CuRVWander

  Flaming Gorge, named by John Wesley Powell on his epic trip down the Colorado River.  Upon floating into the gorge and seeing the red canyon walls illuminated by the sun he wrote that it was as though the gorge was on fire and that he and his crew agreed that the name Flaming Gorge was the right name.  And we get to live here for four months. Actually, Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area is a relatively small area within the 1.2 million acre Ashley National Forest .  Everything we do is associated with the recreation area.  And while it may be dwarfed by the size of the forest, the rec area is plenty big.  Our short commute to work is 12 miles round trip, the long one is 30 miles round trip. May/June 2023 As previously posted, we arrived on May 19th and almost immediately set to work in getting all the interpretive sites that the volunteers were going to operate in appropriate condition for opening beginning the week leading up to Memorial Day.  ...

  Okay folks, this is a departure from my normal lauding of fulltiming life.  We've had a bit of unpleasantness that life can bestow.  Beginning in April, while still in the Austin, TX area, Cyndee was struck with some serious gastrointestinal distress.  Long story short, her problem was traced to difficulties with her gallbladder.  It was either hyperactivity, blockage or stones or any of a number of other things that interrupts the normal flow of bile. Fine, we're in a great place medical services wise.  We'll do the Dr. visits, sonograms, X-rays and whatever in the three weeks remaining before we had to depart for our Utah summer gig.  Wrong!  Couldn't get an appointment for a Dr or any imaging service.  When they tried to get us set up for four or five weeks out for the first appointment we would tell them about having to leave in three weeks.  Upon learning that they simply declined to complete the diagnosis or provide treatment....

  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 V...

  We're two days away from making our last leg to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area.  Before we go we have one more southern Utah National Park to see, Capitol Reef.  Of all the National Parks we have visited in this region it will be the smallest.  Touring it will be a short day for us compared to our other tours for the last two weeks.  Or so we thought. Capitol Reef May 17, 2023 Chief, our truck, had been getting in on the touring action the last couple of trips so today we switched over to Pepe knowing we were not going to be getting off the pavement.  We got an early start from our base camp in Thompson Springs, UT and breezed in to Capitol Reef by 9:00 am, 111 miles later. My opening statement may be a little misleading.  Capitol Reef appears to be small if you are sticking to paved roads as we are.  But if you have an off-highway vehicle or really good knees there are more than 377 square miles to explore, all of it rugged.  But o...

  It's true, I do.  Cyndee, not so much. Don't get me wrong, Cyndee is okay with the desert, she's just not as enamored with it as I am.  She has thoroughly enjoyed our arches and canyons tour.  Which brings us to today's adventure, Canyonlands National Park.  It's a big park so we're going to spread our visit out over two days. Island in the Sky, Canyonlands National Park May 9, 2023 Like the post about Arches National Park, I have lots of photos and narrating them with our travel story would probably come off boring.  So enjoy the pics and a few descriptive blurbs. The above is Shafer Trail.  It hugs the walls of Shafer Canyon and drops 1,400 ft over a small distance. Shafer Trail continues down the canyon floor and provides access to the White Rim Trail which is 100 miles long. The white rim of the White Rim trail.  Our son drove it in its entirety last year.  Made it through some very narrow passages and rock crawls, coming out the other ...