Duchesne, Utah to Thayne, WY – August 4-10, 2014

Monday welcomed us with a thunder storm at 2:30 a.m., and rain. We planned to drive to Utah’s Arches National Park this day, with a stop along the way at the Prehistoric Museum in Price at the College of Eastern Utah. Thankfully, the rain abated enough, with sun sightings, that we could hit the road for the 3-hour trip.

The drive down US 191 from Duchesne to I-70 was breathtaking. The rock formations along the highway rose hundreds of feet above the road, with scrub pine and sage dotting the slopes. Although there was a rain shower to two, we saw a herd of pronghorn deer, open range cattle, dozens of oil wells and oil tankers, and not the least, a beautiful rainbow through a break in the rock cliffs. The highway climbed up, up, up to Schmidt Summit at 9,114’—we were glad we weren’t pulling our camper!

Our first stop was in Price, Utah to see the Prehistoric Museum at the College of Eastern Utah. Wow! We took so many photos, but here are just a few. Hope they whet your appetite to go see this impressive museum.

The Prehistoric Museum features both paleontological and archaeological collections, including more than 1,143,700 archaeological artifacts and over 81,000 paleontological specimens, comprising one of the largest and most significant collections in the country. Many of the artifacts in the museum have become world-renowned, such as those left by the area’s indigenous Fremont people. We were impressed with the giant 10,000 year old Huntington mammoth, the best-kept of all fossil elephants.

The 10,000 year old Hungtington Mammoth

Dinosaurs under "construction" and lab in background

1200 BC gourds and 1300 AD beans and corn

1400-1800 AD corrugated jar

Ammonites from Jurassic and Crustaceous eras

Barrier Canyon mural

Display of cradle boards and priestly garb

Diaorama of Ute Indian Dwelling

Examples of dinosaur "armor"

Herbivorous dinosaur bones

Above and below: fossilized dinosaur tracks

Fossilized Fremont jar: 400-1300 AD

Giant fossilized clam shell 4 feet in diameter

Peloroplites Cedrimontanus dinosaur

Rare mud grainery used to store seeds or grain

Saber-toothed cat skeleton

Stegosaurus

Fossilized Stegosaurus tracks

Utahraptor skeleton

Vision of Chief Washakie painted on hide

Willow basket trays 1300 AD

Willow basket tray 350 AD

 After lunch at IB’s in Price we headed further south to Arches National Park. We were amazed at the rock formations along the drive, but we were blown away by what we saw in the park!

Visitor center courtyard with bronze statues of animals seen in the park.

This photo and the next 3 were taken of the rocks
directly above the visitor center

The park lies above an underground salt bed that is ultimately responsible for the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and monoliths found in the park. Thousands of feet thick in places, this salt bed was deposited across the Colorado Plateau when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over time, residue from floods, winds, and oceans covered the salt beds, compressing the beds possibly a mile thick. Under pressure salt is unstable and under the weight of the thick coat of debris the salt layer shifted, buckled, liquefied, and repositioned itself, thrusting the rock layers upward as domes; entire sections fell into the cavities. As the salt sub-surfaces shifted, surface erosion stripped off younger rock. Due to extreme temperatures, seeping water, expanding ice and water, the free-standing fins and arches were formed creating what we see in Aches National Park. Over 2,000 cataloged arches range in size from a 3-foot opening to the longest, Landscape Arch, measuring 306 feet across the base. Incredibly beautiful! Following are just a few of the many photos we took of Arches National Park.

Park Avenue

Sheepshead Rock

The organ

Three gossips

Ham Rock

Cove of Caves

The Fiery Furnace so named for how the late afternoon sun reflects
off the rocks

Tuesday brought more rain, thunder and lightning in the early, early hours of the day, but bright sunshine when we woke. We decided to spend the day closer to home, and it’s a good thing we did, as afternoon thunder storms hit us again. We did make a trip into Duchesne to fuel the truck, pick up a few items at the local (and only) grocery store. We stopped at the Duchesne History Museum to see what was there.

Salt Lake City was our destination on Wednesday, about 100 miles from our RV park. A bright and beautiful day welcomed us. We parked just up the hill from the LDS Convention Center, so that was our first stop. The 1.4 million square foot conference center is believed to be the largest theater-style auditorium ever built. It is large enough to hold two Boeing 747s side by side; all 21,000 seats in the auditorium have an unobstructed view of the pulpit because the balconies are held up by radial trusses. A 67-foot stepped waterfall descends from the 92-foot glass centered spire, utilizing water from a natural spring found beneath the building. Underground parking holds 1,400 cars.

