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!

On The Move, Now in Utah, Long Post

I left you on our last night in Missoula.  The next morning we headed over to Emigrant, MT in the Paradise Valley which has the Yellowstone River running up through it.  Yet another beautiful Montana valley.  We stayed at Yellowstone Edge RV Park, about 35 miles north of YNP and somehow lucked into a huge pull in site right on the river with a big concrete patio, you know even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then:-)

Along the way

Pulling into our site

 

We got situated in our site and before we knew it HH was upon us, and the rain was threatening.

But we lucked out, and although it rained for about 30 minutes, the wind cooperated so we were able to put out our awning and sit underneath.

It threatened us for awhile longer, but we stayed dry and were able to ride it out.

So the next day would be a big day.  We were off by 0450am because we wanted to be in the park for the sunrise.  It is always nerve-racking driving in the dark with so many animals around, but we are careful.  We could see the hint of the sunrise as we made our way into Lamar Valley.

We made it to a nice pull off for our breakfast, bacon and tomato on English muffins, and with this view and this hour and being in the park again, it was absolutely gourmet!

Lots of bison were moving around, but we saw a commotion about a mile down the road and went over there, sure enough a bunch of folks were watching a pack of wolves.  We love seeing the wolves, and over the many years of visiting here we've seen quite a few, a few moving along together, maybe 4-5 over a kill, a glimpse of one or two in the distance, but this morning was special, we saw 12 wolves together!  And in talking with one of the "wolfers", he said it was only about half of the pack which consisted of at least 25 wolves, the largest pack in the park.  Still they were a long way off, perhaps a half to three quarters of a mile or so.  Jan tried to work her new diopter that fits her iPhone onto our spotting scope, but with the fact it was 34 degrees, and she hadn't had a lot of practice the pics didn't turn out all that great, but you can certainly make out a bunch of wolves.  I know she'll get better and better with this device.

We had planned to stay in the park all day and make the whole circuit, but a lot of construction is underway, in fact we had to wait almost 20 minutes at a road closure even before sunrise, so we opted to do the Beartooth Highway instead.  Charles Kuralt called it the most beautiful roadway in America, and we sure agree, we have done it numerous times in each direction, and even on our motorcycle, and it never gets old.  It had been several years since we drove it last, and the weather was spectacular, so no time like the present:-)

It turned out perfectly, and the fact there was so little traffic really put the icing on the cake!

We needed to find somewhere for our picnic lunch, and sure enough Jan spied a spot down off the road with a very rough entry road to keep most folks out:-)  With a view and out of the wind, it accomplished all those things, we had the world to ourselves.

Then only one more thing to do, come down the side of the mountain, very pretty, but a bit nerve-racking for me.

We even found a nice place for coffee on the way back.

If you remember Yellowstone had horrific flooding a little over a year ago, it took out the Northern entrance road, stranded tons of people, did damage to the Northeast entrance road, both Red Lodge and Gardiner sustained serious damage to homes and businesses, and the signs of the flooding are still apparent.  Since we went into the park in the dark we wanted to go back and see the new Northern entrance road in the light, and tied it into having lunch in Gardiner.  We have visited the park many, many times, and used the North entrance many times.  There used to be a one way dirt road that followed an old stagecoach path that you could drive, and we had numerous times, from Mammoth down to the North entrance.  That is the road that they widened and paved to make a new and permanent North entrance to the park, and so far the old road, the hot springs, and the Mammoth campground are closed.  The new entrance road was opened Oct 30th, about 4 months after the flooding, amazing.

So after a good lunch in town, 

Bison and elk chili

we drove into the park.  This is a view from the new entrance road high on the mountain and you can see the original road that is closed below.

Jan made a wonderful beef and broccoli stir fry for dinner!

The happy chef

A few more things to do before we left.  Bozeman is actually just a touch closer to this campground than Ennis, so into town we went for our last time, Jan got her hair cut, we hit Costco, the grocery store, and of course we had to have some sushi for lunch:-)

The new coif

That finished our time in Montana, off to Henry's Lake State Park.  One of our favorites with some caveats, it has a magnificent view, all paved roads and sites, but only a few with sewer, and they charge double the rate for anyone other than Idaho residents, then tack on another $7/day park entrance fee, bringing the rate for a water and electric site to $76/night, in a state park!!

We thought we'd maybe fish the upper Madison from here, but all reports were that things are still aggravatingly slow, so we went to Island Park, ID for lunch on the Henry's Fork.

The next day we did a loop drive around by Quake Lake, Hebgen Lake into West Yellowstone and back around to Henry's Lake, stopped for coffee overlooking the entrance to Hebgen Lake.

Then our time in Idaho was over and southward we went to Tremonton, UT for two nights.  We stayed at Aspen Grove RV Park, a very nice, all paved, mostly pull through park, with wide, wide, and long, long concrete sites, really nice!

And at a rest area along the way we found our second one of these guys!  We haven't seen any praying mantises in years.

So now we are in Heber City for a week with a lot to do, more to follow:-)