"Living the Dream": 2017

On June 2nd we said goodbye to Las Vegas, the city that never sleeps, and started our journey to Utah. We had to change our route just a little but still had much planned for this fun state.

https://www.rvparky.com/trip/6156598681010176

Unlike a lot of our other posts, this month will be few words and lots of pictures. We have decided to just let the pictures speak for themselves. Bryce Canyon was an absolute eye opener and left Susan and I in awe. While pictures don’t capture the entire scene, we hope that you get the idea.

Our first stop took us to Salina, UT and the Butch Cassidy Campground http://butchcassidycampground.com/. This was an RPI campground so rates were $10 per day. They had the option to charge us a $3 daily fee for 50amp service but we lucked out and they either waived the fee or forgot to add it to our bill. Salina is a pretty small place with only a couple thousand residents but it seemed to have about all we needed, well within a 30 mile circle…

We really only had a couple missions to embark on from this base camp, to visit Bryce Canyon National Park https://www.nps.gov/brca/index.htm and to ride our motorcycle on the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Tour (Hwy 12). Unfortunately, due to weather we were not able to make the motorcycle trip this time.

After our stint at Salina, we headed southeast to the Jeep mecca of the world, MOAB,

UT! In Moab we had a nice stay at OKRV http://okrvpark.com/. The park was a bit of a diamond in the rough - few amenities but super nice people. OK RV honors Passport America discount and during the month of June there was no limit on the number of days we could stay. We did have to pay an extra $5.00 per day AC charge (this is added during June, July and August) but with the temperatures in the 100s daily and the ACs running almost nonstop, we did not complain. Total cost with the AC charge was only $24.50 per day - that is a bit above our $20 per day budget but we have scrimped enough other months to allow us to splurge a bit and remain within our cumulative daily budget.

Susan and I decided that June was probably going to be our “vacation” month so to speak. We have stayed on a pretty tight budget throughout the year, but Moab just had too much to do…lol - and using the excuse of it being our anniversary month Susan didn't argue.

We took a couple of early morning motorcycle trips through Canyonlands National Park https://www.nps.gov/cany/index.htm and Arches National Park https://www.nps.gov/arch/index.htm. Then we rented a Jeep for a day from Cliffhanger Jeep Rental http://cliffhangerjeeprental.com/wp/ and really toured Canyonlands backroads. We got soaked on our 2 hour Adventure Jet Boat Tour with Moab Jett http://www.moabjett.com/adventuretours on the Colorado river. We did have other plans as well, like skydiving and ziplining, but for some reason they don’t like big boned people and my heftiness saved us a ton of money…lol

Along with everything we did, we still found plenty of time to off-road in the truck and we went places we probably should not have been in a pickup, but we had a blast. We crossed over an 11000’ pass https://stateparks.utah.gov/stateparks/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2015/02/LaSal_Pass_OHV.pdf where just days before they had opened the trail for the summer season - and apparently NO ONE knew it was open yet as we did not run into anyone along the pass and locals were surprised to hear we had been on the pass. There was still snow in higher elevations and we drove through it as we climbed, weaved and zigzagged back and forth along the mountain pass and saw beautiful country.

We actually had so much fun on that adventure that we did it again on a different day, except this time we ran into a bit of bad luck when we blew a tire. Our off road adventures in the truck kinda came to an end after that but the tire shop in Moab was great. Luck was with us and we were able to get me a new tire installed and purchase a new spare the next morning. Thankfully someone else had had tire trouble the week before who had the same exact tires we have on the truck and they had purchased a full set of four - leaving 3 perfectly good tires with less mileage and wear on them than the ones we had. We purchased two at a great discount Thank You Moab Tire http://www.pointstire.com/moab!

The last thing we saw while there was the Hole in the Rock just south of Moab. It was a short tour and yes a bit of a tourist trap, but very interesting. The house was literally carved in the side of the rock - no need for AC or heat as it maintains steady temps year round. It did have running water and electric - even had a large hand chiseled bath tub! I would post the link but then you would hate me as last time I went to the home page it popped a "zeus virus" which is a tracking scam that is set up to make it look like your computer has been compromised and directs you to call "tech support" so, as an alternative if you run an image search you can see pictures, we weren't allowed to take inside pictures.

As with Bryce Canyon, we were left with pure amazement of the country we live in during our visit to Moab and hope some of the pictures will show the beauty of this place as well. I KNOW we will be back.

Did I mention that Moab also caused other changes in the Wickett travel plans? Ok, maybe it was Moab and a few too many conversations with Eric Highland. We ordered a Jeep Rubicon Recon Unlimited…lol Susan and I have always talked about a Jeep and we have always wanted one but just never could figure out how to fit it in. Well this time instead of finding reasons it would not work, we decided to simply say we will make it work. So just as we arrived at Hill AFB I made a call to a dealer in Austin, TX (Covert Jeep) and placed an order. (more about that next month).

With Moab in the rearview mirror we were starting our slow migration north and made our last stop of June at Hill AFB FamCamp in Layton, UT http://75fss.com/famcamp. What we found when arriving to Hill AFB was a nice facility and a few things to do in the area. But you have to wait until next month to see what we did. We hope you enjoy all the pictures.