Our tour guide, Penny, took us through the three floors of the convention center, where we saw original paintings depicting Mormon stories and history, beautiful water features, busts of the current and past presidents dating back to Joseph Smith, and portraits of the church apostles, to name just a few highlights.

Hall of Apostles

Hall of Mormon stories

Looking up through the glass spire

We were most impressed with the actual convention center hall which seats 21,000 people on three levels, and the magnificent Schoensteinpipe organ with 7,667 pipes. We were able to hear the organist playing it during our tour—Wow!

The 7,667 pipe organ; notice the organist in the left center of photo in white.

The rooftop of the convention center covers about 4 acres, and is landscaped with grass and hundreds of trees, meant to depict the mountains and meadows of Utah and the land through which Mormon pilgrims traveled to get to this area.

L to R: me, Penny (tour guide), Brigitte and Thad (from Idaho,
celebrating their anniversary in Salt Lake City)

Water feature on the roof of the convention center

Wall of nations behind one of the roof's water features

The Temple in Salt Lake City

Model of The Temple, in the South Visitors' Center

The Joseph Smith Memorial Building, above.
Below is a portion of the first floor of the building

The Assembly Hall built in 1882; free concerts and
recitals are presented weekly in this building

Above and below:  water features near the Temple Square

Just one of the gardens in Temple Square

Above and below 2 photos: The Tabernacle, home of the
Mormon Tabernacle Choir

We ate lunch at Nouvoo Café located in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Nouvoo means “beautiful place,” and is named for the city in Illinois founded by the Mormons in 1839 when they were forced out of Missouri by religious persecution.

The Salt Lake City Planetarium was our next destination. What an interesting place. The first thing we saw as we entered the building was “Science on a Sphere,” which we had seen in Rockport, Texas our first year there. There were all sorts of interesting and interactive displays relating to the planets and universe. 

Science on a Sphere

The rains came as we left the planetarium, so we boarded the TRAX for a rail ride back to downtown to see Beehive House. Built in 1854, this house served as the official residence of Brigham Young. Many of the original furnishings are in the house, as well as original clothing by the Youngs. The house is located within a block or so of the Temple Square.

An example of the exquisite wood work throughout
the Beehive House.

Brigham Young's office in Beehive House

Brigham Young's original cape and tool chest

Above and below: the Parlor

Formal dining room; original chairs are on either side of the fireplace.
The stenciling on the walls is all hand done.

The dish room; the white china is original, and has "BY" on each piece.

The kitchen; the stove is original to the house

Above and below: Brigham Young's bedroom; notice
his hat on the bed.

Emma Young's bedroom

Above and below: the bath room at Beehive House,
originally outside of the main building

Gardens at Beehive House

From there we made our way back to the truck and headed west to the Great Salt Lake, the largest salt water lake in the Western Hemisphere. A shallow lake with an average depth of 16’, it can quickly produce waves up to 10’ high in certain weather conditions. Great Salt Lake is a remnant of a much larger prehistoric lake called Lake Bonneville, which spanned 22,400 square miles, nearly as large as Lake Michigan, and roughly ten times the area of the Great Salt Lake today. Lake Bonneville existed until about 16,800 years ago, when a large portion of the lake was released through Red Rock Pass in Idaho. With the warming climate, the remaining lake began to dry, leaving Great Salt Lake.

Three resorts, each called Saltair, were built and operated on the south shore of Great Salt Lake since 1893, each a successor to the previous one. The first Saltair pavilion was destroyed by fire in 1925. A new and expanded resort and pavilion was built at the same location, but after years of various challenges (floods), it was eventually destroyed by arson fire in 1970. Completed in 1981, the current Saltair serves as a concert venue and is located about a mile west of the original.

Wednesday was a long day with lots of walking, so we stayed close to home Thursday to help our old bones recuperate. We also did preliminary preparation for our departure Friday.

Friday dawned sunny with temperatures in the low 60s. Good day to drive! We headed north and east to our destination in Thayne, Wyoming at the Star Valley Ranch RV Resort.

