab adjacent vehicles with the roof peak sections overhanging the right side of the truck, apparently unaware of the chaos he was causing just behind and to the right of his load.
We drove at a very leisurely pace down US-89 from Spanish Forks through Birdseye, Mount Pleasant and Ephraim before pulling off the road and into the Temple Hill Resort in Manti. The RV park is located directly adjacent to and behind a big hill that has an enormous almost white limestone Mormon Temple that is very spiffy. The park is small with few shaded spots but the views from the park are very nice, there’s a pool, wi-fi and full hookups. It turns out the wi-fi is shit. This place is alongside some 10,000′ mountains to the east and mere 9,000′ runts on the other side of the valley. It costs $18.18 per night with our PA membership. We set up pretty quickly and despite being on the road for around five hours, we still had fooling around time. Daylight savings helps, too.
With our free time we hopped back into Charlotte and took a spin up Manti Canyon Road for about 6 or 7 miles. It is dirt almost all the way but the enormous limestone formations on each side of the gorge are pretty impressive. It is quite a nice drive but we chickened out when the dirt road started to get real narrow, an environment not ideally suited to a 21 foot long, 4 ton 2 wheel drive monster with old people at the controls.
In Manti we found what was originally just a bakery but now includes burgers and shakes called Miller’s Drive-In. Milk shakes were the mission and we were successful. We were bad and ordered large portions which cost us $3.25 a piece but they were great. It is fortunate we do not live near this place because we would happily die from dining here.
You can see a picture of the madman lumber truck driver’s load and some other shots taken during travel by clicking here