DOUBLE FEATURE: A Ride Along plus A Park Review - Salt Lake City to Double Dice RV Park in Elko, NV

MAY 2013

Double your pleasure, double your fun ...

now I have the double mint chewing gum song in my head!  

McTraveler is leaving Salt Lake City, UT and making our way to Elko, NV for the night. The drive along I-80 goes through a lot of scenic landscape changes.  You'll see the green mountains with snow caps as you leave SLC, then by the expansive Great Salt Lake and on toward the flat desert floor vistas of the Great Basin where we found the Bonneville Speedway with salt flats that are blinding white; immediately as you cross the Nevada line you'll find mountains again and finally flatting out some as you enter into the hot, dry desert area of Elko, NV.

This leg of our 2013 Spring RV Trip also included a first ... a cattle drive outside of SLC where the cowboys were herdin' 'em doggies underneath I-80 ... what a fun sight to behold!  That was never expected ... did a double take then snapped a photo.

                                                  Now I have the Raw Hide song going through my head!

Because of the weather, we chose not to boon dock overnight ... just didn't want to have to run the generator all night for A/C.  So we found the Double Dice RV Park in Woodall's Directory and they did give us the Good Sam discount.  Like the name says, we're in Nevada, so everyone has some sort of gaming on property, even the RV park has a casino.  We didn't gamble, but later on we felt we had lost enough money just by staying here.

Campground Views

The park is a glorified gravel parking lot, but we were grateful to find anything with hook-ups on this long lonely stretch of road.  The staff was nice and said to go pick and site and let them know one we settled into.  The vast majority of the 100 park sites were allotted to permanent residences so there were little to chose from.  I peeked into the laundry and showers ... both areas are dirty coin operated messes.  

We did go to the on-site bar restaurant and had  a just okay meal ... but it was nice not to cook after driving all day.

Suffice it to say, we enjoyed the beautiful drive and endured the overnight campground.  Overall rating of this fine establishment get a big fat D.  I was surprised when I just looked at Trip Advisor and they had one excellent, six very good, and four terrible.  We felt the park rated in the terrible range.

We're sorry you had to visit our virtual campground but hope you'll only stay at this campground as a last resort.  But we do hope you enjoyed the ride along to our misadventure.  We promise better adventures at our next stop in Reno, NV ... see you there.

Until then, wishing you safe travels,
Pam, Jim, Maxx and Mollie

RV PARK REVIEW - SLC KOA - McTraveler's eyeballs are popping out from greenery overload - that's a good thing!

MAY 2013

After our adventures throughout southern Utah's red rock/orange sand country (BTW Jim had had enough rocks); McTraveler made it's way north to Salt Lake City.  What a nice change to see green, white, and blue.  Real trees! Lush greenery and flowers everywhere, white snow capped mountains, and beautiful blue sky views of  downtown SLC.

Downtown Salt Lake City

A light rail system is a very short walk
from the campground

The SLC KOA is the closest RV park to downtown and right off North Temple Street where you will find a light rail system for your tourist adventures.  It's also located on the western side of the city; which is where we wanted be to for an overnight. Tomorrow McTraveler will be going westbound on I-80 towards Elko, NV then onto Reno, NV to see friends. Note: To and from the interstate there will be some city street driving.

The location is not your typical campground in the woods (let's go hiking and fishing) but a really beautiful urban campground for taking in the sights of a big city; or an overnight that's convenient to get back on the interstate.  We thought they did a really good job with the grounds to make it a natural setting as possible.  Again, we had been green (forest) deprived the last several weeks.

Views of the campground.
Here we enjoyed the smells of pines and flowers; unlike our last campground's smell of musty mud.

The staff was very courteous, professional, and helpful with giving us tips of things to do while you're here.  It was nice to feel welcomed.  They appreciated our business and wanted us to have a good experience in their campground.  After weeks of spotty phone and internet service and no cable TV, we were all over the electronics here.

