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…)
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…
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…
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…
Today we return to the Colorado National Monument to see more of its beauty…
On our way to the entrance we crossed the mighty Colorado River…
The Colorado River is the major river of the southwestern United States and northwest Mexico. Its headwaters are in Rocky Mountain National Park where La Poudre Pass Lake is its source. It flows southwest through the Colorado Plateau country of western Colorado, southeastern Utah and northwestern Arizona, where it flows through the Grand Canyon. It turns south near Las Vegas, Nevada, forming the Arizona–Nevada border in Lake Mead and the Arizona–California border a few miles below Davis Dam between Laughlin, Nevada and Needles, California, before entering Mexico in the Colorado Desert. Most of its waters are diverted into the Imperial Valley of Southern California. In Mexico its course forms the boundary between Sonora and Baja California before entering the Gulf of California.
We re-entered the Colorado National Monument.
On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the “Organic Act” creating the National Park Service, a federal bureau in the Department of the Interior responsible for maintaining national parks and monuments that were then managed by the department. The National Park System has since expanded to 423 units (often referred to as parks), more than 150 related areas, and numerous programs that assist in conserving the nation’s natural and cultural heritage for the benefit of current and future generations.
The National Park Service manages all of the various “units” – Parks, Forests, Monuments, Historic Sites, Lakeshores, Recreation Areas, Scenic Trails, and several other designations. The first parks were Yellowstone (1872), Sequoia (1890), Yosemite (1890), Mt. Rainier (1899), Crater Lake (1902), Wind Cave (1903), Mesa Verde (1906), Glacier (1910), Rocky Mountain (1915). Colorado National Monument was established in 1911. The different desinations have to do with how they are created. National Parks are created by acts of Congress. National Monuments and most other designations are created by the President via Executive Order. Thirty States have National Parks; the States with the most parks are: California (9), Alaska (8), Utah (5), and Colorado (4).
We began our visit with a ranger talk in the picnic area where we had had dinner last night…
We learned about the geology of these magnificent cliffs and canyons, plus a little of the park history. The man behind the creation of the Colorado National Monument was John Otto, who settled in Grand Junction in the early 20th century. Otto was the first white man to explore the area.
Prior to Otto’s arrival, many area residents believed the canyons to be inaccessible to humans. Otto began building trails on the plateau and into the canyons. As word spread about his work, the Chamber of Commerce of Grand Junction sent a delegation to investigate. The delegation returned praising both Otto’s work and the scenic beauty of the wilderness area, and the local newspaper began lobbying to make it a National Park. A bill was introduced and carried by the local Representatives to the U.S. Congress and Senate but a Congressional slowdown in the final months threatened the process. To ensure protection of the canyons President William Howard Taft (who had visited the area) stepped in and used the highest powers available to him via the Antiquities Act and presidential proclamation to declare the canyons as a national monument
John Otto was hired as the first park ranger, drawing a salary of $1 per month. For the next 16 years, he continued building and maintaining trails while living in a tent in the park.
For many years during the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps. built roads, tunnels, trails, and other features of the park. The CCC left in 1941; the major Rim drive was completed in the 1950s.
Following the Ranger talk we visited the Visitor Center. I liked the fact that it is built from the native sandstone…
After we had seen a few exhibits in the Visitor Center we drove the Rim drive for 23 miles, all the way to Grand Junction. We saw 23 miles of rocks.
Here I liked the walls made from the natural sandstone… These walls are several hundred feet long, and they occur at many of the pull-outs along the Rim drive…
After we left the park we drove through Grand Junction again. We found truck fuel and DEF. Tomorrow we will return to Fruita for some final grocery shopping before we enter the wilderness of Dinosaur National Monument, Flaming Gorge Dam, and the Grand Tetons National Park…
It was 97 degrees again, but we have good, clean power, so both AC units are running in the Airstream… At 5:00 we took a walk around the lake in the park.
We also saw the Colorado River again, adjacent to the park…
Unfortunately, we walked out of the park and around the outside of the park, and finally had to go totally around the park and walk in the maim entrance…
After a short break we joined other caravaners for happy hours. We returned to the Villa, and an enjoyable time was had by all…,
Adventures in the Villa 