Wyoming, the way America used to be

The Star Valley Ranch RV Resort is located just off Highway 89 in Wyoming. It’s the largest RV park we’ve stayed in with over 800 sites, and plans for more—although quite a few of the sites are privately owned with either RVs or elaborate park models. It’s a beautiful, park-like park with lots of trees and is very well maintained. There are tons of activities onsite, including golf, a swimming pool and hot tub, pickleball, exercise and dance classes, tennis, billiards, shuffleboard, a bumper boat pond, large dog park, and a huge community center with an extensive library. There's even a convenience store next to the laundry!

The welcome and check-in building

Our site

The convenience store to the left and laundry to the right

The community center, that houses a very large library
and tables for hundreds.

Just a portion of the library

Pickleball courts above, and the courts and
kids' play area below

Pool area; hot tub is to the left out of the photo

An ingenious golf cart...ha!

Star Valley is located on the western border of Wyoming, right next to Idaho. It’s surrounded by the Bridger-Teton, Caribou and Targhee National Forests. It’s approximately 12 miles wide and 45 miles long, with the altitudes ranging from 5,600 in the north to 7,000 in the south. The Salt River Mountain Range to the east boasts peaks up to 10,000’, while 8,000 peaks rise to the skies in the Caribou and Webster Ranges to the west. Breathtaking.

Oh, and by the way, this valley was a good place for outlaws on the run long before it was settled. There were gold camps to the northwest and salt freighters coming in and out to the southwest. One of the famous Star Valley outlaws was Butch Cassidy (see last week’s blog for a story on his notorious partner, the Sundance Kid).

Saturday we drove south to the small town of Afton, which is known for two things: it is home to the world’s largest elk horn arch, and its proximity to the world’s largest of five Periodic (or Intermittent) Springs, a rare geological feature where a natural spring flows intermittingly, ceasing entirely for a few minutes at regular intervals. The Periodic Spring is thought to be caused by underground siphoning activity. Only five other such springs exist in the world: Gihon Spring in Jerusalem, Dhor Barahi in Nepal, Gyechon in South Korea, Gonaine de Fontestorbes in France, and Igla in Slovenia. It’s located near the edge of the mountains rising east of Afton in a steep sided canyon, near Swift Creek.

A 4.1 mile one-lane dirt road leads from just outside Afton to the parking lot of the “spring that breathes,” so named by the Indians who used to come to the spring for healing and inspiration. From late August to May, the flow cycles on and off at regular, predictable intervals. The spring runs up to 100 cubic feet per second of clear, ice cold water for about 18 minutes, and then begins to subside and gradually ceases altogether for 15 to 20 minutes. The 1.6 mile uphill walk from the parking lot to the spring was on a fairly wide graveled pathway along Swift Creek—that is until we reached the steep muddy and rocky incline to the spring itself. We were unable to reach the actual mouth of the spring due to water running over the muddy path. Nevertheless, it was worth the climb, although our legs were sure tired afterward!

Path up to the spring is to the right; muddy and rocky
and very slippery!

Above: spring not gushing
Below: spring gushing

The elk horn arch is a bridge spanning highway 89 which is 75’ wide and 18’ high and created from over 3,000 antlers, the majority from sheep and bulls rather than elk. Although several such arches are found in several other towns in Wyoming, this is the largest.

We returned to our coach to rest the remainder of the day, and chatted with neighbors Bob and Shari from Wyoming. They have a 40’ Montana 5^th wheel, with a very interesting floor plan. The living room is in front over the hitch rather than in the rear like most 5^th wheels. The bedroom is in the rear of the unit. Pretty cool.

Sunday was another beautiful day, with temps in the low 80s. We decided to drive to Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons, about 60 miles away. What a beautiful drive along the Snake River, which would remind you a bit of the North Cascade Loop in Washington State—not quite as rocky as the loop, but just as beautiful.

After a stop at the visitor center in Jackson Hole, we headed north turning left into Grand Teton National Park at Moose Junction. Our first stop was at the Taggart Lake and Bradley Lake Trailhead. Along the way we passed the National Elk Refuge just east of the highway, which serves as the winter range for 5,000 to 10,000 elk. Unfortunately, elk aren’t generally seen at this time of year.

Above and below: inside the visitor center, these elk
welcomed us!

