Travel Day: Rawlins WY to Salt Lake City UT

Sunday: September 09, 2012

This was going to be a great day for traveling.  We were only going 290 miles today and then we are going to stay 3 nights :)  We are still rushing a bit, but we are finally slowing down some.  The weather was beautiful also.  Not a cloud in the bright blue sky. It was a cool 40 when we got up at 7am.  It was also the first morning we used the propane furnace.  We were using the electric fire place but this morning the temperature in the RV was 50 and the fireplace was going to be too slow.  At leaving time, 10:30, it was a dry comfortable 71 degrees.

We headed west on I 80 toward Salt Lake City Utah.  We saw many antelope and wild horses along the way.  Also, the terrain was just awesome!  It’s real hard to get the views in a picture.  It actually looks like you are on a different planet than earth.  This is something that needs to be experienced as words and pictures don’t do it justice.  

These pictures are of western Wyoming.

Wild horses.  This is BLM land ( Bureau of Land Management)

Welcome to Utah

This was a big lake (miles!).  The Garmin shows this as water.  Very dry here in Utah also.

Approaching Park City Utah. We are going through these mountains and on the other side is Salt lake City.

The last 50 miles were in Utah and the terrain changed again.  We were now in the mountains and not just seeing them in the distance.  However, the road was still staying relatively flat but way more curvy.  Then things really changed very quickly. As we are leaving Park City, there were signs for areas to pull over and check your brakes.  Also, there are signs saying that tractor trailers and trucks with RVs to stay in the right 2 lanes.  These are very serious looking BIG signs with flashing lights.  I was about to drive on my first real mountain road and my adrenaline was really pumping with sweaty palms and now sitting up way straight in my seat.  The signs are now saying the decent is over 10 miles with up to 8% grade with a speed limit of 65 and curves of 45-50 mph.  A couple of days ago I went down a grade of 5% for about 2 miles.  It was a little scary, but not bad.  This was going to be a different experience!!

Let me paint a picture for you about this mountain road experience.  As we approached the decline, it felt like being at the top of the roller coaster, extreme focus was in order now. It is 5 lanes wide with lots of traffic and lots of big trucks and also RVs.  The road is also very curvy and steep.   I am suppose to only use the right 2 lanes.  That was good and bad.  The good was that the people in the left lanes were flying at 65 and over.  I was NOT going to go over 65, so being in the right lanes was just fine with me.  The bad was that some of the trucks in the right lanes were only going 15-20 mph.  Here I am letting the truck automatically brake and hold the speed with the engine and transmission at around 50mph and I come up on a semi doing 15mph.  All of the left lanes are full of traffic with some going real fast.  I’m thinking I don’t want to go that slow, I don’t want to change lanes, and I can’t see very far in front or at my sides in the curves.  I couldn’t even see the curves coming from behind these slow trucks.  And, by the way, 10 miles of doing 15 to 60 mph on a curvy downhill mountain road is a very LONG WAY!  We finally made it with not even a real close call, but we were very ready to get to the RV park which was only a few miles away.

Our site in Salt lake City.

View from the front of our site

This is definitely the most up scale RV park we have been in.  All of the sites are pull through with concrete pads.  Also, the water and electric are part of a decorative stand that is lit on top at night.  The cost is also sort of high at $35 a night.  We had originally planned to stay a few miles north of Salt Lake City but decided to stay closer to see more of the city area.  We also found out that the Utah state fair is this week and we thought it may be fun to go.  The RV Park is only 10 minutes away from the fair grounds.

We ate left overs for dinner as we had planned and just chilled with a little TV.  Then it was off to bed for us.

Tomorrow will be the Utah state fair, probably in the afternoon.

Welcome to Utah!

Stay tuned!