CAMPGROUND AMENITIES50

• 50 Max Amp
• 80'Max Length
• Wi-Fi
• Cable TV
• Pool (5/25 - 9/7)
• Hot Tub / Sauna
• Propane ($)
• Kamping Kitchen
• Pavilion
• Tour Shuttle ($)
  

• 5 Buck Pizza
• Tours
• Coin Operated Laundries
• 2 RV/Car Washes
• Media Center
• Barber Shop
• Nico's Mexican American Cafe
• Free Temple Square Shuttle

So nice to have a paved site with grass and trees

We enjoyed our overnight stay and would stay again if in the area.  Our overall rating for the Salt Lake City KOA is a solid B+.  We hope you found our review helpful.  If you've stayed here, we'd love to hear your view.  We welcome all comments.

Now, we thank you for visiting our virtual campsite and hope you liked the s'mores.  We eagerly anticipate that you'll be back soon to read more of McTravelers RV Adventures.

Until then, wishing you safe travels,

Pam, Jim, Maxx and Mollie

DIRECTIONS

I-15 Northbound and Southbound and I-80 westbound -  take Exit 308 (airport), 1.5 miles on I-80 West to Exit 118 (Redwood Rd.), turn right on Redwood, go 1/4 mile, turn right on North Temple Street. Go 1/4 mile. Turn left at the light marked 1460 W. Turn right into the park.

I-80 Eastbound - take Exit 115 (North Temple) stay on North Temple Street 3.5 miles.Turn left at the light marked 1460 West. Turn right into the park.

GPS address:  110 N 1460 W, Salt Lake City, Utah 84116

ARCHES NATIONAL PARK - Utah Rocks !!!

MAY 2013

Arches National Park is open year round, as well as the Devil's Garden Campground there. Unfortunately, at 40' plus toad, McTraveler is too large for their sites.  Even though we're at the Moab KOA (see our RV Park Review), there are plenty of other area campgrounds to choose from.  So we take the toad (our Jeep Liberty) to spend the day at Arches which is located on US 191 just 5 miles north of Moab.

Arches is another star in Utah's lineup in the NPS system. Throughout the 73,000+ acre park you'll find close to 2,000 geological formations of windowed arches, towering spires that dwarfed us, comical hoodoos, impressive colossal sandstone fins, canyon slots that were sometimes a tight squeeze to hike through, and massive balancing rocks that blow your mind.  Some of the rock star attractions include Balanced Rock, the Delicate, Landscape and Skyline Arches, Devil's Garden, and the Park Avenue Trail. Arches National Park is known as having the world's largest concentration of natural sandstone arches.

To learn more about the history, landscape, flora and fauna, and climate of Arches National Park, please click here.

After checking out the displays and watching the film, we picked up the road guide and hiking brochure at the Visitor Center; then took the scenic driving tour that lead us though stunning landscape.  The road had numerous turn outs for scenic overlook photo ops; plus we found parking at the best hiking trails where we found ourselves up close and personal to amazing rock formations.

To get a closer look at the Landscape Arch; take the Primitive Loop which is the longest maintained trail in the park.  The trail head is located in the Devil's Garden section.

    Location: Northern area in Arches National Park
    Difficulty: Easy to Landscape Arch; moderate to complete the primitive loop
    Length: 7.2 miles (round trip) to complete the primitive loop
    Elevation gain: About 400 feet

A sampling of photos from our video

So now it's time to put your hiking boots on and hit the virtual trails with us.

We'd love to hear if you enjoyed our hike together, plus your actual experiences if you have been here, or if our journey has inspired you to add Arches National Park to your personal travel bucket list.  Thanks for joining us and hope to see you back soon for the next McTraveler's RV Adventure.

Until then, wishing you safe travels,
Pam, Jim, Maxx and Mollie

RV PARK REVIEW: Moab KOA - Yuck the Muck !!! Where's my Rubber Ducky?

MAY 2013

I thought the saying was April showers bring May flowers?

