I move my mobile mansion from Wenatchee to Lake Powell.
I’ve been traveling for the past week or so, starting in Wenatchee Heights, WA and ending in Phoenix, AZ.
I left Wenatchee Heights with my 5th wheel RV hooked up behind my husband’s Chevy pickup. The first day’s drive was relatively short: from Wenatchee Heights to Walla Walla, a distance of only 190 miles. Only a small portion of the drive was on a freeway (I-90); the rest was on back roads through farmland.
It rained for part of the drive, but never enough to make the road slick. I took my time. The trailer weighs in at 15,000 pounds and although it tows well, I can never really forget that it’s back there.
In Walla Walla, I stayed at the Blue Valley RV Park. It was a relatively pleasant place, with average sized RV spots, full hookups, picnic tables and grass. The trees were too young to give shade, but I bet they’ll be nice in about 5 years. The main building had a pool table, laundry room, and restrooms. Everything was clean and the place was quiet. I got some laundry done, wrote an article for AircraftOwner Online, and relaxed.
I had dinner at two excellent local restaurants: T. Maccarone’s and Saffron Mediterranean Kitchen. It was nice to have a change of scenery. I was there for four nights. The wine with my dinner at T.Maccarone’s is what sent me to Dusted Valley Winery for a tasting, where I bought four bottles of wine.
On Friday night, I got the trailer hooked up again and mostly ready to go. I needed to be on the road early for the next leg of my trip: from Walla Walla, WA to Draper, UT (south of Salt Lake City), a distance of 606 miles. I was on the road not long after dawn. The route took me south almost to Pendleton, OR, then onto I-84 through Oregon and Idaho and down into Utah, where I picked up I-15. The landscape started with farmland, then mountains, then more flat farmland, then more mountains, and then finally into the Salt Lake basin. I’d driven the route before with my underpowered Ford F150 pickup towing my old 22-foot Starcraft. It wasn’t fun then; Saturday’s drive was much more tolerable. I stopped three times for fuel and twice for food. It was very unlike me to make so many stops; I usually try to get food and fuel on the same stop, but the situation made that tough. I rolled into Draper, UT’s Camping World parking lot at 6:15 PM local time, just 15 minutes after the store closed. I’d called the week before and knew I could park out back, so I did. I even got to hook up 50 amp power.
On Sunday, @AnnTorrence picked me up for a drive to Ft. Bridger, WY. There was a Mountain Man Rendezvous there with hundreds of people in period clothes set up with period campsites. The “period” was apparently mid 1800s. Ann was there to take photos and research a possibly future book project. I was there to take pictures and look around and have a day off from driving. I didn’t take a single photo, although I carried my camera bag around all day. Well, that’s not true. I did use my BlackBerry to take this shot of Ann. She, in turn, used her iPhone to take a shot of me with my only purchase: a genuine raccoon skin, which I hope to turn into a hat.
After a very pleasant lunch at Cafe Trio in Salt Lake City with Ann and her husband, Robert, I went back to their house to relax on the front porch. @BWJones showed up and I finally got to meet him in person. After a tour of the garden, Ann and Robert returned me to Draper for the evening. Again, Camping World had just closed for the day. No one had left any notes on the RV or truck (which was still attached) and the power was still connected. Alex the Bird entertained us for a while.
Monday — Labor Day — was my last drive day. I drove from Draper, UT to Page, AZ, a distance of 370 miles. I got a very early start, pulling out of the parking lot at 6:30 AM local time. By the time I stopped for fuel two hours later, I’d already gone more than 100 miles. (I parked with the big rig trucks and discovered that my rig was about as long as theirs.) This part of the drive was mostly on I-15, but started east on route 20 to Highway 89, which took us all the way to Page. The roads were mountainous and there was a lot of climbing and descending. There were also a lot more vehicles on the road, making driving a bit more of a chore.
The only food stop I made along the way was at the Thunderbird Restaurant at Mount Carmel Junction. The place is a bit of a tourist trap, but it does have good “ho-made” pies (whatever that means). Odd thing happened when I tried to leave. They couldn’t give me a bill because the computer was down. Apparently no one knows how to do basic math. All I had was a piece of pie with ice cream and an iced tea. They apparently expected me to wait until the computers came back online. With Alex the Bird in the front seat of the car, that was not an option. Finally, my waitress disappeared into the kitchen where she may have used her “lifeline” to get help with this difficult math problem. The verdict was $7.79. I was afraid to count my change.
I arrived at the Lake Powell Resort just west of Page, AZ at around 11:30 local time. I’d been on the road for 7 hours.
My husband, who’d flown up in his plane and spent a few hours swimming in the lake, met me at the lodge restaurant for lunch. Afterwards, we put fuel in the truck and parked it (temporarily) at Page Municipal Airport. I gathered my belongings — forgetting only two things, one of which was vital — and we loaded into Mike’s plane. Then we started the long (90 minutes), hot (90°F+), and bumpy (I almost got sick) flight to Wickenburg. The only sights of interest along the way — keeping in mind that I make that flight about 1000 feet lower at least a dozen times a year — were a handful of forest fires east of our Howard Mesa place and a heavy rain shower coming out of a remarkably small cloud near Granite Mountain.
Back in Wickenburg, we put the plane away and went straight home. Hot and sweaty, it was good to take a shower in a real bathroom.
