Hooking up in the rain

Rog with his trusty rain gear.  First time we needed
it on this trip.

Sure was fun this morning - not.   First time we've had to do this since our Eastern seaboard trip when we felt as if we could charge the locals everywhere we stopped for being rainmakers!!  Despite raincoats we got wet and muddy.  Moab red mud everywhere.   We drove out of the rain in about an hour and had cloudy skies the rest of the way to Salt Lake City.  

Colorado River North of Moab

We never made it to the rock art yesterday.  It never stopped raining.  We thought about staying another day so we could see them and maybe take the river trip, but, after checking on the weather and discovering it was going to rain today, too, we decided to continue with our planned departure. Maybe we will get back on our way home from Pensacola next May!

We drove through Utah's coal country.  Neither of us realized that there was such a big area in Utah that had coal.  Again, I learned something new.  I always prided myself in my geography and history knowledge but am finding I know so very little.  Kind of humbling.  Every day we are on the road I learn or see something new.  It's one of the reasons I love the trips.

Roads and weather were fairly dry today once we left the Moab area and, as I said in the previous paragraph, we saw some new country.  We would make that same drive again. The only part of the drive that was stressful was when we connected with I-15 at Provo and then had four lanes of traffic all the way into Salt Lake City.  

We are staying the night in the Salt Lake City KOA.  It is HUGE! It takes up about two city blocks and is near the downtown area. We are two miles from Temple Square where the main Mormon Temple sits.   We have spotted about 20 rental RVs here in the park and they all seem to be together on some sort of caravan.  Roger helped one gentleman who was having trouble hooking up his water and said that he sounded British.  Some of the men are wearing capri length pants - something European men wear but U.S. men don't.  Of course Roger wouldn't ask about the group (even though I asked him to) so we are surmising that they are on holiday from Europe and touring the West.  We hope they are enjoying their time here and seeing our beautiful country.   I'm guessing that about 80% of the folks in this KOA are here to do some research at the LDS genealogy center here. I can see coming back if I ever need to delve into the actual records.   

There is a small Mexican eatery on the grounds of the KOA. Dad was cooking and the kids were serving.  It was a limited menu but they went out of their way to make us a vegetarian version of what we wanted.  We were the only customers at the time. They even charged us less than the menu price because we didn't get meat.  Dad/Cook says he needs to put veggie versions on the menu. He's only been open a couple of months and is still playing with the options.  The daughter/waitress looked about 16 or 17, skin tight pants and shirt, lots of makeup, tatoos, and a 4-month old son in his car carrier tucked under a table where she and her brother watched and played with him. He was adorable and so good.  We felt so sad seeing the situation.  Kids having kids. What a shame.  

We plan on driving to Winnemucca, NV tomorrow which is going to be our longest travel day yet - 303 miles - 5 hours.  The reasoning is that we will stay there two nights so that Thursday we will clean, pack, and winterize the RV before going straight to the storage space.  Winnemucca is only 160 miles from home and will give us a short day on Friday so we can have time to park the RV, schlep all our stuff to the house, get mail, groceries, etc.  We are not looking forward to the next two days but it is the price we pay for our trip! The last few days always are hard.   Home again, home again, jiggety jog.