{"id":14491,"date":"2018-06-24T11:16:43","date_gmt":"2018-06-24T17:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vicarib.us\/?p=14491"},"modified":"2018-06-24T12:04:31","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T18:04:31","slug":"vicaribupdate-11-northern-utah-and-southern-idaho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vicarib.us\/blog\/vicaribupdate-11-northern-utah-and-southern-idaho\/","title":{"rendered":"Vicaribupdate 11 – Northern Utah and Southern Idaho"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of time, distance, non-bus travels, exciting news and more have happened since the last Vicaribupdate. We have worked our a way from Moab through bits of central and northern Utah, and now up into Idaho. During this period we also took a a quick beach vacation to Virginia and added some new content to the site. Little known fact: Only 1 in 10 Americans have ever heard of Idaho (and they like it that way).<\/p>\n

Central and Northern Utah<\/h1>\n

After we left Moab, we worked our way up to the Park City area just outside of Salt Lake City. We split the journey in half by staying one night at a quaint little campground way up above the Price Canyon called the Price Canyon Recreation Area. We didn’t stick around there very long, though it was a pretty cool canyon\/river area. The second leg of this relocation sent us through Spanish Fork, Provo and Orem where we re-provisioned at various “big city” stores and filled our bellies at Five Guys. The mountains surrounding these southern suburbs of Salt Lake were big, green and captivating. We cut back into these mountains from Orem headed towards Heber City, which was to be our home for the next few days. On the way up to Heber, you pass the Deer Creek Reservoir and State Park which had appeared to be a popular spot to hang out with lots of water activities. We intended to come back down to spend a day there, but never made it.<\/p>\n

Heber City is a small valley just east of Park City. It is has a small airport, a decent little town center and is surrounded by more green mountains on all sides. It had been a while since we had been anywhere green or seen trees, so all of the trees and grasses were very exciting to us. In Heber we stayed at our very first RV Resort. We decided to treat ourselves to a little bit of “luxury” after “roughing it” for a few weeks. We stayed at the Mountain Valley RV Resort<\/a>, and it did not disappoint. The grounds, facilities, service and views were immaculate and we were perfectly fine paying the premium price for such a nice place.<\/p>\n

While at the Mountain Valley RV Resort, we caught up on our interneting and showers and explored the town and surrounding areas. We spent one of the days heading up into the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. It was a bit of a drive, but gorgeous and riddled with plenty of excellent looking camping spots just off of the road. We made the Provo River Falls our turn-around spot, first getting out to stretch our legs and checkout the falls.<\/p>\n

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Provo River Falls<\/p><\/div>\n

We spent another afternoon walking around Park City proper (and picking up some Amazon locker packages). We intended to grab lunch there, but as with most of the hikes in the area, we couldn’t find any place that was dog friendly (surprisingly) and settled for ice cream instead.<\/p>\n

Our final adventure in the area was a short hike to Blood Lake on our way out of town. It was a loooong, steep, windy road up to the hike which was at the top of the pass up above Park City. It was so long I was certain that Vicaribus was going to explode, but thankfully did not. The hike and lake were gorgeous, but the 10,000 ft altitude turned me into a useless pile of wobbly meat, so we didn’t stay too long. The drive down from there was also quiet pretty and quiet taxing on Vicaribus’s brakes. In the future I plan to look at the elevation profiles of the routes we plan on taking, as I don’t know how many more of these big passes the bus can take.<\/p>\n

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Blood Lake Photoshoot Photoshoot<\/p><\/div>\n

For all Blood Lake photos, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bonneville Salt Flats (of Doom)<\/h1>\n

Our next destination was the Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah, right near the Nevada border. We crossed through Salt Lake City and passed the Great Salt Lake before making it to the flats. We already documented all of this on the social medias, but in essence, we didn’t have the best time at the flats. The flats themselves were quite a site to behold, and we drove up to the edge of them on our first afternoon there.<\/p>\n

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The Sign at the Rest Area on the Edge of the Flats<\/p><\/div>\n

Upon arriving both of started feeling not so great so we decided to call it an early day and go ahead and grab a boondocking spot under the small mountains just to the side of the flats. After some checking out some not so level and scenic spots we finally found one the looked pretty good. (At this point Heather is dying in the back of the bus.) When I stepped out of the bus to check out the spot I noticed a big rolled up tent about 20 yards ahead of me in the bushes. The wind was blowing and it seemed to have something pretty heavy (and body-shaped) holding it down.<\/p>\n

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It Was a Pretty Spot<\/p><\/div>\n

After finding a nice poking stick (and mustering up the courage) I went and poked at it a while to verify that there was no body and ultimately learning that it was just a bunch of water holding it down. On the way back to the bus I noticed a bunch of flies buzzing around a bunch of small animal organs (no carcass, just organs) a few feet from where we parked and decided that maybe we would find a different spot. So we drove a little further out into the middle of nowhere and checked one more spot. Miles would not set foot on the spot I was thinking about finally setting in, so we decided to listen to his doggy intuition and went over to the nearby town and got a hotel for the night.<\/p>\n

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The Second Spot That Miles Would Not Enter<\/p><\/div>\n

The next morning we slept in and each feeling a little better headed back to the flats to at least actually spend a little time driving around on them. We immediately both felt like crap again once hitting the sand, but pushed through long enough to do a speed run in the bus, get some cool photos and crash the thousand dollar video drone.<\/p>\n

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Here’s a VLOG of our time at the flats<\/a>, including the “speed” run.<\/p>\n<\/div>