Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Early Departure From Jojoba

 

Well, we had planned to head up to Utah right after Easter, but with us as always, we tend to change plans on the spur of the moment! We had talked with our friends and summer co-workers Steve and Joan (FOSJ) and their plan was to leave a little early and see some of the national parks in Utah in the next two weeks before we start work.

Steve and Joan were leaving from the Lake Meade area where they volunteer each winter. Steve had a softball tournament over last weekend. They said from there, that they were going to head up to Torrey Utah and check out Capitol Reef NP and some of the surrounding parks as well. They mentioned that we should come up early as well. Max and I thought about it and we could not really find a reason why we should not.

So last Wednesday we brought the motorhome up out of the storage lot and started getting it ready for the summer travels. It took us about 3 days to get it washed, waxed, packed and ready to go. We pulled out of Jojoba last Friday and drove a whopping 17 miles to the Pechanga Casino in Temecula where we spent the night, donated some money and had a nice seafood buffet. Our plan was to leave early Saturday morning for our 425 mile day.

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We wanted to stay Saturday night and Sunday night in Hurricane Utah, which was about 40 miles from where Steve and Joan were spending their weekend playing in the softball tournament. Fortunately for us but not so for Steve, his team was knocked out of the tournament on Saturday. That left Sunday open for us to go explore the back side of Zion NP, Snow Canyon, Kolob Reservoir with them.

Here are a few pictures from Sunday.

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Monday morning we met Steve and Joan with our rigs, at the Kolob Canyon visitor center and took a short drive up to look at the views.

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From the visitor center we headed north about 217 miles to Torrey just outside the Capitol Reef NP entrance.  Max and I are in one campground and Steve and Joan are just right down the street. We have spent the last two days exploring the area and doing a little Jeeping off road as well.

That’s me in the middle

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We came across these old mines.

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What’s this? Radioactive!!  These were old Uranium mines. The sign says to not spend more than a day in the area.  I wondered if I got close enough if the radiation would give me super powers!

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Steve and Joan

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Max taking a break in her little cave.

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We will be in this area until next Tuesday, then we will move over closer to Provo. I need to have the Jeep looked at again at a dealership next Wednesday. I have an intermittent problem with an engine light and traction control light. They both come on and I loose some engine power. I took it in to a dealer in California and since the light will reset itself there was not much they could do.

This is a bad sight when you are in the middle of nowhere, but the Jeep still performs well enough to get us back home. I just hope the dealer can find out what is causing this to happen. It has happened about 5 times in the last month. Sheesh!

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Enjoy Your Day!

4 comments:

owensontheroad said...

Perfect area of the country to Jeep!

Pete and Jean Hamilton said...

Jeeps computer should set a code to tell them what caused it....IMHO.

Al and Karen said...

You are going to have a great time! If you all are near Tetons this summer, drop a line, we'll be in Moran at the ranch mid-May to October.

Jim and Barb's Adventures said...

Cool that you were able to spend a few days with Steve and Joan. We are putting the final touches on our equipment as well so we are ready for next week.

See you then!