Tag: Utah

Tourist Review – Dead Horse Point State Park – SE Utah

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Friends, RV'ing, Sightseeing, Touring, Tourism Review, Traveling, Volunteering, Working

When we stayed a couple weeks at Angostura Recreation Area (Hot Springs SD) you’ll remember that we had the pleasure of meeting and visiting with our neighbors Clark & Anita.

Clark and Anita (and their Oliver Travel Trailer)

They told us that as we traveled south from South Dakota through Wyoming and Utah, we just HAD to stop (and camp if we could) at Dead Horse Point State Park just northwest of Moab, Utah.

He told us if we didn’t make it to any of the other popular parks in that area of Utah (Arches, Canyonlands, Canyon de Chelly, Grand Staircase Escalante, Capital Reef) we’d just HAVE to visit Dead Horse.

As it turned out, our travels back to Rover’s Roost at Casa Grande Arizona found us traveling west along southern Wyoming and the east side of Utah and traveling down U.S. 191 instead of using the interstate highway system – and we’re so glad we did!

This way we stayed out of Colorado and the I-25 / I-70 yet we still got to see a LOT of beautiful scenery and ecosystems as we traveled up and down the hills and valleys, sometimes as high as 9000 feet!

But the Creme de la creme – has been Dead Horse Point State Park. The Colorado River runs through the park. The main (only) paved road through the park is Utah State Route 313 and it’s one way in and the same one way out. The $20 (non-resident) entrance fee is per vehicle so we parked our rigs in a gravel parking area just outside the park entrance and then we climbed into David and Susan’s car to visit the park.

As we all realize, photographs just never represent fully the depth and beauty of the subject. But I just had to share some with you here.

If you click on any of the thumbnails below, a larger picture will open. If you have a slower internet connection it might take a second (or a few) to sharpen up the image. Just be patient and you should be able to see and appreciate the beauty in the detail.

Here’s a short (1-1/2 minutes) video of some of the beauty we took in.

And a special thanks to Clark and Anita for putting us on to this gem. Next time we are going to be in the area, we’ll need to make campground reservations ahead of time!

Thanks once again for riding along on the journey of our lifetimes. It’s been five years now that we’ve traveled full-time and worked (volunteered) part-time along the way and it’s still fun – how about that!

Until we meet again, take care of yourselves and each other. You’re all you’ve got. Be good. And stay safe in this crazy world of ours.

Herb and Kathy

Camping at School

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Camping, Friends, Learning, Traveling

We’ve really enjoyed using our Boondockers Welcome membership to stay in new and unique places and meet all kinds of interesting folks.

This week, on our way from Arizona to Montana where we will be camp hosting for a couple months at an Army Corp of Engineer campground, we utilized our “BW” membership to once again camp in a driveway of “Friends We Haven’t Met Yet”.

This time was a little different than all the others we’ve stayed at. This time we stayed in a schoolyard!

The old Millard LDS Academy (1910-1923)

Our host was Kevin Caldwell. Kevin and his wife have owned the school property for 8 years now and have been continually restoring it in hopes of one day opening it as a Bed & Breakfast / Event Center and meeting place for the benefit of the community.

The school was completed in 1910 and was originally used as the Millard Latter Day Saints Academy until 1923 when it then became the Hinkley (Utah) High School until 1953.

Over the years the school has been purchased and sold several times and various business ventures have come and gone. In the mid-1970s the Hinckley Elementary School made use of the academy building. It even served as a disco around 1978. The disco, called The Total Eclipse, operated for only about 18 months. In the 1980s, a swimming pool and water slide were built and soon closed again.

Kevin and his wife (whom we didn’t have the opportunity to meet – she was out of town working) along with his teenage children and occasional local labor have done a TON (or five) of work including; removing all the old wood shake roof and installing all new plywood sheeting, felt paper and shingles, stripping all the interior walls of plaster and lathe and building out the inside of the exterior walls with 2X6 studs so that they can be packed with insulation, and installing, taping, and mudding all new drywall.

But before the new drywall could be installed first they gutted all the old “knob & tube” electrical wiring and rewired the entire building to present code, installed all new plumbing throughout including all fresh and waste water lines, installed new gas lines to supply the (3) new gas forced air furnaces (with 4 more to come), and installed extensive solar panels on the gymnasium building adjacent to the main school building.

During the first five years of the project Kevin and his family lived in their Montana 5th Wheel trailer on the property. They were able to move in to the building 3 years ago.

Both Kevin and his wife have full time jobs and they still have 4 children at home to raise and nurture. Part of that nurturing is teaching them a good solid work ethic and helping on the schoolhouse gives them plenty of opportunity to help out, learn new skills, and learn to appreciate their personal accomplishments.

