After a couple of hours of driving on Saturday, we reached Capital Reef National Park, another beautiful place. As we searched for a campground, we passed another Lazy Daze and said hello. Later, Mike and Linda invited us over to see their rig and a glass of wine. It’s a 23-foot vehicle, so it’s set up a little differently from ours. We then had another glass of wine at our rig, so they could get a look at ours. They are full-timers, with no permanent house, who split their year between New Zealand and the United States. They keep a rig in New Zealand and spend summer in both countries, since New Zealand’s summer is our winter and vice versa. As we drove out the next day, we met another couple from Livermore, CA in their Lazy Daze. There aren’t all that many Lazy Daze rigs, so it is fun to talk about them with other owners.
Yesterday, we did one of our favorite drives in the country. We went on Highway 12 over Boulder Mountain. It was a mostly cloudy day, so the light wasn’t that great, but the views are still spectacular. Boulder Mountain has the best stands of aspen we’ve seen. They were still bare of leaves, but their white trunks, limbs and twigs gleam in any light.
In all our trips to Boulder, we never went on the Hell’s Backbone Road. We did today, and though it had a few nice spots, it wasn’t worth the 38-mile trip. So we continued onto the Burr Trail, one of our favorites. The ride starts out in white hills that are etched with vertical and horizontal breaks that create a grid effect. Then the road drops into Long Canyon, with 1,000-foot high red cliffs with huge alcoves where the rock has broken away. Although I’m very careful going up and down the gullies, my feet slipped out from under me and landed very hard, directly on my butt, adding to my collection of bruises, but not seriously hurting myself.
Tomorrow, we head to Cedar City, to stock up for our race across Nevada. Nevada has its own kind of beauty, but it’s a long haul across a lot of empty country. It looks like Nevada is where I’ll turn 60.
