Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Fires - Colorado & Utah (June 24 -26)


We left Grand Mesa on Sunday, June 24 and stopped for breakfast at the Dream Café in downtown Grand Junction.  The downtown area was well preserved and revitalized into a fun tourist area.  The Colorado and Gunnison rivers join together right there in downtown Grand Junction (thus the name…)
The Dream Café is renowned for its Eggs Benedict and wonderful Cinnamon Roll French Toast.  We sampled both and were tempted by the 6 different kinds of ‘Mimosas,’ including a Red Bull Mimosa – orange juice, champagne & Red Bull (a little scary).  But we opted for a sober, calm drive instead.

We intended to head about 200 miles for Scofield State Park in central Utah.  But again we ran into fires as we had in New Mexico and Colorado.  Scofield State Park was on a lake and there weren’t many trees.  It was hot and the skies were filled with smoke, so we opted to head on and finally ended up in a KOA campground in Salt Lake City.  What a long and exhausting day!

The KOA was really very nice.  It was 14 blocks from downtown and the Salt Lake City Temple. It was hot in Salt Lake (96) and the air quality was poor because of the fires. For the first time, we slept with the air conditioner on in our RV.  I was already missing those 50 degree mountain nights with sweet air…

Our campground had many trees, a swimming pool, jacuzzi, laundry, store and car wash.  We spent the next morning doing laundry and washing our car and RV because the first two weeks of our journey had made us all a little dirty.  Even Maya got a bath.
We only spent one night in Salt Lake and Monday went on to Logan, Utah, hoping to escape the heat and fires.  Logan was a little cooler during the day and the nights dropped down into the low 60s so that made it much nicer.  Also, there was no smoke in the air.

The west is so dry.  It is sad to see so many of the western states in drought and in extreme fire danger.   Avoiding fires may be part of our adventure as we travel this summer.

No comments:

Post a Comment