The gymnasium (at this point) only hosts the solar system. Work on the rest of the building will only commence once the main schoolhouse is completed

It was a real treat having the opportunity to meet Kevin and part of their family and see all the work they’re doing to restore this grand old property.

We want to thank them for hosting us and giving us a tour of their project and we wish them all the luck in the future as their dream comes to fruition.

Our rig parked next to the gymnasium. Kell and Karen also pulled in this afternoon and have their rig parked right behind us.

Thanks for riding along with us. If you haven’t already done so, please subscribe to our blog by entering your email address in the block on the right above – that way you’ll be sent an email each time we publish a new post.

Where We’re Heading To Next

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Friends, Ham Radio, Sightseeing, Traveling, Working

It’s March 18, 2019 and we are currently parked at the Pima County (Tucson, AZ) Fairgrounds with about 2000 other Escapee RV Club members enjoying the annual Escapade national gathering.

One of the evening entertainment sessions at 59th Escapade – Tucson, AZ

Since we “hit the road” and started our full-time RV lifestyle in late 2016, we had been Workamping our way around the country. We work at campgrounds or RV parks offering about 15-20 hours per week in exchange for rent-free living at the park and it typically includes all our utilities, cable TV, wifi, laundry and sometimes discounts at the park store or nearby attractions.

But being members of the Escapees RV Club, we were able to take advantage of getting on a “Wait List” for any of their parks. We put our names on the Wait List for the parks in; Wauchula FL, Hondo TX, Casa Grande AZ, Benson AZ, and Pahrump NV. We figured whichever park had our name at the top of the list first (waiting lists are often many years long), that’s the park we’d call “home” for the winter.

In addition to having a place to winter regularly, the “home base” would provide us a place to go at very little additional cost (only electric and propane) to be should we need a lengthy stay for say, recovery from a medical procedure – planned or otherwise.

As it turned out, we rose to the top of the list at Rover’s Roost in late 2017, accepted the lifetime lease agreement, continued our Workamping commitments for spring, summer, and fall of 2018, and then arrived here November 1st to be “on vacation” for the winter months.

We’ve spent a very relaxing and enjoyable winter at our leased lot at the Escapees Rover’s Roost RV Park in Casa Grande, AZ. I’ll share more with you in later posts about our time here at “The Roost” both having fun with our new friends along with some of the projects we’ve completed to our “home on the road”.

Our winter home at Rover’s Roost RV Park at Casa Grande, AZ

But now it’s early spring and it’s time to leave “The Roost” for the summer season (it gets WAY too hot here) and head north to cooler climates.

This year, we are heading to Montana to work at an Army Corp of Engineers campground as Park Hosts. We’ll be at Ft. Peck Dam Downstream Campground for 3 months (April, May, and June) and then we will move a little east to our next Workamping commitment at DC Booth Historic Fish Hatchery in Spearfish South Dakota working as visitor center and museum employees. We’ll be there July, August, and September.

Here’s a map of our trip north next month. This is subject to change as we have over 120 places on our Bucket List and we’ll try to hit many of them along the way, even if it takes us off track a hundred miles or so. We’re not in any big hurry to get north, we’ll hopefully just follow the spring thaw!

If you’d like to check up on us as we travel and see where we are at any given moment in time, you can just go to www.aprs.fi and type my ham radio license number WB8BHK-9 into the Search box and it’ll return a Google map with our exact location at that moment. We’d love for you to follow along!

I admit I’ve been a bit lax the last few months and haven’t posted blog entries as often as I would have liked to. I’ll work to improve my postings as we travel north and we appreciate you following along.

Oh, by the way …. we’ve designed a new logo to market our brand. Whatta ‘ya think?

Road Trip to Arches National Park

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Sightseeing

Since we “workamp” two days each week, that leaves us with five days to do what we want. We’ve been doing a lot of sight-seeing since we’ve been here, and this week was time to do a little more.

Kathy’s had it on her “bucket list” to visit as many of the national parks that we can.  This week we decided we would make the 6+ hour ride up into southeastern Utah to spend a couple days in the Arches National Park & Canyonlands National Park.  We also took a little detour on the way there to visit the “Four Corners” (4 states come together) and another small detour on the way home to visit the “Canyon de Chelly” National Monument.

The slide show below represents some of the pix we shot while driving through the parks – stopping at at the overlooks to stand in awe of all God’s beauty.

The rock formations we see are formed over hundreds of millions of years as the earth would split and shift, leaving valleys and canyons in the iron rich sandstone.

Remember, if you’re seeing this post because it came to your email Inbox, you may not see the slide show.  Instead, click on the link at the top of this email to be taken to our blog where you will be able to view the slide show.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Here’s a YouTube video with a little more,  (it’s about 12 minutes or so)