DuEtte - Lake Powell Rally

We are now officially back home!! We drove straight through from Vegas just to be home today (golf tomorrow - priorities!). It wasn’t a bad drive, probably because we left Vegas on a Saturday. So, relatively uneventful until we were about 2/3 of the way down the 166. We came upon a Sheriff’s car blocking the traffic westbound. Then we saw smoke and fire and more lights down the rode. But, the oddest thing was we saw at least four airplanes circling the skies. There was at least one commercial aircraft and a couple of smaller planes. These may have been unrelated events, but it was certainly odd. When the Sheriff let us pass, we saw that a car on the eastbound side had had a wreck and caught on fire that spread to the neighboring field. Then, just as we were passing by the damaged car, the commercial airliner buzzed, what seemed like a few feet, over our heads - freaky!! Anyway, good to be home! 1,806 miles, 2 visits to Vegas, 1 National Park, and 1 National Recreation Area - yeah!!

Apparently, this is becoming our comfort place. Plus, it was about half way for our trip back home - any excuse for some good food and maybe a flirt with Lady Luck! Alas, no luck tonight, but we did have some good Japanese food!! Today, we also knocked off a couple of new roads that we had never been on before. If you don’t know, we (read - Nan) highlight a road atlas for all of the roads we travel. So, we know where we have or have not been. Now, we’ve color coded our highlighting between DuEtte vs another vehicle. We’ve managed to highlight many new roads on this trip, even though we’ve been in this neck of the woods many times. Anyway, it looks like we are coming to the end of this adventure. We are hoping to be home at some point tomorrow. It will be a bit of a slog, but it is time to go home… Here are a few last peeks at Lake Powell…

Last day here! So, good down day. Walked down to the Lake today. It is supposed to be 71 degrees, my toes thought otherwise. Washed up the rig a little today with our latest RV wash kit - it seemed to work well. Still more practice needed. Then, the much anticipated ‘Tech Talk’ this afternoon. We re-scheduled one of our Slot Canyon tours to be available for this. It was good - but, as with many things, a lot of differing opinions about the best way to do things. We learned a few things so all good. Then, afterwards, there was ‘Your Favorite Gadget’ show and tell. J, after mush arm twisting by N, demonstrated her favorite grill - and, it turned out to be the hit of the show! So many people came up afterwards and wanted to take pictures and had questions. All in all, this was a very pleasant rally. We connected and re-connected with people and had a grand time!! Of course, I think we need to come back because there is so much to see and do… View from our campsite:

Today, we did the Lower Antelope Canyon Slot Canyons. The difference between the Upper and Lower is the the angle of the slots. The Upper is an ‘A’ frame where the path is wide where we walk but when we look up the opening is narrow. This is ideal in the summer when the sun’s path can be directly over the peak of the ‘A’ to create shafts of lite into the canyons. While the Lower Canyon is a ‘V’ frame where the path we walk is very narrow but the opening above is wider. This allows for more colors on the sides of the canyons and wider vistas above. Both are beautiful, but it just depends on what your preference is. We came back to the campsite and enjoyed some quite time before our evening entertainment of a folk singer playin his guitar under the vast expanse of stars…

Today we did the Upper Antelope Canyon Slot Canyon Tour. It was pretty amazing to walk through a very narrow passage through a rock canyon carved by water and wind. The colors and geometry and curves and angles and depth and magnitude were just incredible! It was almost too much to take it all in. We took many many photos, but none of them do the space justice. Nonetheless, we have the experience and the images in our mind to remember what it was like. Just another step in the RV adventure…

We’ve made it to Lake Powell! It was a glorious travel day. We went through a corner of Zion NP and went through the historic tunnel that connects highway 89 with Zion. The tunnel was built before wide-bodied vehicles. So, to accommodate, they make the tunnel one-way traffic (just like a construction zone), and, if you happen to be oversized (as we are) you pay an extra $15 fee for the privilege to drive down the middle of the tunnel road - it was kind of cool! Then, we meandered through the Vermillion Cliffs area before arriving at Lake Powell. There are around 63 Leisure Travel Vans here for the rally. We recognize a few folks from the last rally we attended in Las Vegas. So far, it has been nice to talk with folks. The weather is beautiful, but the Lake is still soooo low - it’s sad to see…

After the big excitement from yesterday, we HAD to have another down day! So, not much to comment on today. Omelettes for breakfast, some touch up painting on DuEtte from all of the rock encounters (did I mention we had to break out the Gorilla Tape again for our ‘fixed’ windshield crack that decided to expand on this trip!?!), and general puzzling and reading - all in all, a grand day! Here is the river we are parked next to and an uninvited visitor:

Wow - what a show! We got up early so we could make our breakfast tacos on the grill before the big event. It started a little after 9am. Let me just say that eclipse glasses are a must!! They block out everything except for the sun. We watched as the moon crept over the sun on little mouse feet. It was slow, but quick at the same time if you thought about those huge celestial bodies in motion. When we weren’t watching the show directly, we were watching the ambiance in the air - the quality of the light changed significantly and it was definitely colder without the full brunt of the sun shining down on us. The peak was between 10:27 and 10:32 for us, but the whole experience was awesome!!