Easy access to the campground from US 191 (the main drag running through Moab) 

The night before leaving the Bryce Canyon area, we made on-line reservations at the Moab KOA. After the great experience we had at the Bryce/Cannonville KOA (A+ rating) we presumed we'd feel pretty much the same about this one. We also chose the Moab KOA for it's convenient location to Arches National Park; which was our number one attraction we planned to visit. We also liked their campground amenities and would fit McTraveler's needs:

• 50 Max Amp
• 65' Max Length
• Wi-Fi
• Cable TV
• Pool
• Propane ($)
• Mini Golf ($)
• Bike Rentals ($)

Campground entrance

Picnic table and a grill are provided

McTraveler was the first coach to park at this new site

Upon entering the campground, we noticed that it was well maintained; and we liked the natural, raw high-desert setting.  

Our greeting at check-in was lack luster ... like we were a bother or even worse, a pimple on their ass. Would a smile really hurt you?  We are your guests; and guests like us keep you in business, or not.  We're not looking to make a BBF but a warm welcome would have been appreciated. You know what they say about first impressions ... you don't get a do-over to redeem yourself.

Our park escort (a fellow workcamper) to our site was friendlier and helpful.  He even stayed to jaw-jack while we were hooking up utilities. We shared with each other our workcamping experiences ... we had been workcampers at a KOA in Arkansas the previous year.

McTraveler was the first coach to park on a brand site designed for big rigs.  WOW, this is pretty neat, or so we thought.  The desert soil is red, gritty sand and the freshly graded site had not packed yet.  The new site had a very light gravel base that was just wide enough to get your tires on.  Stepping out of McTraveler was directly onto the loose dusty desert floor. Well, dusty until the skies opened up so much we were looking to board Noah's Ark.

Pam's first step out after the deluge, into inches of standing water, resulted in her shoe getting sucked off her foot and left in the muck.  Maxx and Mollie didn't like it either when they tried walking to Kamp K-9 for their potty breaks.  Mollie, our blonde and silver Yorkie, was no longer blonde, not even a strawberry blonde, but ORANGE!  Maxx didn't look much better.  With the consecutive days of rain, we got sooo tired of washing eight paws and legs every time the pups went out.

We think it's wonderful that campgrounds expand when the need arises; but in this case they were premature in opening up the site.  The ground was not packed so during the rains, the loose sand washed over what little rock they had in place.  It would have helped to have some type of edging between the sand and the rock to keep our doorstep area from becoming quicksand and muck.

We really didn't spend much time in the campground; we were too busy out exploring the area and enjoying our adventures.  So with mixed thoughts on this campground we say ... stay during dry season but beware during rainy seasons.   This campground gets a C rating.

Campground main entrance road changes
from paved to gravel

So McTraveler Adventures thanks you for stopping by our campsite.  We hope you drop back by real soon; next time we'll have the s'mores ready.

Until then, wishing you safe travels!
Pam, Jim, Maxx and Mollie

Campsite view

Campsite view

Campsite view

The red rock cliffs behind us were beautiful

Campsite view

We couldn't find the ark
 but did find our rainbow at the end of the day;
 and that put a smile on our face.
What a beautiful way to end our stay in Moab.

A Kodachrome moment - hiking with me, myself, and my camera

A Sunday, May 2013

Kodachrome Basin State Park, near Cannonville, Utah

From my previous post, you may recall the day started with Jim in his cave and I'm heading south from our campground on Utah Scenic Bypass 12, then following the signs through Cannonville (and a quick stop ... the attempted B&E into a closed visitor center) then onward to Kodachrome. Well is was an easy 10 mile drive to the park entrance.

Here I found stunning scenery, giant towering spires dot the landscape with the colored ribbon walls of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument as it's backdrop.

Put your hiking boots on and join me on the video tour.

Visitor Center

Spring weather in southern Utah is unpredictable and changes rapidly

Compare the size of this giant next to the fully grown tree

A RIDE ALONG: Utah Scenic Byway 12 - a white knuckle drive - they call part of it "Hell's Backbone" for a reason!

MAY 2013

Well McTraveler (65 feet towing) had already been on part of  Scenic Byway 12 driving in from St George to Cannonville, it had some challenging parts but overall not too bad to handle ... and the scenery was beautiful.  Talking with several folks around the campground, in Bryce and at Kodachrome ... they were all raving about the spectacular drive taking Byway 12 from Cannonville to Moab, our next stop.

