Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area

Many times while traveling along I-80 I had seen signs about Flaming Gorge, and I always wanted to see it.  Well, last week with our change of plans in heading to California early due to my aunts death, I awoke in the middle of the night and said to myself, “Why go further east into Colorado?   Why not visit Flaming Gorge, then head west to I-80 near Fort Bridger, and on down to Lake Jordanelle.  So the next morning, after going back to sleep and having a good night’s sleep on it all, I showed Marcia my plan, and so we decided that after Black Canyon, go up to Flaming Gorge and spend most the weekend, heading down to Jordanelle on Sunday.  Above is the view of the Green River from the Red Canyon Visitor’s Center area.

    

First, we caught US 191 from Vernal up to the Gorge area.  US 191 heads to the east side of the Gorge at this point, but we were headed to the west.  US 191 is the same highway that goes through Moab and Monticello, and near Goosenecks, places we have been before on this trip, or on others.  Very quickly we start to see more rock cliffs and the road, though a bit bumpy, is lightly traveled and very scenic.

We start up the Uinta Mountains, an east-west trending chain of mountains in northeastern Utah extending slightly into southern Wyoming, the highest range in the contiguous United States running east to west (west 100 miles to Salt Lake City).   The highway nears the 10,000 feet elevation mark in two places in Utah…near Price, and between Vernal and the Gorge.  GULP…  But first we pull over at nice turnout and get a panoramic looking south.

Red Canyon of Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area is only 35 miles or so from Steinaker Lake State Park, but with climbing 3,000 plus feet going over the Uinta Mountains, it takes us over an hour.  Here is our first view of the Gorge area…you can faintly see some blue water in the middle of the picture.

   

There is a nice little Visitor’s Center at Red Canyon, along with a couple of National Forest camping areas…no nothing in the camping areas except pit toilets.  The exhibits are nice, we watched one of the many short movies they have available, and of course, the view out the windows of the Green River flowing slowly, due to the dam, through the Gorge.  Seems like you can see for a hundred miles!  (We will be visiting the dam another day, so I won’t go into that right now.)

Outside there is a pathway that Marcia and easily navigate the GoGo on.  There are numerous viewpoints, most of which she can “see somethings”, but a few have rocky areas and that view just is not available to her.  After getting the first picture in this post way above, I see a boat out in the water and get this picture.  Look at the reflection in the water of the red cliffs…

To the left you can see Marcia scooting along the pathway.  There are various information plaques along the route telling you the names of trees, information about animals, and other good stuff like that.  But the best thing is the overlooks…the wonderful views of the Gorge.  I was just elated that Marcia was able to enjoy the views at the Red Canyon area.  The temperature was right at 70 degrees, the dogs stayed in the motorhome, so we did not have to worry about them.  And there were just a few people around…no crowds…little noise except for birds and little ground squirrels or chipmunks…and having to dodge a few butterflies as you walked through certain areas.

    

The River/Gorge takes many turns, and along the walk it goes around this point (top picture), and you can see the view to the north (above left) and to the south (above right). 

We really enjoyed our 90 minute visit to Red Canyon…but it was time to move on and try and get a camping spot for four days.  Our goal was along the Utah/Wyoming boarder in a place near Manila Utah…a large National Forest Campground called Lucerne Valley Campground.  There were many views along the way…those we will show in future posts as we go back to visit the dam, take the Sheep Creek Canyon Geological Scenic Loop, and just enjoy the area.

Thank goodness we landed a camping place through Saturday…four nights, electricity, $78 with senior pass.  Now we could have stayed at other NF campgrounds, but without electricity, much cheaper.  But with temps falling into the lower 40’s for the next few nights, having electricity means we can use our electric heater that makes no noise.  Besides, we found our near twin just one loop to our west!  I recognized the lady coming out of the other Isata, this one with a door towards the rear, as one of two ladies who walked by our motorhome earlier in the day staring and pointing.  Now I can see why they were gawking.  But they were not the only ones walking around the campground today….

