Month: May 2021

A Great Week in Torrey Utah

/ our38ftlife / 4 Comments

Utah is one of my favorite states from the scenic point of view. Five amazing National Parks, lush green valleys, vast plains and beautiful mountains. We finally made it to Capitol Reef National Park for more than a day and this was our last Utah NP to explore. CRNP did not fail to deliver and for hikers this national park provides some outstanding and strenuous hikes with amazing vistas. 

Chimney Rock in Capitol Reef National Park

We love traveling during the shoulder seasons despite the sometimes unpredictable weather. The last time we planned to visit CRNP in spring 2017 it snowed… heavily, so a quick change of plans were in order and we headed to sunny Lake Powell instead.  Despite Wallys emergency dental surgery in Arizona, this year the stars aligned and we made it there with no detours. 

Our hiking buddies Laurie and Tom Miller joined us for the week. They recently bought a Winnebago View RV so they too have now joined the ranks of us land-yacht owners! We have boating history as we met these two awesome humans at our marina in Anacortes many moons ago. We share a love of travel and exploring the world so many great adventures have ensued since!

The Thousand Lakes RV Park in Torrey Utah was our base camp for CRNP exploration. The red rock views from our site were amazing and the RV park itself was great. They have all the amenities you would expect plus a very quaint restaurant that served some mean BBQ and steaks. I recommend this RV Park over the other one in Torrey as many of the sites there back right up onto the road at a major intersection.. okay, its major for Torrey! The sites were all gravel and are decent sized plus they are set back off the road further so road noise in minimal.

  • Our view!
  • The very rustic restaurant which later in the season will have live music.
  • The three butt kitchen was turning out some very delicious steaks.
  • Nothing fancy but hey no sides to wash either!

Spoiler alert… there are no lakes in Torrey or near the RV park…With a name like thousand lakes, ones gotta assume right?  Well, after some pondering and and lots of joking about the lack of lakes, I figured it out. The nearby mountain range to the north of Torrey is the Thousand Lake Mountains… yep, there are lakes in them there mountains!

Torrey itself is a small town in a remote part of Utah but with the CRNP entrance just 5 miles away, the town definitely caters to visitors. All the essential services plus a few nice restaurants and eateries. We spent the week not only exploring the park but some eatery exploration as well. The Wild Rabbit Café is a great lunch or breakfast stop. With a great menu and coffee roasted on site, it became a quick habit to stop in the afternoon for a cold brew coffee after hiking in the park. We had a wonderful anniversary dinner at Hunt and Gather. Game and local mountain trout are featured on the menu so we definitely partook. They also had a very nice vintage of champagne on the wine list so of course that was ordered too! 

Another fun spot to eat is Paizlee’s Grass Fed Beef. It’s a bit odd, not really a meat market or a true restaurant but you can get both there. They have a very limited menu and two tables inside… its like they want you to come in but not really stay! While we were there having breakfast, our host (a fine looking young man in tight jeans and a cowboy hat) delivered a lot of take out to the curb. I am only guessing its take out, heck for all I know it it a front for nefarious drug activity! LOL… seriously, the small one butt kitchen cranked out a delicious Huervos Ranchero Tacos with coffee for a mere $9.99!

Our biggest dining adventure was out of town, in nearby Bickenell. Curry Pizza, yep you read that right! Come on people, with a name like that you have to try it. We had to convince Tom but once he heard from our waitress at Hunt Gather that it was good and Guy Fieri from the Food Network had been there, well that changed everything! The pizza was good but what I really wished we was that we had time to try was the Indian Food. It smelled incredible and the family who run the place are Indian of course – good combo!

Now, about Capitol Reef NP… Honestly it didn’t fail to deliver on incredible hiking and beautiful vistas. In between all that eating, we hiked or did scenic drives. Driving into the park, you immediately get a sense of how special this area is. The geology is fascinating and Mother Nature worked hard to create this marvelous canvas of color. The Navajo called it the land of the Sleeping Rainbow but some of these amazing, colorful formations are over 270 million years in the making. Click on the link above for a more in-depth geology lesson on CRNP. 

