Whaddaya Know, We Actually Did Leave:-)

We managed to tear ourselves away from Montana.  Finally, and even at the last moment we gave some thought to putting it off another day, but our last evening was perfect, no wind, nice temps, and except for the smoke, stellar.

Initially we planned to stay the night in Salt Lake City at the Pony Express RV Resort, then go over to Speedco and have the oil changed and the chassis lubed, but decided it was too soon, we usually do it in Nov-Dec, don't know what I was thinking, so basically we wasted a night there; see, we could have stayed another night in Ennis:-)  And I should mention the Pony Express is hardly a resort, it is all paved, but the sites are tight and short and expensive, and it's filled with permanents.

Next we headed over to Heber City, UT to Mountain Valley RV Resort which is definitely a resort, an awesome place!  We got a premium site in the back with adult only amenities.  They have 2 pools and spas, 2 separate laundry rooms, and 2 rec halls, and the ones in our section are adult only.  We thought it was great.  The site we were in, just like all the premium sites was at least 20' wide and close to 80' long, and ALL concrete!  It also has a hedge row between sites for added privacy, and if it wasn't still smoky, the views would have been awesome.  Yes the smoke stayed with us the whole way to Utah, and now since we are in Colorado, we can report the smoke is still here.

We had 4 main goals in Utah, stay at the RV park we had heard so much about, get our flu shots, eat a Banh Mi sandwich at Oh Mai where we had eaten several years ago, and get some of the best french fries we've ever had at Cubby's.  Yeah, you knew food had to be included somehow:-)

All of our errands are in the Salt Lake City valley which mean a huge circle to get there from Heber City.

This is basically what we did two days in a row

First we got our flu shots, quick and easy at CVS, then headed north towards Oh Mai, and on the way we saw quite a sight.  We've seen lots of paragliding before, but never so many at one time and one place.

Sorry for the poor photo, but Jan tried her best through the truck window
at 70+ mph with her phone, but you get the idea, wow

Now we hadn't had the Banh Mi sandwiches at Oh Mai since 2014 when we came through on our way to Alaska, so it is always a crapshoot as to whether the restaurant is still good or even there.  Well we can report they are just as good and they have grown to 9 locations.  We picked up our sandwiches and found a quiet place to eat, and man o man they were delicious!  

This is beef brisket

And this braised pork belly

In fact they were so awesome we decided we'd go back the next day and get 2 different ones, as at this point we don't have a go to place for Banh Mi's anywhere.  Decadent, but the 2 different ones the next day were just as good!  And then for good measure we grabbed an order of Rosemary Fries at Cubby's that were just as good as we remembered.  So on the food front we did quite well in Salt Lake City.

We did do one drive up Rt 92, called the Alpine Loop Scenic Highway, even with the smoke.  The views weren't as good as they could be, but it was still beautiful, especially with the aspens getting color.

The beginning of the road

Gaining elevation and color

Beautiful!

So after a whirlwind short 4 day visit, we bid Utah good bye and headed farther south to Montrose, CO before we head down to Durango for 2 weeks, looking forward to meeting Jan's sister Karen and Tom there.  Who knows, maybe the smoke will leave us by then, but we heard yesterday another fire just started a little north of Durango, so we aren't getting our hopes up.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Yeah, I know I must sound like a broken record, as this is, I think, the third time I have told you we were leaving Ennis, but this time we are really leaving.  In fact we weren't even supposed to be here now.  We had planned to leave Picabo, ID, go back north to Henry's Lake State Park for several days then over to West Yellowstone for several more, then head south, but.....

We realized Henry's Lake had switched over to a first come, first served status as of September 15th, so we knew we had to get there early as they only have a limited number of sites that can fit us.  The day before we were leaving, Jan happened to check on her phone for the latest info on the park and found out they were in the midst of paving and it was running behind schedule.  In addition to that 2 whole sections of the park were closed!  We looked at each other knowing our chances were minuscule that we would be able to get in, then after we each looked at each other with the same idea, and blurted out, let's go back to Ennis!  So Jan called and got us a site on the back row with those lovely views I've showed you so many times.  All set then, we would go to Ennis for a few days then continue with our plan to go the West Yellowstone and then south.  Well, when we got to the park, serendipity got us the best site in the park, on the end with no one in front or beside us which gave us an absolutely unimpeded awesome view!  Wow.

How's that for a site?

We got parked, settled in, but unfortunately when we went to set up our satellite dish we got a 775 error message saying the receiver couldn't communicate with the dish?!?  We checked the connections inside and no change.  So up on the roof we went.  We found nothing unhooked but a ton of corrosion, so I decided to disconnect all the wires, clean up the ends, lube the ends with dielectric grease and put everything back together and see where we stood.  The big elephant hanging over us is our dish, a Winegard Traveler is now almost 12 years old.  We have had a couple of minor repairs done, added a SWM switch a couple years ago, but every so often it burps and we wonder if it is its last gasp.  So after doing what we could, we came back down and amazingly enough we had our TV back...........but for how long?  Hopefully at least to Florida, where number one, we have time to replace it, and number two, we don't need it as we use a permanently mounted dish there.  Fingers crossed.

The coax from the SWM to the dish

All the wires on the SWM

Looks pretty sad, remember fingers crossed

So just to tell you how fickle Jan and I are, we decided we were so enjoying our time back in Ennis, we cancelled our days in West Yellowstone seeing how we were just in the park a few weeks ago, and extended in our awesome site.  Managed to wash the motorhome and truck, fished a few days, went to Bozeman for a few things, took several awesome rides, shivered a bit as a cold front went through with highs in the 40's and lows in the 20's, and wind, oh man, wind!  40mph plus.  Yes, we know, now that we have our weather station:-)  The smoke would waft in and out, but we did get a few stellar clear days to make up for it.  

Even lunch in Bozeman
Crispy, delicious calamari

Sushi in Montana 

Even ahi poke tacos!

So sadly we are definitely leaving tomorrow morning headed to Salt Lake City, but I'm going to leave you with even more pictures.  Hope you can stand it.

Just as we were celebrating no smoke, this appeared over
a span of 30 minutes to our north.
We never did find out what caused it, but we did drive up the next
day and thankfully, found it almost out

The moon glowing through the storm clouds

And I'll leave you with this one,
the moon glowing through the clouds lit up by the sunset behind us

Good bye Montana for now.