I was asleep by 8:30 PM.
I spent the morning cleaning out my hangar at Quincy for departure the next day. Then I flew up to Chelan and met my friend Jim. He flew us in his helicopter to Spokane, ID for lunch and then on to Coeur D’Alene, ID where he’s based. He demonstrated a confined space landing by setting down in the parking area of his business property in downtown Coeur D’Alene to offload a bunch of stuff. Then we went to the local airport, fueled up, and picked up his wife for the return flight to Chelan. I got some great photos of 
My destination was Walla Walla, WA, about 150-200 miles away. I chose a route that kept me on back roads. I don’t think I ever saw so much wheat in my life. My chosen route took me past 
But we headed out to the Snowbird ski resort area, where we took a hike in Albion Basin. The area had been recommended by photographer and 
I pulled out of the RV park at 6 AM sharp and continued south on I-15 to SR 20 to 
I reached Ennis, which Lynn had told me was very touristy. I didn’t really notice that, but I made my turn there, so I may have missed that part of town. I was still on route 287, but it was heading southbound now. After a while, the road joined up with the Madison River, which I followed for quite some time. When I got to the turnoff for Quake Lake, I turned in. Lynn had told me a little about the place and said she’d wanted to see it when she and Ray had driven past. Ray hadn’t been interested at the time, so they’d gone past without stopping. The place was situated in a canyon where the Madison River flows. In the late 1950s, an earthquake had caused a landslide that dumped debris into the river bed. Twenty-eight people had been killed, although I don’t know how. Perhaps they were on the road there? In any case, the natural dam caused by the landslide had created Quake Lake. I read all this on the sign outside the visitor center. It was all I needed to know, so I didn’t go in. I took a picture of the little lake, then got back into the car and continued on the road as it wound alongside it. There were lots of dead trees sticking out of the water. I imagined a heavily forested canyon suddenly filled with water and the slow death of the trees that were submerged.
I headed into the park, crossing over the border into Wyoming, the eighth state I’d visited so far. My National Parks pass got me in without a fee. (It works at Yellowstone but not Mt. St. Helens? What kind of bull is that?) I took the map and gave it a quick look. My objective was not to visit the park. My objective was to take a nice, scenic ride south toward Salt Lake City. The problem was, it was a Saturday in August. The park was full. And the tourists were of the most annoying variety: drive-through tourists who will stop their car anyplace someone else has stopped, just to take a picture of whatever that other person is taking a picture of. When I wanted to drive slowly, there was someone on my butt. When I wanted to drive faster, there was someone in front of me. When I wanted to stop in a place where no one else was stopped, two or three other cars immediately appeared, spewing occupants armed with cameras to take the same picture I was trying to take. At one point, I reached a traffic jam on a narrow, one-way road as at least 30 cars had stopped to photograph a grizzly bear on the other side of a creek. I was so wigged out by the crowd that I neither stopped nor saw the bear.
I did see plenty of elk, though. The first herd was right inside the park, grazing along the Madison River. I guess seeing tourists have tamed them, to a certain extent, because some very gutsy tourists were approaching quite close and the elk didn’t seem to care. I also saw a few bison. Most of the bison, as I recall, are on the grassy east side of the park. I was on the west side. I saw four individual animals, each of which were the subject of many tourist photos. But the one that amazed me the most was the one walking alongside the road in a forested area. I think he was lost. But he was walking on the pavement, forcing vehicles to go around him. That, of course, caused a traffic jam because everyone wants the thrill of driving alongside a walking bison. When it was my turn to pass him, I didn’t stop. I just aimed my camera and pushed the button while I kept driving. He was so close that someone sitting in my passenger seat could have reached out and touched him. Although he didn’t seem interested in me (or anyone else), I could imagine what those horns would do to my car’s paint job if he decided he didn’t like the color red. I wondered what he thought of the long line of campers and SUVs and cars filing past him in slow motion. I also wondered where he was going. Probably to the administrative offices to complain about all the traffic and exhaust.
I took the exit to the Old Faithful Inn, in search of a decent lunch. I got a great parking spot in the shade and got out with my camera. There was a huge crowd of people sitting on benches, facing the Old Faithful Geiser, which was spewing out various amounts of steam to keep them entertained. I tried two places and found a cafeteria and a buffet. I checked out the buffet and was surprised to find that the cafeteria food had looked better (although it didn’t smell better). As I was walking back to my car, Old Faithful let go and I managed to get a bunch of good photos. It was still bubbling water when I left. 
I also managed to get a photo of this little fellow. It’s unfortunate, but people at national parks find it necessary to feed the wildlife. As a result, they become tame, like this guy probably was, and they forget how to forage for themselves. In the winter, when there are fewer tourists around, they starve. That is if they don’t get sick and die from the junk the tourists feed them.
The road followed the Snake River down to Jackson Lake and Grand Teton National Park. The main feature of Grand Teton is the mountain with the same name, on the southwest side of the lake. It’s 13,770 feet tall, very rocky, and has a glacier not far from the top. In this photo, it’s the mountain that’s farthest away. It was after 3 PM and the sun was moving to the west, making it difficult to get a good photo of the mountains from the east. I followed the road, choosing the path that kept me close to the lake rather than the faster road that went direct to Jackson. A scenic drive.