Or favorite hike hands down was Cohab Canyon –  From the Fruita trailhead, we climbed the steep Cohab Canyon trail switchbacks for about 25-30 minutes to where it tops out and drops into Cohab Canyon. The saddle here offers amazing views of Boulder Mountain, Fruita, and other areas west of the park.

Now that you have that grunt behind you, the trail now begins descending the very colorful and featured Cohab Canyon. The Wives, a series of short technical slot canyons come in on the right-hand side. Wandering up some of the side, slot canyons was a fun diversion.

15 or so minutes from the saddle, as Cohab Canyon becomes wide and open, is a trail junction. Left (north) makes a nice side trip to an overlook of Highway 24 and the Fruita area (20 minutes round trip) while right becomes the Frying Pan Trail and eventually reaches Cassidy Arch. We opted to climb some more, because the first grunt wasn’t enough – LOL.  It was worth the extra climb as the views up on the plateau were incredible. This hike is an out and back so from there we did the route in reverse back to the Fruita trailhead.

Other notable hikes were  Chimney Rock – amazing views and fun wandering along the ridge top. The Grand Wash is a great hike which features the pioneer registry on the canyon walls. We also met up with some beautiful Big Horn Sheep there. Hickman Arch is a beautiful hike to a natural stone arch and has pretty valley views as well.

There are also some great scenic drives from Torrey – Hwy 12 is simply spectacular and is a great car drive. It’s a bit hairy for large RV but doable if you have a low pucker factor! We choose to do it as a day drive in Tom’s Jeep and stopped at the Escalante River to check out the 100 Hands Petroglyphs. We may have gotten a bit lost and hiked a few miles the wrong direction but we finally found the trailhead just a few hundred feet from where we parked – LOL. It was worth the grunt up the hill, long past lunch time, in the hot sun. The petroglyphs were quite beautiful but sadly there has been some vandalism. I honestly can’t understand what makes people do this kind of crap… it’s a piece of history we can all enjoy from a distance….ARGHH!

Good news… we found the only open restaurant in Escalante and had a kick ass burger so the day ended well for everyone! Well, except our little pal the snow man!

  • The Behunin family still has roots all through this area.
  • Yep… all those Behunin’s lived in that tiny house.
  • We checked out the local cemetery and found most of the Behunin gravesites.
  • Yummy burgers – YAY!

Our week in Torrey exploring the CFNP just flew by… I can’t recommend this area enough and I am so glad we had such nice weather for exploring. The US is truly an amazing place to explore. Onward we roll, next stop Sun Valley Idaho.

Another Great Winter in Palm Springs

/ our38ftlife / 5 Comments

Despite going into Covid lockdown again just weeks after arriving, we had another great winter at the Outdoor Resort Palm Springs. No major lot improvements this year, instead we just enjoyed catching up with friends, relaxing on our outdoor patio and all the amenities of the resort. For most of the season, we stayed pretty tight with our small bubble of friends. With the warm weather and nice outdoor patio’s it wasn’t really hard to social distance and stay well.

Our god daughters parents and family were in the valley for the month of December which was a real treat. We had several fun nights with the whole gang. Christmas Day was a ball.. it was so much fun to spend the day together, cooking a huge meal, replete with Prime Rib Roast and plenty of red wine!!! We were responsible and spent the night in their guest casita.

California has had access to loads of vaccine and we were lucky to get our shots in Feb/March as were most of our friends. Even though we did not meet the age criteria at the time, we were able to get on a waiting list a for un-used vaccine at our local Rite-Aid. What they were doing was filling their no-show appointments with willing victims! It was a huge relief to be able to see people outside our small bubble socially again. Even with both shots onboard, we are still being careful and wearing our masks out in public.

The Outdoor Resort hosted many outdoor events this year… masked required of course. Pickleball, golf and tennis were all open as well. We had a ball with friends at SINGO, real live concerts, All Star and Comedy Night – our Activities Staff did an amazing job pulling all these outside events together.

