Home For The Summer.

 

May 19, 2023

Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area

Red Canyon Road

We made it!  Seven months after leaving our extended stay service with the Corps of Engineers at Allatoona Lake we're here.  Our experiment of traveling with a truck, trailer, SUV, and cargo trailer has been better than anticipated with the exception of said SUV going tango uniform (see previous post).  We covered almost three thousand miles as a caravan, driving separately but close enough together that a pair of little family channel walkie-talkies kept us in contact.  Even with the limited range of the little radios they were far superior to cell phones since we were traversing long stretches with no cell signal whatsoever.

From our position in southern Utah there was really only one, practical path we could take to our destination on Red Canyon Road and that was via Vernal, UT.  The mapping apps predicted a four hour drive, which means at least five hours for us.  We'll stop in Vernal at their Super Walmart and top off the fuel tank of Cyndee's vehicle and pick up enough groceries to get us by for a couple of weeks.

Coming out of Thompson Springs, UT on Interstate 70 was a little tense.  Our lumbering caravan moving along at 65 mph while traffic around us was at 80+mph caused a little stress.  But that only lasted for 28 miles until we turned north on UT 191 and began a track across good but narrow two-lane plateau top and relatively easy mountain roads.  But we earned our salt for the day driving the mountain roads between Vernal and Red Canyon Road.  LOTS of 8% grades and sharp, hairpin-turn switchbacks.  The switchbacks had turning radii that were amenable to a tractor-trailer so I didn't drop any wheels off the pavement or anything but 180 deg direction changes while pulling an 8% grade degraded my speed to less than 15mph at times.  The truck hit coolant temperatures it had never seen before.  All in all, we climbed 3,000 feet between Vernal and the end of the dramatic switchbacks in only twenty miles of lateral travel.  And 80% of the elevation change occurred over a six mile stretch.  I need a dry shirt.

After the steep switchbacks the rest of the drive was a breeze.  We rolled through some beautiful country, soaring, snow-covered mountain tops, forests of ponderosa pine and steep canyon walls dropping down to lush green valleys.  Our destination was just minutes away.  We found, and made, the requisite turns onto numbered forest roads and crept along to ever smaller and the less visibly marked road we were to take to our campground for the next four months.

We found what looked like the road we were supposed to turn on but it was very narrow and lead into a stand of ponderosa pine trees.  The trees were so thick it was not possible to see if our campground was down this road.  It looked very cramped in those woods and I was not about to go poking around with a tall, long and heavy rig.  I radioed Cyndee and asked her to go in and investigate.  She disappeared into the centuries old growth and it seemed like forever before her voice came over the radio saying that our name was on a tree next to an RV pad.  She said it was going to be tight getting there but our pad was plenty big.

  

Our rig is once again a cabin in the woods.
All dirt, picnic table and a community fire ring about 100' away.

Our arrival was on a Friday, there was one volunteer couple that had arrived ahead of us but our timing was good as this day was the first day that water had been turned on to the campground.  Over the coming weekend there would be two more RVing volunteer couples arrive.  The four of us will fill out the Interpretive Group ranks and there would soon be two more couples that will work on the boat launching ramp below the gorge dam, on the Green River.  One of the couples will be staying in a duplex that is in the volunteer campground.

Monday came around and our Volunteer Coordinator wasted no time in starting our orientation training, uniform fitting and a string of get-to-know-you introductions to the various departments supporting Flaming Gorge.  Over the next several days we de-mothballed the Visitor Center and Swett Ranch.  The Visitor Center was just a matter of dusting, sweeping and learning how to operate things like the audio/visual equipment and cash register.  But not Cyndee and I.  Our interpretive assignment was to be docents at the Swett Ranch.  We got in deep getting that place opened up.  There were nine buildings that had to be, literally, de-mothballed.  There were hundreds upon hundreds of moth balls everywhere in an attempt to discourage rodents from occupying the interior spaces during the winter shutdown.  It didn't work.  What some of those rodents left in some of the spaces would gag a maggot on a gut truck.

Everybody was gloved and masked up for cleaning the hard surfaces in the cabins and house.  The horse barn and workshop were declared a loss and entering them was forbidden without a hazmat suit.  I was somewhat spared the worst of it as I was immediately sent to the equipment shed to get new blades on a push mower and service and get running a lawn tractor.  Meanwhile Cyndee was helping haul out all the textiles that had been secured in large plastic totes for the winter.  There was a slug of quilts that the Swetts had made and were original to the property that were well preserved and put into service on the beds they were made for.  The week leading up to the  Memorial Weekend opening was turning out to be physically taxing and mind over gag reflex.  But things are looking good and we're ready.

And here is our little group.
This was Swett Ranch prep day.  Knowing it to be a difficult day 
our Volunteer Coordinator treated us to a home made picnic lunch.

In addition to our picnic lunch we were given a backroad tour from the ranch up to the paved road leading to our campground.  The road was best driven by high clearance vehicles, which we all had.  It was slow going but the view was awesome.

The scenic route out of Swett Ranch.
The clearing in the lower-center is the Swett Ranch.

Okay, here we go.  Our summer gig is prepped, opening day is immanent.  Now we just have to execute.