Leaving California is never easy - saying goodbye to family and friends, wrapping up business, swearing at our storage one more time... Always way too much to do before we leave. This departure was also dotted with maintenance on the RV - full lube, some minor repairs. Getting ready for the road ahead.
Leaving California is always difficult in another way - Cali has some of the worst roads we drive on. It is never fun to look forward to several hours of teeth rattling, light fixtures falling, and general "contents WILL shift during flight" issues. However, we did have something to look forward to with getting out of Cali - next stop Moab, Utah!
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Well, maybe not the "next stop", but the next destination for sure. We were quite happy to be heading off to Moab. Ok, I was quite happy. Ang was along for the ride - always game for the next adventure. Moab has been one of those places that has always eluded my travels. I have wanted to go there since I first read about it when I was mountain biking. It just seemed like the place to go. Now, with dragging the Jeep behind us, I had renewed interest, and had been trying to get it into our travel plans for quite a while.
Bolthouse Farms - Angie's Mothership & the reason it is so windy in SoCal
The trip out of Cali was pretty uneventful. We passed Angie's favorite provider of yummness - Bolthouse Farms. She was awake to see it! As we approached the California border, we kept seeing corny signs for "The Best Gyro in USA!!". So, a stop at The Mad Greek in Baker, Ca. (home of the worlds largest thermometer!!) filled our bellies before we left the state.
Tiredness hit at around 2am when we rolled into Mesquite, Nv. I had wanted to get out of Las Vegas while it was night time, as I had no desire to deal with that place during daylight hours. Mesquite turned out to be a pretty neat little town, and we found a cool casino with an RV parking area that allowed us to park for the night.
Overnighting at a Casino
Once we were out of Nevada, the Ahhhhhhhhs turned on - big time! The tiny part of Arizona we drove through was beautiful - big canyons and nice roads. Once we were in Utah, it was time to start looking for the off ramp to start our 2-lane adventure!
We got off of I-15 just past St. George, Utah. We really didn't know what to expect, but after looking at the maps for a week or so, I figured we could handle anything the 2-lanes were going to throw at us. Our first lesson on AWESOME was shortly after we left the interstate hell - Zion National Park. The warnings were a little intimidating, but we figured we weren't the first motorhomers to drive through the park.
As we stopped at the gate to the park, we were informed that we were too long to drive through the park, so we would have to unhook and Ang would have to follow behind me. No big. Then came the real news - there is a tiny little tunnel that we have to go through, and because of our size, they have to shut the traffic down so that we can drive down the middle of the road. No big. I can do that. Then the downside of all that - it was going to cost us $40 to drive a few miles through the park, including the $15 tunnel charge!
However, after driving a little bit through the park, I decided that $40 was a true bargain. This place put the awe in awesome. The tunnel was just an added bonus!
The drive through the park on Hiway 9 was amazing. We were able to stop a few times, take some pictures, dig the beauty. Once we left the park, we were treated to hours and hours of beautiful country. Zion NP had a high concentration of beauty, but the whole drive had something to offer.
At Mt. Carmel, we headed north on Hiway 89, then jumped on Hiway 12 east which took us through the top part of Bryce Canyon National Park. We didn't get to really see much of the park, as we decided to continue heading east. We found out about half way through the day that we were now on Mountain time, and since we didn't have campground reservations for the night, we were hoping to get to Escalante, Utah, before nightfall.
We found our spot for the night at the Broken Bow RV Park. Not a fancy joint, but exactly what we needed after a few days on the road - food and cocktails right across the street!
Check out the rest of the pictures in the Gallery - cal2utah_001.jpg through cal2utah_027.jpg.
--kev
