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Adventures in the Villa

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Dutch John, UT

2021-06-13 – Springtime in the Rockies caravan… Day 18 – Traveling to Grand Tetons National Park

We are Parkers! Every caravan assigns various duties as needed throughout the caravan. In the past we have been parkers, de-parkers, singers, and Grace-sayer…

Today we are parkers. That means we need to leave extra early , arriving extra early at the next RV park, so that we can assign campsites to the various caravaners before they arrive and help them find their sites when they do arrive…

We left at 7:00 am. Today will be the longest travel time on the caravan… 290 miles!

We were following one of the Co-leaders… You will see a lot of pictures of his rear-end…

We traveled north across northern Utah, and somewhere (we don’t know where…) we crossed over into Wyoming…

We stopped briefly to stretch our legs and buy some groceries…

We continued north through Wyoming…

We started to see evidence of mountains ahead…

We stopped again in the small town of Pinedale, WY…

Looks like a great place for lunch, but we had no time!

We finally arrived at Jackson, WY, the main town in Jackson Hole. What a touristy mess!

Leaving Jackson, we now viewed the Grand Tetons in all their glory!

We parked the Villa in our assigned site, then showed up for our parking duties…

We had a flagger, to flag in the Airstreamers so that they did not miss the park and have to drive all around the world again to find it… Some of us handed out sandwiches, others gave directions and site numbers, and others kept track of who had arrived and who was still on the road…

After our parking duties were over, we walked about. We are parked right on Jackson Lake. This is the marina, with the Tetons byond…

This is just above the swimming beach, on Jackson Lake.

Our campsite, naturally, is in the trees. No internet, no satellite TV. No TV of any kind…

We had a meeting with the Ranger to explain to us the rules, mostly rules on how not to get eaten by a bear…

We returned to the Villa. No power. Half the park is out…

We had an early dinner and turned in early. (Power came back on at about 9:30…)

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

2021-06-12 – Springtime in the Rockies caravan… Day 17 – Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, Dutch John, Utah

This morning, since we had not had a group dinner upon our arrival, we shared a lovely breakfast at the Flaming Gorge Resort…

After breakfast we drove towards Red Canyon. This is beautiful, but we still don’t know anything about Flaming Gorge…

We arrived at Red Canyon, and peered over the rim…

Flaming Gorge Reservoir is the largest reservoir in Wyoming, on the Green River, impounded behind the Flaming Gorge Dam. Construction on the dam began in 1958 and was completed in 1964. The reservoir stores 3,788,900 acre-feet of water when measured at an elevation of 6,040 feet above sea-level (its maximum).

The reservoir is mainly in southwest Wyoming and partially in northeastern Utah. The northern tip of the reservoir is 10 miles southeast of Green River, Wyoming (not to be confused with the town of Green River, Utah), 14 miles southwest of Rock Springs, Wyoming, and the Southern tip is approximately 40 miles north of Vernal, Utah. The lake straddles the Utah-Wyoming border. The nearby town of Dutch John, Utah, was built to serve as a base camp during construction of the dam, and as an administrative site afterwards.

We were spellbound at the views from here… especially since the land (rocks) we were standing on were clearly separated from the “mainland”…

After being amaized by the views from Red Rock Canyon rim, we drove a short distance to the Swett Ranch…

Swett Ranch, southwest of Dutch John, has buildings dating from 1909. A 14.1 acres section of the ranch was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It included nine contributing buildings and three contributing structures.

There were three houses on the ranch. An original log cabin, originally elsewhere, was disassembled and reassembled here on this site. This was the original house, and later it became a bunkhouse for the family’s sons.

This is the second house, added a few years later.

This contained a Kitchen-Living area, a primary bedroom, and a loft for the family’s daughters…

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The third house was the family home from the 1940s to the 1960s. While it is quite modern in appearance, it took them until the 1960s to finally add a fully functional bathroom… and even then, they had to walk outside to get to it…

This is the stable; beyond it is the schoolhouse…

Inside the stable…

The Spring House…

The root cellar… It has a long passage, with three doors, which extends into the hill beyond. Being an underground room, it is at a constant 55 degrees – it would make a perfect wine cellar…!

The Swett family live here from 1909 into the late 1960… living without electricity until the late 1950s… All farm equipment was horse-powered; they never had a gasoline or diesel powered tractor…

The countryside is beautiful here. After the ranch we drove towards Dutch John…

There is a great bridge we drove over…

And then we found the dam…

We returned to the RV Park…

This evening we were treated to a wonderful dinner at the Red Canyon Lodge by Patricio and Essy Donoso, new Airstream friends from Florida.

It is their 45th wedding anniversary today…

This is the finest restaurant in the area… I, of course, brought the wine… They had the audacity of charging $8.00 corkage fee! What are they thinking? I haven’t seen $8.00 corkage since the 1980s…

We had a lovely dinner, and the grounds were lovely in the twilight after dinner…

We returned to the Villa. An enjoyable time was had by all…

2021-06-11 – Springtime in the Rockies caravan… Day 16 – Traveling to Flaming Gorge, Utah

Travel day again. We are leaving the Dinosaur National Monument area, and traveling only a short ways north, to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, near the town of Dutch John.

We left just after 9:00, and traveled through the town of Naples, where we topped off our fuel. We continued west a few miles to Vernal, which looked interesting. We stopped and walked the town for about 45 minutes. It clearly has seen better days, but it looks like improvements are on the way…

At Vernal we turned north again and climbed more mountains…

We continued driving north through the mountains…

We arrived at the RV Park and found our spot…

That evening we had happy hours and a GAM to celebrate our arrival…

We returned to the Villa and an enjoyable time was had by all…

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