These two male Pronghorns were the first ones to come by today…opened the door to take the dogs out, and there they were. 

   

I had read that Pronghorns wander around the park at ease.  Later we saw a female walk by, and even later I got a picture of two more…but they might have still been these two.  It was near sunset, and they were down in a few loops away.

Oh, it is going to be a nice four nights here along the Green River….tomorrow (Thursday) be dam.

Just Past Vernal Utah to Steinaker Lake State Park

   

The drive from the Fairgrounds in Hotchkiss Colorado to Steinaker Lake State Park was 200 miles in length, but felt more like 400.  First, let me say, the night’s sleep at the Fairground in Hotchkiss was fabulous for both of us…me, I slept for over 6 hours straight…wow, that felt great.  We left at 6:30 in the morning…I wanted to get to Grand Junction before 8 am because I wanted our tires rotated at Discount Tire.  WOW, were they busy when the opened…but we got things done and out of there by 9:30.  Then a trip to Walmart and to Sam’s Club, got some gas and off we went.

  

Leaving Grand Junction we travel west on I-70 for a short time, and then we turned north on highway 139.  I probably should have looked into the route a bit more…essentially it is remote, sparse, no towns for the entire 72 miles, and goes over the Book Cliff Mountains at Douglas Pass at an elevation of 8,268 feet.  Above are pictures of some of the desert mountains and cliffs of the Book Cliff Mountains we passed through…this mountain range is located in western Colorado and eastern Utah.

 

As we near the 8,200 foot mark there is a nice pullout where one can get a great view of the mountains (panoramic shot above top) and also a view of the winding roadway we just traversed (picture above bottom).  Unfortunately the higher elevation gives Marcia a splitting headache…so getting to Rangely and over to US 40 and on to Vernal is a must…but the terrain does not allow for fast driving.

So I get back into the motorhome and off we go (picture of the motorhome at the pullout to the left).  We are not at the top yet, and this is a very steep road.  I take a picture of the dash on the motorhome…first gear, 15 mph, 2200 RPM, and all the gauges are looking great,  No traffic behind us, so I just slowly cruise the final few hundred of feet up until we get to the top of the pass.

As we get closer to Rangely, Marcia says, “you know, with this wind…if this stuff catches on fire it is really going to burn.  We take a few more corners and I say, “Look, that looks like smoke up there…”  Sure enough, there are two fires near Rangely…between Rangely and US 40.  They don’t affect us at all, we can see the smoke, but the winds, gusting up to 70 mph, sure play havoc on the fire.  To the left is a picture I got from the 9News, KUSA TV out of Denver.  Now we did not see flames, but we sure could see all the smoke.

As we near the town of Jensen, near Vernal, US 40 passes over the Green River…and is it ever high.  Down stream it will travel down through Canyonlands National Park and merge with the nearly equally sized Colorado River.  Did you know that the Grand River, which was the river that the Colorado and Green River’s merger formed, was renamed by an act of Congress to the Colorado River?  That was new to me…not even a twinkle in my momma's eye back then.

Originally I had intended to move on further along the road…but I also knew that Steinaker Lake State Park was a possible place to stay.  So we pulled in with our fingers cross that we would find a spot, and as it turned out, the park was not even half full…now the weekends it is full of fishermen…but weekdays you can probably find a spot.  As I set up, Marcia got to fixing up a brew of Greek Coffee, along with a Tylenol and an Aspirin to end her headache..works again in less than 30 minutes.  Of the 28 or so RV spots, 8 are full hookups, 8 are electric only, and the other 12 are dry camping, with prices of $28 for full hookups, $23 for just electric hookups (there is water to fill you tanks and a dump station), and I think it was $14 for no hookups.  We got an electric site…but the weak Internet signal was just too poor to publish a blog.  So here we are at our secret four day location, and I am publishing this now.  Our next post will reveal our final canyon of the summer…of course, some of you have already guessed it…