Yoo-tah, Utah - the desert lands

Twenty years have passed since we last visited Las Vegas, I must have changed and certainly aged as the glitz and glam had faded for me. After a fruitless shopping journey to outfit our feet we had some shut eye in a hotel bereft of my most important need - something to make a cuppa with. I had the teabags and even some sachets of a dreadful product called “creamer”, but no cuppa for Jane and no energy to traipse miles through the hotel to find one. 

I did however gamble my allowance of $US1 on a slot machine, pocketed $US16 and walked. Stuart lost his dollar, so $14.00 up.

  

Our helpful uber-lady dropped me off at Walmart while Stuart did the business with the RV rental company. I had hardly started to wade through a difficult grocery shop, discarding products that looked unsuitable for

normal consumption, when himself appeared at my side. Stuart was given his own list of goods to procure and set off with his own trolley.

The gaudy beast was waiting outside in the heat and glare. Cruise America had us given a labrador puppy to mind. Gaudy on the outside and grimly brown on the inside. A very serviceable colour is brown and the manufacturers had no intention of updating their design  over the past decades. It also has only 2 windows which together with the wilful brown curtains that refuse to remain open makes the interior  gloomy. It is built with no thought for weight-saving, in fact the mattress can barely be lifted. Never mind, they said “just shove a v8, 7 litre engine under the bonnet and that should move the beast along". Ten miles to the gallon if the going is good.

Hoodoos at Bryce Canyon NP

The trip to our pre booked camp in Zion National Park went very smoothly, so smoothly that I was able to unpack clothes and organise the groceries while Stuart drove. We arrived in the dark and I checked in with the kamp kommandant the next morning, phew - I only wanted to show her my reservation. She wasn’t having a bar of me, loudly telling her husband to ignore me as I was ‘just a walk up’. I had to persist before I was given an official tag for our site.

Zion has a wonderful shuttle service which eliminates private vehicles from the park, we joined more people than we would have liked  on a non too peaceful riverside walk. Still the grandeur can’t be denied.

We bought an annual pass for the National Parks and were disappointed at either being too early or too late to present our credentials at the entrance booths of the string of parks we visited.

The tunnel that exits Zion towards Bryce National Park is too narrow for RVs so we had to buy a permit for the rangers to close one lane so we could drive down the middle. As it turned out, it seemed as if they permanently operate a one way system. 

  

Bryce Canyon has rows of brick red hoodoos that glow with a light of their own. They form amphitheatres and the area was described by Ebenezer Bryce as “a helluva place to loose a cow”. You can walk the rim trail looking down on the hoodoos or descend into the canyon for a close-up view. 

More hoodoos

But yet more NPs were on the list.

We scored the nearly impossible goal of getting a camp site in Capitol Reef NP at Fruita, a former Mormon settlement. The camp was surrounded by orchards, and apples and pears were ripe for picking. A family of mule deer with their over-size ears grazed, their teeth aren’t designed for apples and I hoped they wouldn’t choke as they rolled the apples on their  tongues.

Mormon barn at Fruita, Capitol Reef NP

Mule deer in orchard

Stu picking apples

We both had persistent colds so decided to have some rest in a couple of state parks, with gentle hikes thrown in for good measure. Coral Sands State park is a magnet for ATV fans, and like the RVs that towed them, they were big – bigger than my car anyhow. 

The park has very fine coral pink sand that forms dunes and beautiful desert flowering plants were in bloom. The camp host, with his ATVs, full set of BBQs, huge RV, stars and

stripes flag etc on display showed us a nice canyon for walking in.

 

Kodachrome State park

Kodachrome State park, wish I could forget that Paul Simon song, was stunning with 5 star bathrooms. There was one anatomically accurate natural rock formation that had campers pointing and shaking their heads, but the park is aptly named with red and white rock, blue sky and yellow flowers. My favourite so far.

We are still in Utah but not done yet with deserts and rocks, we are travelling  on the lightly trafficked roads,wishing NZ roads could receive the same quality and quantity of road  surface. Blue skies, yellow roadside flowers and red rocky hills. Adios for now.

Indian Paintbrush plant