Road Trip # 15 – TN, AR, KS, CO, UT, NV, CA, AZ, NM, TX

Posted 1 year ago by Kram

Off we go on Road Trip # 15. The plan is a jaunt through Southern Colorado, Southern Utah, Nevada, and Southern California. We headed out on I-40 west, which is the worst road in the world for RV’s. We had two days of 500 plus miles of driving. Our first stop was Long Branch US Army Corp of Engineers campground, which is near Lancaster TN. You can’t go wrong with ACOE campgrounds. The price is great, and the sites are spacious. After one night at Long Branch, we continued west for 500 more miles and spent the night at another ACOE campground at Aux Arc Park located in Ozark, Arkansas.

We continued west and veered north and headed for Dodge City, KS. We spent two nights at the Dodge City KOA, which was conveniently located within walking distance of the Boot Hill tourist attractions. Dodge City was a nice stop, but the gunfighters didn’t show up for the gunfight at Boot Hill. That is probably one of the downsides of traveling after all the young folks go back to school.

From Dodge City we headed due west, and our next stop was La Junta, Colorado. We stayed at the KOA for two days and had a nice visit to Bent’s Old Fort. The National Park service has a gem with Bent’s Old Fort. Some amazing history, hard to realize how tough it was to live in those days.

From La Junta we continued the journey, and our next stop was Alamosa, CO. We stayed two nights at Base Camp Family Campground, which is conveniently located near Great Sand Dunes National Park. We packed lunch and spent the day walking the dunes and checking out the park. A real anomaly in southern Colorado. You just don’t see 750-foot-tall sand dunes at the base of a mountain range anywhere else in the U.S.

We arrived in Cortez CO, and we are staying at the West View RV Resort (technically a Dolores CO address, but it seems much closer to Cortez). We will be using this location to visit Mesa Verde National Park, Hovenweep National Monument, Four Corners and Monument Valley, and Telluride CO.

We spent the day at Mesa Verde National Park which was created to preserve the Pueblo cliff dwellings. These dwellings date back 1500 years. This park is another gem in the National Park system. Well worth the visit.

Spent a nice Saturday on a little day trip out into the canyon and mesa country west of our basecamp in Dolores CO. The weather was perfect, 70’s and sunny. Our destination was the Hovenweep National Monument. Hovenweep translates to “deserted valley”, and the name fits. We arrived at the visitor center and talked with the ranger. We then proceeded on the 2-mile Square Tower Group Loop trail. Beautiful day for a little hike down into the valley and around the top of the mesa. No one has lived in the ruins in the past 700 years. What a country.

A busy, busy, Monday. Road trip from our base in Cortez to Four Corners Monument, followed by a trip to Monument Valley. The weather was perfect with temperatures in the mid-seventies and dry.

We arrived early in the morning at Four Corners and there was not a crowd on a Monday at 9 AM. Maybe 10 people. Anyone who has every looked at a U.S. map has surely noticed the four corners where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. What a neat place.

It was 100 miles from Four Corners to Monument Valley. Nerak thinks I am crazy, but this is bucket list stuff. Monument Valley is a site to see.

Took a day trip up the mountain from Dolores to Telluride. Beautiful mountain views. Tough walking around Telluride at 9000 feet. Really sucking air. We took the gondola up to Mountain Village from Telluride. Amazing it is free to ride. Quite the heights and quite the views.

Colorado was a nice trip. We encountered a tarantula migration, a large bull elk standing in the middle of a road, some great pizza, and of course, beautiful sites for the eyes to see.

From Cortez CO, we headed northwest into Utah to our next stop outside of Moab. We are camping in La Sal UT at Coyote Springs RV Park. It is very rural, about 20 miles to Moab, but a nice location for exploring Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. We are also going to Dead Horse Point State Park and to Mill Canyon to see the dinosaur tracks.

Our first site to visit in Utah is Arches National Park, the home to over 2000 arches. Like the Badlands, pictures just don’t do it justice. You need to come and see it. Another gem in the National Park Service. Great roads, well maintained trails, a lot of pull-offs, and places to picnic. I like the timed entry system, where you must make a reservation to enter, otherwise, the park would be overrun.

We followed up the visit to Arches NP with a visit to Canyonlands National Park, the “Needles” section. It was about 40 miles from our camping site to the park entrance. Canyonlands is very rugged with a mix of canyons, mesas, buttes, fins, arches, and spires. Canyonlands is a very large National Park. We are going to the Island in the Sky section next week.