Look at all the cool places we're going to drive through!

We were enthused and our wanderlust said Okay, let's do this!  But we had broken one of our cardinal rules before hitting the road. We did not refer to our copy of Mountain Directory West.  If we had, we would have read this ...

UTAH HIGHWAY 12 (between US 89 and Utah Hwy 24)

     There are many steep grades along this 130 mile stretch of road.  Most of these grades are fairly short but can be in the 8 to 12% range. The longest grades are south of Torrey, UT.  About 23 mile short south of Torrey there is a summit called Round Top Flat.  The northbound descent from the summit is a curvy, stairstepping decent of about 6% for 5 1/2 miles.  Then there is a section of rolling hills for about 4 miles followed by 10 miles of stairstepping grade, some of which is 8%.  The longest single section of 8% grade is about 2 miles long and there are several sections of 1 1/2 miles or less.

     The southbound descent from Round Top Flats starts with about 1 1/2 miles of 6% grade and then 1 1/2 miles of rolling uphill grade.  After topping out the grade is back downhill at 6-8% for about 5 miles where it eases to about 4% for several miles.  At this point you are several miles north of Boulder, UT.

     Between Boulder and Escalante there are several sections of steep grade both uphill and down.  These can be as steep as 10 or 11% but they usually don't exceed 2 miles in length.  There ae more short, steep grades between Escalante and Henrieville including a one mile stretch marked at 12%.

     Just east of Bryce Canyon there is a 2 miles 8% grade and just west of Bryce Canyon there is a 2-3 mile stretch of 6% grade descending into Red Canyon.

As you can read, this route can be challenging even for a car.  After a good hour into the white knuckle drive, Jim had had enough and was cursing up a blue streak and looking for somewhere to do a U-Turn.  He was dreading that the next 4 hours would be same intense driving; McTraveler had turned into a monster to handle. Well, that U-turn was impossible on this narrow road with virtually no shoulder, no guard rails, and shear drop offs. Plus, we had gone too many miles to make turning around prudent considering the cost of fuel.

Mountain Directory calls the Hell's Backbone section of curves "stairstepping" ... several were very tight 180 degree switch backs with no shoulder or guard rails with shear drop offs ... we thought we would be able to do a Jeep tire inspection because of the tightness of the curve we'd be able to see the rear end of our toad (tow vehichle).

We did make it to Moab, a 5 hour 258 mile drive, but the byway was a white knuckle experience for Jim and he was exhausted. As the photographer in this pack, I loved the fantastic scenery but many times it was pretty unnerving to look through the bottom window of the passenger door and see no road, no shoulder, nothing but a thousand foot drop off.  Jim had to look at the photos to appreciate the beauty of what he drove through, at the time he was too busy just to keep McTraveler from going over the cliffs.

Would we take this route again?
Jim: Not only no, but Hell NO!
Maxx: No, he was quaking in his thundershirt the entire drive.
Mollie: Oh yeah, she loved sitting on the dash watching in wonder.
Pam: No, not as a driver.  But I'm sure glad I had this "one and done" experience ... I was entranced and in awe, such diversity in landscape and weather changes as we made 3,000 foot elevation changes along this scenic byway.  Plus this drive gave us a story to tell about our adventures.

Are you ready? It's time to take your Dramamine, get an extra cushion for the bumpy ride, and climb aboard McTraveler so you can ride along with us on Utah's Scenic Byway 12. Let's roll ...

Like us, you made it safe and sound all the way to Moab.  It's time to let us know what you thought, and if you'd make the same trip in your RV?  Hope you enjoyed the scenery and you'll be back again soon for more adventures.

Until then, wishing you safe travels,
Pam, Jim, Maxx and Mollie

Cave man time and a closed visitor center in Cannonville, Utah

A Sunday Morning, May 2013

Jim was in his man cave mode so I took off exploring on my own ... heading south on Utah Bypass 12 for Kodachrome Basin State Park to do a photo-shoot hike through the towering spires in the canyon.

