QC61-03 A Return to Utah

May 17, 2016 (Wed)  Bend, OR to Mountain Home, ID (365/3983 miles/34.2mpg) 57/78° - Party last night! Not us, we weren't invited. It started too late anyway - 2:00am. It went on until about 5:00am two doors down or that's when we finally got back to sleep. I guess motels aren't much different than campgrounds in that respect.

We got off at about 8:40 this morning after breakfast at IHOP. Yes IHOP - we thought we'd give them a try. Not bad but almost as expensive as Denny's. We came out of the West Cascade Mountains soon after leaving Bend and traveled through long stretches of flat sagebrush covered plains. I hadn't realized Oregon had such country. Prairie Dogs crisscrossed the road tempting us to hit them (we didn't) and the prairies themselves were often a haze of purple flowers. US20 through Oregon was beautiful, whether across the flat lands or later through mountain passes. It was a whole lot different then the same road in the east which tends to traverse some of the worst eastern cities have to offer.

We're in Mountain Home, Idaho for the night. from our window, off in the near distance, we can see the Walmart where we spent the night in our motor home several years ago. Is this motel room better? Well yes and no. The folks next door are playing their TV rather too loudly but that may be better than cars without mufflers roaring by.

C007406 Mountain Home Inn, Mountain Home, ID

May 18, 2016 (Thur)  Mountain Home, ID to Salina. UT (440/4423 miles 36.8mpg) 47/72° - Here it is,  the picture I tried to include with the last post. The original picture is huge. What with newly installed windows 10 and some senior moments, I couldn't make it smaller.


It's a scene from Chihuly Garden. The orange and purple shapes are glass sculptures. The garden and museum have hundreds of other sculptures. Absolutely fascinating and beautiful the way the sculptures compliment the gardens.

We were up at about 5:30 this morning (habit, we almost always get up about then), showered and went down to the Motel-provided breakfast. It wasn't much, they never are, but it held us till we could get a more substantial meal later.  Since we were going into scenic environs, we decided to get sandwich fixings. We did that at the aforementioned Walmart and finally got on the road at about 7:40. The ride down I-84 and I-15 was, indeed scenic and beautiful - Salt Lake City traffic, not so much. Because of some miscommunication, we left I-15 before reaching I-70 and struck out cross country. We may have missed seeing some scenery we'd looked forward to seeing but the countryside and vistas on the "back roads" have their own beauty and it was new to us. Lunch, very late, was outside Yuba State Park. Outside, because going in would have cost $10.

C007045 Scenic Hills Super 8, Salina, UT (pl83)

May 19, 2016 (Wed)  Salina, UT to  Panguitch,UT (275/4697 miles/30.2mpg) 51/67° - We"re in the area so why not? We've never been there. It seemed like a minor park when we were out here before - Zion seemed the place to go. So  we found some motels last night and away we went today - destination, Capitol Reef National Park.


This is from one of the side roads and doesn't begin to show the awesome beauty of the park. What a place! We'll have to come back and explore in detail. Four hours is nowhere near enough. But we have reservations on down the road.

When we left the park, we decided to take a more scenic route than Hildene was suggesting. That would be UT12 and it was most spectacular! The narrow, twisting two lane road took us up to over 9000 feet past vistas that took our breath away. At one point, maybe more than one, at about 8000 feet along what was called "Hell's Backbone" the road side dropped away on both sides with no shoulder and no guardrail. We could look down  for hundreds of feet and out for miles left, right and ahead. We were glad we were in Cigggy not Q!

The Purple Sage Motel has a full sized cardboard cut-out of John Wayne and a very friendly proprietor.

C008120 Purple Sage Motel, Panguitch,UT (B79)