We spent a relaxing Sunday in pursuit of dinosaur tracks. We visited two different areas, the Copper Ridge Dinosaur Track Site and the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Track Site. Both of these areas are north of Moab. I personally am a believer in the 150 million year old dinosaur tracks. Nerak on the other hand is a skeptic and thinks they are from the seventies.

After a hard day of analyzing dinosaur tracks, Milts was a perfect lunch stop for great burgers and fries. Thank you search engines for the great tips on where to find a good burger in Moab.

We set out early Monday and headed north of Moab to see the sites of Dead Horse Point State Park and Canyonlands National Park, the Island in the Sky region. They are both in the same area and made for a nice daytrip.

Dead Horse Point State Park would have to be rated as one of the best state parks in the country. The park has great roads, is exceptionally clean, and is very well maintained. It is well known for its overlook and rim hiking trail.

After we finished up seeing the amazing sites of Dead Horse Point SP, we continued down Utah 313 to Canyonlands National Park, Island in the Sky District. This district is very different from the Needles district we visited earlier in the week. Where the Needles district weaved through the slot canyons, the Island in the Sky district is mostly on top of the Mesas. At least that is how they seem to me. The different districts in Canyonlands are separated by the Green and Colorado rivers. There are many hiking opportunities in Canyonlands and we chose the hike out of Grand View Point overlook and back. It was about 2 miles along the canyon rim. Very scenic.

For our last outing from Moab, we headed up Utah Scenic Highway 128. This is where you can see how the Colorado river carved these Utah canyons. When you look at the work the Colorado did in Utah, and the work the Colorado did in the Grand Canyon, it is easy to figure out that the Colorado is the Michelangelo of river carving.

We continued our journey west across Utah and headed out from Moab. We are using St. George UT as our next base station. Beautiful drive across Utah to the end of I-70 before jumping on I-15 south to the bottom, southwest corner, of Utah. St. George seems to be a booming area. It will be a nice base station for our visits to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks. We are staying at Desert Canyons RV Park, which is extremely nice. 

We were very smart to get up on a Friday morning early, early, early, early to head to Zion National Park. Research states it gets very busy.  We arrived at the visitor center by 7:45 AM. We beat the crowds and jumped on the shuttle for the 45-minute ride to the end of the canyon. Our decision to go to the end of the canyon and work our way back to the visitor center turned out to be a good one. During our visit, we completed the Weeping Rock Trail, The Riverside Walk, the Kayenta Trail to the Lower Emerald Pool, and the Pa’rus Trail from the Museum to the Visitor Center. It really pays to take a few minutes and talk to a ranger when planning your day. We had a very nice visit to Zion. I believe we will be back later in the week and come in through the East Entrance.

Since the National Parks are so jammed up, particularly on the weekends, we decided to do a Saturday visit to Snow Canyon State Park, located right on the edge of St. George. We first went to the Saturday morning market at the Tuacahn Amphitheater, and then drove a few miles to the State Park.

Next visit was to Bryce Canyon National Park. It is about a two-hour drive from St George over the mountains of the Dixie National Forest. A little snowy on the west side of the mountain, and then clear on the east side.  There is no other place like Bryce Canyon National Park. After a stop at the visitor center, we headed out for 18 miles to the end of the park at Rainbow Point. We then worked our way back to the beginning. The highlight is the “Bryce Amphitheater”. We also enjoyed the 1.8-mile hike down into the hoodoos on the Queens Garden Trail.

After our visit to Bryce Canyon, we headed back to St George. Along the way, we made a brief stop at the Cedar Breaks National Monument.  Hard to breathe at 10,000 feet. I guess at some point you will get used to it.

We are still trying to figure out which we like better. Is it In-N-Out Burger or is it Whataburger. Being east coast people, it is nice to sample both. We will decide the winner by the end of the trip.

We departed St George and Utah and headed for Ely Nevada to visit Great Basin National Park. It was about 230 miles and was all backroads. Probably saw 20 cars all day. We stayed at the Ely KOA and it is definitely one of the nicer KOA’s. Very well-spaced out for a KOA.

We headed out for a nice daytrip from Ely to Great Basin National Park, which is very remotely located. We checked in for our 9 AM Lehman Cave Tour and then we drove up the scenic route toward Wheeler Peak, and quite a peak it is. Numerous mountains here in Nevada.

