In Colorado After a Great Week in Heber City

Before we left Tremonton in the northern part of Utah, we did take a nice little loop drive after a fairly disappointing lunch in Logan, UT.  We didn't have a lot of time, so it was a pretty short loop although beautiful.

We made our way down to Heber City to one of our all time favorite parks, Mountain Valley RV Resort.  It is a stellar park, all paved, mostly huge concrete sites, and by huge they are over 25' wide and nearly 95' long, with privacy to boot.  Adult only sections including pools and hot tubs, laundry facilities, pickle ball courts, and also family areas with the same.  It is pristine, maintained impeccably, and maybe a bit on the high price side, it is worth every penny here.  Oh and did I mention the views?

We started to see little hints of fall on the drive down.

Had some cool visitors the next morning.

We have been coming out here for many, many years, and a lot of the visits were in the fall, and we've seen gorgeous yellow aspen leaves so bright they are almost blinding, but we have never seen the amount of red that we did this week.  The pics can't do it justice, absolutely beautiful!

We had several things planned to do while we were here.  Salt Lake City is not very far away as the crow flies but you can't get there from here.  You either go way north up and around, or go way south and around, so for us it obviously turns into a big loop.  The most important goal was to go to lunch at Oh Mai, a little Vietnamese place we first went to back in 2014 on our way to Alaska after seeing it featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, by Guy Fieri.  They are best known for their pho and for their killer Banh Mi's.  Scrumptious!  So we made a bee line for Holladay, UT.  We each got a Banh Mi, and we just sat there in silence with occasional oohs and aahs savoring the flavor and perfectness of these sandwiches.

Beef short rib

Pork belly

We complimented the owner as we left and promised we'd be back again before we left town:-)

We had some more errands to run, Costco, a real grocery store, a cigar store we'd heard good things about, and learned first hand about the high sin tax on tobacco in Utah, but did manage a small haul of sticks we can't find too easily and a few new ones.

A couple shots of the campground and our site.

We wanted to do a drive on what used to be a narrow dirt road, but all paved now, that goes from the extreme top of Deer Valley ski mountain and cuts across to descend into Heber City.  It is a gorgeous drive and particularly so with the colors popping.

The ski jumps at Utah Olympic Park near Park City

The beginning of the road just behind the vey top of the mountain

 

We have an auxiliary air pump which I've told you about previously, that provides air to our leveling system when the engine is not running, when the system, while periodically leveling, needs some air.  It works fine, but it is on the noisy side, we've tried various solutions, different mounting with various rubber shims, mounted it on a board raised off the floor, and none of them has quieted it very much, so I ordered a set of noise deadening mounts and installed them while we were in Heber.

It is better, but not perfect, a work in progress.  Then we had another project, one that was really upsetting us, particularly Jan since the job fell to her, again.  I've told you about our braking system light, it's a small light by the driver's seat that illuminates whenever the truck's brakes are being applied by the braking system, and if you remember this thing has driven us crazy, we replaced the switching mechanism, all the wires in the truck, all the wires in the cockpit of the coach, and Jan has already run 2 wires over time from the rear of the coach to the front, all done on her back underneath the coach.  The second time was when she found a cut wire that was shorting the system, and that second wire worked for a long time, and then in my August 6th post of this year, we had it quit again, she went under and found the anti-chafing application had moved, she repaired it on the side of the road, and off we went again thinking it all fixed, and it only lasted a day.  I checked out all the wiring in the truck, from the truck to the coach, and went into the console in the cockpit and checked everything there, found nothing wrong.  Jan went under and checked the entire wire and could not find any issue, but it still blew the fuse in minutes.  We decided to run one more wire much to Jan's displeasure, so I found a double stranded wire, 12 gage, way over kill, that had a very substantial covering on it.  Jan took one for the team and crawled under after perhaps mentioning this third run would be her last..........ever!

This way I have another wire if we need one again

We were absolutely blessed with amazing weather while we were there, 70's-80's in the day, and high 30's and low 40's at night with clear blue skies, so we wanted to take another ride into the mountains around Heber and find a spot for coffee.  We had an incredible drive, saw areas around Heber we'd never seen before and worked around into the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, and we hit gold for our coffee spot!

Not only did we have a view, we looked down on hundreds of grazing sheep,
and with binos saw 6 elk on the hillside across from us, all does,
it is hunting season.

It was so peaceful we even had a cigar with our coffee:-)

Then we made our way back out towards Strawberry Reservoir to make our way back.

It was my turn to cook dinner when we got back, no it's not my turn very often, and decided to try shrimp and grits, something we had never cooked before.  Turned out pretty good if I do say so myself:-)

Our last day arrived and first and foremost on our agenda was to go back to Oh Mai for lunch, another Banh Mi for Jan, beef brisket this time, and Beef pho for me with ribeye and meatballs, OH MY!

Then we wanted to drive Rte 92, a small narrow road over the mountain through Sundance to work our way back.  What a day!

It was a fantastic way to end our wonderful week in Heber City, blessed with fantastic weather, no smoke, perfect temps, and superb foliage.

We drove down here to Montrose, CO yesterday to another frequently visited park for us, Centennial RV Park, fairly small, large gravel sites, you can wash which we will do immediately, we are filthy, great location to do the few things we want before we move to our "secret" boon docking spot.

On the way we had quite an experience, at first we couldn't tell what was going on, but it was a helicopter running wires to a huge tower for an electrical transmission line.  It was truly amazing how delicate this operation appeared, the helicopter hardly moving and when it did slowly and confidently with never a mismotion.  It was awesome!