Twice burned, thrice foolish

Two years after our fiery short-lived RV adventure, we rented an RV for a week from Road Bear, an excellent small Swiss company with facilities in Las Vegas. Karin flew out; I drove up from Redlands.  I pretended not to notice a burning bus that had been heading south on I-15 just beyond Barstow.....

I picked up the rig at Road Bear and drove to McCarran to get Karin.

Another learning experience: lots of 7' clearances at the airport -- with escape routes (whew!) -- plus you have to pick people up at Departures, rather than Arrivals. Baptism by fire calling Karin while navigating around the airport.

We ate supper in St George, leaving the RV in a bank parking lot, then out first real RV overnight at the KOA at Quail Creek State Park.

The next day was up I-15, with a stop at Walmart in Cedar City to get RV toilet paper and black-tank deodorizer pellets, thence east on I-70 to Green River.  Great Southern Utah views all the way.

I guess "SoUt" doesn't have the same ring as "SoCal", where I live.

Karin in "SoUt"

 I-70 Scenery

We had planned this trip anticipating the Federal Government shutdown, and stayed mostly in Utah State Parks.  The shutdown lifted in time to visit Arches, Natural Bridges, Bryce and Zion.

Next day was the Fiery Furnace tour in Arches, which we had scheduled for our ill-fated 2011 trip and abandoned, The arches are splendid and form an interesting counterpoint to the quite different "natural bridges" we saw later. 

Landscape Arch

Fiery Furnace walk

A long, remote drive the next day: down to Blanding on 191 and west on 95 for a quick stop at Natural Bridges. We drove 30 minutes plus at a time not seeing another vehicle travelling either way.  No cell phone bars of course.  But it's nice to know you can live in the RV for days if anything happened.

Along the way we started to appreciate the stop-anywhere-for-lunch feature of RV life

We crossed the dried-up Colorado then continuing north on 95 to Hankville and a quick jog NE on 24 to Goblin State Park.  

Goblin is great (thanks for the tip, Kevin Sato!)

We got to try out the leveling ramps at our campsite,...

and walk among the goblins the next morning:

That's another Road Bear RV in the distance, rented by a Swiss couple. We were the only Americans we saw renting from RB. (I had heard just too many horror stories about El Monte and CruiseAmerica.....)

After Goblin we drove back west on 24 with a stop to see the petroglyphs in Fruita

then south on the spectacular and sometimes rather exposed (dropoffs on both sides)  Route 12 for lunch in Escalante and on to Kodachrome State Park.

 Our first $100+ fuel bill.

Overnight at Ruby's Inn with warnings not to leave our "city water" connected overnight -- temps going down to 20, then spectacular walks in one of the Bryce amphitheaters

Bryce Hoodoos

A peek at Zion....

and back to an RV park at a casino in Las Vegas near Road Bear:

Yes they have drinks with umbrellas in LV

Postscript:  You probably noticed lots of pictures of rocks.  Karin immediately ordered an excellent DVD-based Geology course from the Teaching Company which we've gone through.  I took geology in college, but that was 50 years ago and a lot has changed.

1300 miles on our SoUt loop -- a great trip in one of my favorite places in the world.  Well, along with Molokai, the Maine coast, Bonaire, Florence.... and others.