Headed for Colorado

At Hailstone Campground, Jordanelle State Park

  

Above are pictures of our stay at Hailstone Campground, Jordanelle State Park along Lake Jordanelle near Park City Utah.  We have stayed here probably 4 or 5 times now…and have enjoyed each stay.  Temperatures have been in the mid-80’s, just enough to cause the use of AC for a few hours.  At night it has been cool, and by morning it can be a bit cold for a few hours..but we did not turn on our furnace.  Many of the sites include this nice patio area which includes a nice picnic table, a BBQ and a fire pit which also includes a grill.  This one is up a slight slope along a dirt path, maybe 15 yards from the parking spot.  The site comes with electric and water for $30 per night.  There are some areas which have no utilities, but all have access to the dump station and water spout to fill up your tank with.

As we were driving along the salt flats on Monday morning we passed this old VW Bus…it reminded me of the trip that mom, dad, brother Roger and sister Sandy took to Washington DC, summer 1968 in '65 (or was it a '66) blue VW Bus.  Brother Jim was with us as far as Pennsylvania from what I remember, where we dumped him off at a friends place (a girlfriend!).  How did we do it, all that way in August without A/C???  By-the way…if you run out of gas in one of those things, it will run on White Gas, the type of gas one used for portable camping stoves before the small propane canisters became the more popular method of fueling camp stoves.  That trip is something I will always remember...sleeping in a tent at campgrounds, visiting Gettysburg, taking the stairs down the Washington Monument (elevator up), Arlington, Smithsonian, Capital (up the steps and right in the door back then)...but I can't remember the heat at all.  How do I remember the year?  Because Bobby Kennedy’s grave was still fresh at Arlington… 

 

Our purpose of being here was to see Stephanie.  (Above she is between her two brothers, Ryan on the left and Michael on the right at Michael’s wedding back in July.)  Stephanie just moved into a new apartment about 10 days ago, with the help of Michael and his wife Anna.  We had two days to visit, to get a few things for the apartment, and a couple of dinners…Olive Garden to go at her place, and a steak restaurant this evening.  She is doing so well, and I am so proud of her.  Those who have followed the blog for a long time know that she is still suffering the affects of multiple head traumas which included hitting her head on a rock while hiking, having a surfboard hit her in the face, and multiple falls before and after her diagnosis a few years ago.  Her location puts her close to mass transit, two of her three medical professionals that she sees, and in a safe, controlled entry location.

 

The campground is also right along US-40, and we are taking US-40 over to Colorado towards the Rocky Mountain National Park.  There is one fire, which is about 6 weeks old, has burned over 68,000 acres, is 90% contained, started on July 1st, called the Dollar Ridge Fire.  The fire destroyed over 70 homes,  hundreds of sheds and many RVs.   It closed US-40 on July 4th through the 6th, but it will not be a problem to travel through now.  My plan is to make it to Lake Grandby / Grand Lake area in Colorado by Monday where we will camp for a number of days and explore the surrounding areas.  The question is…can I restrain ourselves and travel the 400 over 4 days…heck, we do that in a day many times.

Lake Jordanelle Utah–A Favorite Park of ours

Hailstone Campground, Lake Jordanelle, Utah

Ok, so I forgot to take pictures….those will come tomorrow or the next day.  But we love Lake Jordanelle…we have stayed here for 3 or 4 years now.  Down in Salt Lake, 40 miles away, it is hotter, busier, and more polluted…if you consider smoke from natural fires polluted.  Up here, it is 10 degrees cooler, and so very quiet…for $30 per night you get electricity, water and a dump station.  It cost around $10 more if you do a reservation…but if you show up mid-week, you can normally get a place until the weekend.  We will be here until Thursday morning.

Last night, as you know if you read the blog, we stayed just between Winnemucca and Battle Mountain.  It is a GREAT place to stay, especially for a Sunday night, but the weather was a bit hard on us…At 11 pm, it was still around 80…YUCK!  Had vent fans on all night, some windows open, it was still hard up till 2 am or so.  Yes, we both slept during that time period, but you wake up in a sweat…YUCK!   Bring back Southwestern Oregon anytime now!!!!  But we did sleep, and at 7 we fed the kids, by 7:30 we were off and going.  Coffee in Battle Mountain, also in Elko, Diet Coke in Wendover, and by 3:45 we were at Hailstone Campground at Lake Jordanelle…losing an hour due to Mountain Time.  Marcia says that I can do that trip from Sacramento to Salt Lake with my eyes shut...almost, but not quite.  It seems I have done it a hundred times....more like 50, but still, many many times.