I had just made the turn to go through Cannonville onto Kodachrome when I see this Visitor Center sign; I do a quick U-turn at the only stop sign in town and go back to check it out. Unfortunately, the Grande Staircase-Escalante National Monument's Cannonville Visitor Center  was closed.

I was bummed, but thought they did a good job with the outdoor displays.  Through a snapshot back in time, you can see how geography affected the Paiute (Utah's historical tribe arriving in A.D. 1100-1200) and 19th century pioneers to settle on this beautiful but unforgiving landscape.  What a difficult life they had.



I peeked through the windows of the Visitor Center and saw wonderful artifacts and a topographic relief model of the 1.9 million acre monument.  Never made it back when they were open, but what I saw gave me a good insight how life was like before this little town (1.2 square miles) of Cannonville, Utah was founded in 1874.  The last census I could find was the 2000 population of 148.  The town's namesake was early Mormon pioneer George Q. Cannon.

Early pioneer style of fencing

I can't even imagine trying to live and raise a family in this
water willow hut ... we're roughing it in a 40' coach!

So why this story about a closed Visitor Center?

After a career life of mostly self-imposed anal strict schedules and procedures; I challenged my retired self to learn to be flexible and spontaneous.  I'm happy to report I making headway.

This quick stop proved interesting and educational; and that's another retirement challenge ... learn something new everyday.

So thanks for coming along with me and hope you'll be back soon.

Wishing you safe travels!
    Pam

RV PARK REVIEW: Bryce/Cannonville KOA. Cannonville, Utah

DISCLAIMER: We are not paid to endorse or slam any RV park we review, the owners/operators are unaware of any position or personal opinion we make and/or post until after the fact. 


MAY 2013

Bryce Valley / Cannonville KOA is centrally located in a beautiful valley with Bryce Canyon National Park to the north (12 miles/15 minute drive), Kodachrome Basin State Park to the south (10 miles away), and the Grande Staircase-Escalante National Monument (1.9 million acres of BLM public land to explore) to the east but the Escalante Visitor Center is just a few miles south in Cannonville, Utah.  There are so many things to do in the area.  This park gets an A+ for convenience of location.

From Bryce Canyon National Park drive south on
Utah Scenic Byway 12 to the KOA and in route you pass by
the Grande Staircase-Escalante National Monument

The KOA is situated in the Bryce Canyon area near 
Cannonville which is also so close to 
Kodachrome Basin State Park

In 1999, John and Marsha Holland purchased the raw land and proceeded to build their dream campground with emphasis on enhancing their guests' camping experience. Today as family owners and operators, they still have the same passion and continue to update and improve the campground.


The 50amp full hook-up sites will accommodate rigs up to 85' and include WiFi (my Verizon Jet Pack and phone did not have reception through out this whole canyon land area), picnic table and fire ring (firewood is available for purchase - do not bring your own).  The park's amenities includes a propane station (we needed to heat McTraveler), a very large kitchen pavillon for groups, a family pool, and a snack bar and a stocked kampstore which we found helpful.  Note: fullly stock up on provisions prior to coming into the national park and monument area; you're in the middle of no-where.

This park has a wonderful rustic western ambiance

The staff made us feel very welcomed and 
they genuinely wanted us to have 
the best possible experience

The family staff is very friendly and concerned about your experience in their campground; but doing so without being overly obtrusive. Marsha is a great source for local things to do and will help you plan your day trip excursions to ensure you don't miss out on the 'best stuff'.  She also gave me her personal favorite hiking tails and advised what time of day is best to tour various attractions.

We used the laundry facility and found it very clean and the lowest priced wash/dry load to date.

Overall, we immensely enjoyed the relaxed, friendly atmosphere, the beautiful setting and the welcome we received that made us feel like family - that's an A+ all around.

Hope you found this helpful and that you'll be back soon.

Wishing you safe travels,
Pam, Jim, Maxx and Mollie


PS - Yes, we recommend this park and will definitely go back!

View from our dining room