One of my favorite events was our Pickleball Club End of the Season Pool Party. It was hotter than heck in April so floating in the pool, chatting with friends was a perfect way to spend the afternoon. The more hardy people actually played pickleball, or corn hole or ping pong. The club supplied tubs of cold water, beer, wine and boxes of hot pizza. Casual and fun!!!We also had some pretty epic card nights, birthday parties and a Sunny Cycle outing with our bubble. Of course, there were loads of patio happy hours and dinners alfresco.

I fooled around with sour dough bread making in my spare time and even made some Limoncello with our fresh Meyer Lemons. I haven’t mastered baking in our convection microwave oven and found our Traegar to be way better for baking bread. I do miss having a “real” oven sometimes but I honestly don’t need the calories from breads and desserts anyway! Boo-Hoo!!!

I also fooled around with a tiny garden… red leaf and romaine lettuce, tomatoes and a plethora of herbs. I was actually able to get basil going too. We had a bumper crop of lettuces, the cooler winter weather here is perfect for colder weather plants. The tomato’s of course really went into overdrive just days before we are rolling. No way those were traveling with us … wahhh. Good news for the tomato plants …our friends in Palm Springs adopted them.

We did get out and hike with friends in the area. The valley has endless opportunities for hiking and one of our favorite hikes was in Mecca – yeah, not that Mecca!!! The Ladders hike at Painted Canyon was spectacular… combine climbing ladders, slot canyons, boulder scrambling, ridge hiking and crazy geology for an amazing day exploring.

Another big highlight of the season was having other fellow RV friends come stay at our resort. I also got to met a fellow blogger pal, Laura Greene in person. We have enjoyed each others blogs and have been pen-pals of sorts. Our paths have never quite crossed but this year the stars aligned and we drove to Riverside to have lunch with them at the busiest brewpub in all of California. We were having so much fun chatting we didn’t even take any pictures – blogging failure! Despite the uber loud busy outdoor patio we were sitting on Wally and I had a great time with Laura and Kevin and yes, several pints were consumed.

One upside of living on a small par three golf course is all the birds and wildlife. I really enjoyed having my morning coffee and watching all the critters around the small lake behind us. We have a resident Costa’s hummingbird – Henry the III who keeps watch over the feeder in the lemon tree and sits with us on the patio. This is the third year he has been back to our feeder.. next year we won’t get to see Henry the IV as we are planning to spend the winter in the SE and Florida.

Turtles, Mallards with ducklings, Coots, Pelicans, Egrets, Roadrunners and a host of other birds visit or live around the lake. I also hung a bird feeder behind the coach by the bedroom window – for the cat to watch of course!

In February, we took a five day trip over to Mesa AZ to spend some time with my Mom and some AZ friends. We left the coach in Palm Springs and stayed with friends in at their “Placa in Mesa”. For Valentines Day we all co-opted a great meal. My friend Laurie and I pre-cooked loads of crepes for the main course. That was a blast and we had a great time in the kitchen together. I started the evening off with a cheese and wine pairing with products from Penny Royal Farms in Boonsville California. The farm and winery is in the beautiful Andersen Valley where they make all their cheeses from their sheep and goats.

While we were in Mesa, we took a day trip to Superior and hiked around the Boyce Arboretum. Masks were required at all times inside the property but on a Monday, there was hardly anyone there. This is a great place to bring a picnic lunch, explore the massive gardens and hike the property. Since it was winter, there wasn’t much blooming but it was still beautiful.

I was also able to visit my Mom… this was before the vaccines but with a negative Covid test I was allowed to actually be inside her small community. It was a bittersweet visit and while she has settled into her new memory care community, it is so difficult to see her mental decline. I am lucky that she knows who I am and we did have some silly fun, looking at picture of our pets and laughing about their antics. She is very child-like at times, which is not uncommon with dementia and I have come to accept that this is who she is now. I feel great relief and appreciation that she is safe, living in a lovely community and has companionship. She had isolated herself in her apartment at her other senior community, didn’t go out much and I think she also had forgotten how to manage the remote TV control. Dementia is such a sad journey….

That said, this journey with my Mom has reinforced to me how important it is to live more in the moment and it is all the more reason to get out and enjoy life RIGHT NOW.