One thing about being here is that I am close to my favorite gal…my daughter Stephanie.  Use to call her my princess…don’t think she appreciates that term anymore.  But she will always be my girl, even at 30 years of age. Tomorrow I get to see her new apartment, and later I will return with Marcia for dinner wherever she wants to go.  Having just moved into this place by herself last weekend with the help of Michael and Anna, it is a new experience for her living by herself…but a good thing considering the effects of her multiple concussions. When she needs quiet, she will have it.  When she needs to nap, she can.  That is all a good thing.

Pictures in my next blog…I promise...had we we taken pictures today, all you would have seen is a bunch of smoke.  But I did sit outside the motorhome for about 90 minutes...that was nice...about 80 in the shade, and quickly down to the 70's at nightfall.  It is 9 pm and 73 degrees....awesome!

Lake Jordanelle, Utah – Visiting Stephanie

Here is a picture of Lake Jordanelle that I took out my window this morning.  It is nice seeing the lake completely full!  When we arrived on Sunday there were all sorts of boats and water crafts out on the lake, and the guy at the gate said, “For a Sunday, we are pretty busy!”, further stating that normally they fill up on Friday and empty Sunday morning.  The last two times we stayed her, back in October and May of last year, the “greenery” was not here…in early May it had arrived yet, in October it had already left.  The temps have been at 90 as a high, and 55 as a low.  Slept with windows and vents open both nights…it feels so nice, though just a tad warm during the day, but the A/C helps with that.

Utah is a very beautiful state…lots of mountains, rivers, canyons, lakes, and interesting places to see.  Of course, the BEST thing about Utah is my girl Stephanie.  A few years ago she had a devastating blow to her head with a surfboard, was laid up in the hospital for a few weeks, and has been dealing with an injury to her brain ever since.  The brain is a very complex thing…the injury’s affect is most notable on her her ability to make decisions, even easy ones, real quick.  Headed to the library at BYU from another building she seldom uses she might not know if she should turn left or right, so it becomes a trial and error type of decision.  Now, put that into context of being on a city bus and trying to remember which stop you need, how to tell the driver that you need to stop, and then, after getting off the bus, knowing which way to turn.  I have been in similar predicament when in Chicago or New York while attending an American Library Association conference…they spread the meetings all over the Hotels that host it because it is the only way to accommodate 20,000 attendees.  Except I know where to get off…just don’t know where to go after I get off…and trial and error sometimes was the only way to find it.  But for her, this is an EVERYDAY thing.

Yet other parts of her brain work much better.  For instance, her ability to write is still very remarkable, especially when, and despite, all the other things that the injury has done to her.  To the left is a quip of an article she wrote back in January.  If you want to read it, and I urge you to do so, just click here.  Now you may or may not agree with what she is saying…but the way she writes, how she was able to compile her thoughts and express them, that is her.  Yes, she had a person or two proof read for her…normally her older brother is one of these people, but other than grammatical changes, they don’t change the thoughts she expresses.  She still attends BYU, but can only handle 2 classes at a time with special tutors to help her. 

Yesterday I drove down to Salt Lake and picked her up from the U of U where she had an appointment early in the morning.  From there we drove over to a theater where we had a quick lunch, then into the theater to watch the newly released Cars 3 movie.  In this movie Lighting McQueen finds it hard to keep up with the new, younger, stronger race cars, but in the end finds the real purpose to life…helping others.  After an afternoon nap for Stephanie, we went to dinner, and then I went back to Jordanelle where Marcia and the puppies were all happy to see me return…well, the doggies were because it was 10 minutes past the dinner bell.

Not sure what we will do this morning/early afternoon…but while she is napping I will come back to Jordanelle and pick up Marcia so that we can all go to dinner…just as long as we are back by 8 to make the dinner bell for the dogs that is.