Down Day! We look forward to these just as much as adventure days. Today, we grilled fried egg sandwiches outside for breakfast - yummy! Then lots of reading and puzzling and investments for N while J tried to scrub most of the bug guts off of DuEtte. All in all, a grand day!! We are living the life of the fine print…

Our campsite offers shuttle rides to Zion National Park. So, we took advantage of that today. Once in the park, you can take a hop-on, hop-off tram to various locations in the Park. We decided to ride to the end of the line and work our way back. At the end of the line is a hiking trail that leads to one of the Park’s more famous hikes - The Narrows. The Narrows is a hike where you enter the Virgin River and walk up stream between cliff walls. Most of the people doing that hike today had stopped at an outfitter just at the park entrance and rented shoes, socks, waders, hiking poles, and water bags. Nan and I actually hiked The Narrows 27 years ago when you could drive into the Park. We didn’t have any special equipment and we remember seeing a handful of other people, at most. Today, we walked the trail to the entry point and enjoyed the memories while watching the throngs of people enter the water. Still, lovely to see the Park and all of its beauty!

Travel day to Utah! We try very hard to take different roads whenever we travel. Sometimes that means we add some time to our travels. Today was no different. While we could have traveled for 3 hours, we chose the route that took 5 hours instead. As a result, we went through the beautiful Pahranagat National Wildlife refuge with an aqua marine lake surrounded by grasslands and many, many birds. And, let’s not forget Snow Canyon State Park in Utah with mountains of Snow White boulders and deep canyons. Sadly, we also stumbled upon Mountain Meadows Memorial where Mormon soldiers hijacked and massacred nearly everyone on a wagon train of homesteaders headed to California. We have so many sad tragedies in our collective histories. We can’t do anything about the past, but we can all continue to strive to be the person we want to be and to continue to find ways for others to feel good about themselves… The juxtaposition of the beautiful scenery at the Mountain Meadows Memorial:

This is our last day in Vegas. It was a bit breezy, but still hot. Amazingly, the campground was much emptier today - maybe from everyone leaving after the Raiders game. Anyway, we had some nice downtime today and spent some time by the pool. Then, back into the city to see if Lady Luck was going to strike twice. Let me just say that J did not feel the love today :( Luckily, Nan went all in at Blackjack on her last hand before dinner - and came away another winner!! On our Uber ride home, we had a very interesting driver who is launching the first Irish Tequila next month. You just never know who you may meet in the world…                                                                      

Today was our first annual maintenance for DuEtte. Thankfully, she got a clean bill of health! Plus, they were able to address a couple of annoying ticks that she had developed (squeaky chairs, sticky awning, …). So, we have full confidence to be able to roam a lot more over the next year. As a reward, we decided to go to the Strip tonight. We selected Aria as our casino of choice for the evening because they have a seafood restaurant that features Japanese cuisine. Luckily, we arrived a couple of hours before our reservations and could spend some quality time in the casino. J stuck with her traditional ‘potential’ big money payoff slots, while N gravitated to her traditional Blackjack tables. J converted her cash supply to paper tickets and had to wait to see what the final tally would be. As dinner was approaching, N put her whole stack of chips on a final bet and came out a winner! As it turned out, both girls came out with a ‘new pair of shoes!’

We are at our favorite campsite in Las Vegas - Oasis (mostly because it is the only one we know…). We had an uneventful ride here today. We tried to take a detour, but route 127 was closed due to all of the weather this last season. So, we got to the campsite early and just hunkered down.  Tomorrow is our annual checkup - fingers crossed that there are no big issues… Oasis pool looks good in 93 degree weather…

Took off for a planned shorter trip than last time. Multi purpose for this one: DuEtte’s First Birthday Maintenance Checkup (in Las Vegas), Annular Eclipse Viewing (near Zion’s), and Southwestern Road Runners Club (DuEtte’s cousins, Leisure Travel Van owners) Rally (at Lake Powell). Our day actually started off perfectly. J took a couple of friends to the San Luis airport for their vacation first thing this morning. Then, after coming home for some coffee and waiting for the storage unit to open at 6am, J picked up DuEtte and brought it home to fill the fridge and freezer with last minute items. After that, we both headed to Adelina’s for our pre-trip ritual of breakfast before hitting the road. The drive was uneventful today. We ended up stopping for the night at a Harvest Host (typically places that have some extra room where you can stay overnight for free or a token purchase if they have anything for sale). This one is called the Slash X Cafe just outside of Barstow. It was 92 degr...