Sep 12, 2012 - Bleak, Barren and Stark

Bleak, Barren and Stark. Sounds like a law firm, doesn't it? But, unfortunately, it describes a lot of today's scenery. We left our beautiful tree covered site this morning, and climbed up a pass to the top of a plateau which we traveled on for many miles. Once again, there were no trees and nothing green. We came to a small community called Snowville, a sign of what the winters are like here, I am sure. Finally, we passed down into a valley and there were green fields and trees and farm land once again. -- Whenever the scenery is Bleak,...

Sep 11, 2012 - Park City

Today we drove scenic I80 to Park City, the place we stayed and skied 20 years ago. It's grown significantly since then, partly due to the Olympics in 2002. We toured the Olympic complex and saw the ski jumps and luge, bobsled tracks from below and the top of each. Athletes train here year round, from all over the world. We also learned about the history of skiing in the Park City area, snowboarding was conceived here as well. We also saw ski jumpers training in a pool, they performed aerial flips and landed in the pool, swam to the side...

Sep 10, 2012 - Salt Lake City

Yesterday we drove to Salt Lake City, a large city. Even though it was Sunday, we were stuck in traffic - smaller towns are so much easier. We drove into the University of Utah campus to the Natural History museum, a new building that is green with grass growing on the roof along with the solar panels. The shore of ancient Lake Bonneville can be seen from from the patio. We saw fort Douglas, establshed in 1862, now an active army reserve base; many of the historical buildings are used by the college for residences. We saw the Olympic venue...

Sep 8, 2012 - The golden spike

We went to promontory point to see where the golden spike that united the east and west of this country was driven. The national historic site is on the north shore of the great salt lake. We just missed the reenactment of the ceremony that took place May 10, 1869 in which the Central Pacific's Jupiter and the Union Pacific's No 119 pulled up to the tie in which a golden spike was driven, joining the 2 railroads. Exact replicas of these engines steam engines were puffing smoke and we were able to see them as well as learn about this feat of...

Sep 7, 2012 - Kennecott copper mine and great salt lake

We visited the richest hole on earth. This is the Bingham copper mine, Kennecott copper and is the largest and oldest open pit mine in the world. Mining started in 1903 and was considered revolutionary as an open pit. The pit is more than 3/4 of a mile deep and 2 1/2 miles wide, has yielded 19 million tons of copper as well as gold, silver and milybdenum. It's just huge and can be seen from space easily. There are trucks that run continuously taking rock to the crushers, they look like ants but are the size of cars. One of the tires was on...

Sep 6, 2012 - Ogden Hill AFB

We are staying at Hill AFB which is on the south side of Ogden. Today we checked out the base, went to the Hill Aerospace Museum that is extensive, has early and current military aircraft. They are in the process of completing a Vietnam exhibit that includes a POW cell. It's not quite done yet, but is very sobering. We also went to the Exchange and Ray bought a new IPad and I got a keyboard, finally. Surprisingly the base had the New IPad with 4G for us. Now if we could only be at a campground with good WIFI so we wouldn't have to buy 2 4G...

Sep 5, 2012 - From Golden Spike to Ogden

Tuesday morning we awoke to a warm, sunny day. I was anxiously anticipating our day trip to the Golden Spike National Monument at Promontory, UT. The site of the driving of the last spike and the completion of the transcontinental railroad has always been that elusive must visit for me. Even though there isn't much to see it's like visiting Kennedy Space Center in Florida and viewing the sites where man first launched the vehicles that eventually sent man to the moon. In its own way the completion of a railroad from Atlantic to Pacific was...

Jul 18, 2012 - Day 4; Golden Spike to Bridger National Forest

Day 4 Cows, Sheep, Mud, Ruts.....they all tried to kill us. Well today was........ um..... challenging. This installment is sort of long but we packed a lot of disaster into 12 hours. We left camp late this morning (9:30am) because it was fairly cold and nobody wanted to get out of their sleeping bag. About 38 degrees overnight at almost 9000 feet. It was shaping up to be another perfect weather day in the mountains. As it turned out, the weather was the only thing that would be perfect today. We rolled out of camp and on to the forest...

Jul 17, 2012 - Day 3; Pony Express to Golden Spike Railroad

Day 3, Silver Spike to Southern Wyoming. Welcome to the forest. We broke camp early and headed east on the rail bed to the Golden Spike National Monument. We got there just in time to see the very cheesy reenactment of the locomotives coming together at the site of the spike. They were colorful though. Of course I rushed to pay my $4 to push my way past the little old ladies, children, and even a couple of Harley riders. (nobody argues with a bald guy in an armored suit.) Much to Charlies dismay I began my dive into railroad history by...

Jul 16, 2012 - Day 2; Wendover to Golden Spike Railway

Day 2 Pony Express to Trans-continental RR and the Golden Spike We broke camp early today to avoid federal prosecution for desecrating a national monument...... seemed like the thing to do. Loading up we headed west along the "real" Pony Express Route to Wendover, Nevada. I'm glad my horse has a 1200cc engine and holds 9 gallons of gas...... Wendover is an old gambling town just over the Utah Border on I-80. (way past it's prime) We topped up every tank with every last drop of gas knowing that the next gas stop would be nearly 250 miles...

Jun 10, 2012 - Ogden, UT

We moved to Ogden, UT on June 7th. One of Paula's cousins is in the USAF and is stationed at Hill AFB, near Ogden. His parents were in town for his recent wedding so we decided to move camp to Ogden. We did get to have a nice visit with the family and ate dinner at a neat restaurant in Eden, UT called Carlos and Harley's Mex Restaurant. There are a lot of hiking trails near here. One could probably spend the entire spring/summer here and not get all of the hikes seen. We will go on at least one hike and take in a scenic drive while we are...

Jun 9, 2012 - Hill AFB, Ogden, UT

09Jun12 - We are heading to Utah today! We will be staying at Hill AFB in Ogden, Utah for 4 days. We are in a holding pattern for leaving Idaho.... seems we woke up to rain and wind. We are going to wait it out before getting on the road. The weather improved so headed out and arrived at Hill AFB around 4PM. It was a day of mixed weather events; rain, dust storms, cloudy, more rain and plenty of wind! We were happy to finally arrive and be off the road. After setting up we are now just chilling out. 10Jun12 - Today we drove out to Salt...