Continuing on, we decided to take the plunge and hike up to Taggart Lake, a mere 1.6 miles; the vista of the Tetons would be gloriously portrayed just above the lake. The first quarter mile was easy; then the trail started up, up and away to 6,902’ above sea level. (The trek we took the day before to Periodic Spring was taking its toll on my legs, so I made it about ¾ of the way before turning around. Dick continued on…) 

Me with just a glimpse of the Tetons behind me

Taggart Lake was formed from the Taggart Lake Glacier, which flowed from Avalanche Canyon, scooping out the lake basin. It’s interesting that no foothills stand in front of the major Teton peaks. Earthquake movements over time continue to cause the peaks to move skyward, while the valley moves downward.

After I left Dick at 12:15 p.m., he continued on, but took a wrong turn taking him to Bradley Lake (at 7,022’), rather than Taggart, another mile along the path. Bradley Lake is the smallest of lakes along the base of the Teton Range, formed by the glacier that flowed from Garner Canyon. (Dick never made it to Taggart Lake…). While on the Bradley Lake trail Dick met a group from Ohio (Dick grew up in Ohio and lived there many years). Two of the lads had Ohio State t-shirts on so he couldn’t resist the photo op. Notice they were posing the “O” and “H” in OHIO. Great to meet special folks along the way.

By the time Dick returned to the parking lot, and me, it was 1:45 p.m., and it was hot. (Because we’re at such a high elevation, the sun is intense even though the temperatures may not be high.) I figured as long as I didn't see a MediVac helicopter flying around he was still going strong!

Above and below: Bradley Lake

We then headed further north to the Jenny Lake Trailhead and visitor center, in the Cascade Canyon. The Cascade Canyon is one of the most spectacular canyons in the Teton Range. It lies between the “Cathedral Group,” the Teewinot Mountain, Mount Owen, and the Grand Teton) to the south, and the St. John group (Symmetry Spire, Rock of Ages) to the north. Breathtaking! (As we entered the visitor center we noticed 8 to 10 people sitting outside, all with their hands busy texting on their phones—just can’t get away from being connected…)

As we walked south along the lake toward the boat ramp, we became aware of a bit of commotion and a large crowd of people. Just to the south of the ramp along Cottonwood Creek were watching a mother moose and her calf, about 120 yards away. Dick took photos, and then we moved away toward the parking lot, where we got an even better view of the animals, this time they were about 40 yards away. They didn’t appear to be skittish or bothered by us, which was so cool. As they walked through the water we shot this video. Awesome! That was the hit of the trip!

During our drive and hikes we also saw antelope, deer, chipmunks, and osprey. How very cool!

On our way back to Star Valley, we stopped in Jackson Hole to take some photos and have a bite to eat. The town square has 4 elk horn arches, one at each corner, at the entrances to the square. The square doesn’t allow dogs or smoking; if you attempt to remove one of the antlers from the arches you could be subject to a $750 fine. (We didn’t attempt that! Ha!) The town is very quaint with lots of galleries, shopping and restaurants. The sidewalks are wooden planks, lending itself to the western atmosphere. A stagecoach with 2 horses will take you around the town if you wish.

Unfortunately, it was Sunday so we missed
the shoot out.

Although it was not quite 5 p.m. we decided to eat at the Town Square Grill, upstairs from street level. Ouch! Our legs and joints were telling us “no” but our stomachs were telling us “yes!” We sat outside overlooking the town square, and had their famous Tap Room burgers and fries. Good stuff, Maynard! As we were sitting there, a family across from us started talking with us, first referring to the shirt I was wearing from The Naniboujou Lodge located on the north shore of Lake Superior outside Grand Marais, Minnesota, where we spent several months last year. They were from Minnesota, and had vacationed at Naniboujou and the surrounding area many times. It was fun chatting about the area and sharing with them what we’re doing.

By this time our legs were really suffering; we’re used to walking and riding our bicycles, but climbing uphill over rocks and boulders uses an entirely different set of muscles. It hurt to climb into the truck, not to mention up the 3 steps into the camper when we returned home!  And, the 3 steps up to the bedroom!

Anyway, that’s it for a busy week. This week we’ll drive up to Yellowstone (hopefully, not much hiking...ha!), and Thursday pack up and head further east toward Mt. Rushmore. Hope you’re enjoying our adventures along with us.

A. Carson City, NV

B. Elko, NV

C. Duchesne, UT

D. Thayne, WY

See you down the road…

Hugs ‘n’ love,

RJ and Gail