On our way back to Ely from Great Basin, we stopped by the Beehive Charcoal Ovens that operated from 1876 to 1879. Nice charcoal ovens. In fact they were the nicest charcoal ovens I have ever seen.

It was a nice stop in Ely Nevada and a very nice visit to the Great Basin National Park, which is probably one of the less visited National Park’s due to its location in the middle of nowhere. We have been in numerous caves during our travels and Lehman Cave ranks up there with the best of them.

We departed Ely and headed for Amargosa Valley, Nevada. This stop was planned for visiting Death Valley NP, but it is still closed due to the roads being washed away by the remnants of Hurricane Hilary. It is not due to reopen until October 15th, but we will be in Southern California by then. So, we relaxed in the middle of the desert and stayed for four days at the Longstreet Inn & Casino RV Resort. A very interesting place.

Our next stop was Desert Hot Springs in California. We stayed at the Palm Springs/Joshua Tree KOA for four days. We had a great visit to Joshua Tree National Park, and really enjoyed the Keys Ranch tour. The history and preservation of the Keys homestead is first rate. It would make a great movie about homesteading and life in the desert. Most people aren’t aware of the Homestead Act of 1862, and I am sure numerous people took advantage of the 160 acres of government land, to live on and improve.

I had lower expectations for Joshua Tree National Park, but I was wrong. It is a really neat place where one can explore two totally different desert environments. The Mojave Desert and the Colorado Desert, which make up the National Park are totally different. Keys View provided a great view of the San Andreas fault line, Mt San Jacinto, and my favorite from the Air Force days, San Gorgonio.

We departed California, the $6.35 gas and paying double for literally everything, is too rich for my blood and human soul, mind, and spirit. Next year we will do a loop through Northern California. 

It has been a whirlwind trip, and now it is time to do our turn back East. We have been out for forty days, and I am sure the grass needs mowed. We will spend a couple of weeks making the journey back east and plan to see some sites along the way.

Our first stop is for a few days of relaxing in the 100 degree heat outside Yuma AZ, specifically the Copper Mountain RV Resort in Tacna AZ. From there we headed to Kartchner Caverns State Park, located a few miles down the road from Benson AZ. A really nice and clean state park with a great RV campground. We also did the Big Room Cavern tour, but no pictures allowed in the cave. We had an extra day, so we headed down the road about 40 miles to visit Tombstone. It just happened to be Helldorado weekend, which really brought out the costumes. 

As we are heading more east into Texas country, we have landed in solid Whataburger country. Since we are east-coasters without access to In-N-Out and Whataburger, we have to sample the cuisine for the good of humankind. In our travels we have been lucky to have eaten twice at In-N-Out and twice at Whataburger. They are both really good. I wish we had both of them in NC. We have unanimously decided that Whataburger has the better burgers and In-N-Out has better fries. In all honesty, both have excellent burgers and fries. 

On our journey back to NC, we had reservations for South Llano State Park TX, but it had been raining pretty hard all day from a tropical system working its way up from Mexico, and of course there was flash flooding everywhere that required a change in our plans. Since we couldn’t get to South Llano due to flooding, we diverted to Kerrville TX. We landed at a KOA and decided to take a day trip over to Fredericksburg TX to see Adam and Lucius.

For the last leg of Road Trip # 15, we stopped in San Antonio, Texas, for a few days. We stayed at the Yanawana Camp RV Park, which is located on the southern side of San Antonio, and provides easy and very close access to the River Walk Bike Path.

After arriving on the first day, we got the bikes out and headed up the River Walk Bike Path to visit the Missions of San Antonio, which are part of the National Park Service. On this first day we visited Mission Espada, Mission San Juan, and Mission San Jose.  These missions date back to the early 1700’s and served as a church, village, fort, school, farm, and ranch.

For our second day, we drove into downtown San Antonio to visit the Riverwalk and the Alamo. It also happened to be the San Antonio Day of the Dead celebration. Downtown San Antonio was hopping. While downtown, we had lunch at the Dough Pizzeria, which we were aware of from Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and by Triple D Nation. Guy Fieri said it was good, so we had to try it out. Guy was right, it was very good. I had the Fontina E Salsiccia pizza and Nerak had the Margherita pizza.

On our last day in San Antonio, we went to Mission Concepcion and then headed out for some Texas barbeque. Our campground hosts recommended B&B Smokehouse, so that is where we went. We were not disappointed. The deluxe plate was excellent. Nice meal to end Road Trip # 15.

 

 

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