Dunfey Alaska Journey

Recently, we had some flash flooding in Tucson that left a couple of people dead. These people had ignored the road signs telling them not to proceed ahead when there is water on the road ahead.  We always see the signs and never see water except…

The above was a wake up call to all of us to respect the water!

Today, we were suppose to get a powerful monsoon rain. I wanted to check out our drainage to determine if we needed to put up gutters or not. We really didn’t get much rain in our yards but the washes all flooded with the water coming off the mountains and in the surrounding areas. I took pictures of the rainbows in the skies around our house as well as the washes that are behind our house and along side our house.

Drive To Lake Powell from Bryce

It was a very picturesque drive from Bruce Canyon down through Kanab and onto Lake Powell about 9 miles from Page, AZ. We stayed at Lone Rock National campground.

Lake Powell – Lone Rock Campground

This was a no frills camping on the beach. Anythime you turned around there might be someone setting up their tent right in front on you. We made it down to a nice spot with a wonderful view of the water and the rock formations on the other side of Lake Powell. The road down to the beach had many sandy spots. On our way out the next morning, we got stuck. About 5 college students in a pickup truck help us out. They hooked their pickup to haul our trailer out. They were a special group! Thank God for the mormon college students!

The kayaking on Lake Powell was suburb! The views from the Kayaks of different rock formations surprised us. There were numerous “paths” among the rocks to explore. We found a nice secluded spot to beach our kayaks and take a swim. The water was very clean and wasn’t very cold.
We left Lake Powal after a morning kayak trip. We decided to stay in Flagstaff for a night before the final leg home to Vail.

In Flagstaff, we stayed at Black Barts RV Park. It turned out that Black Barts is a local favorite Steak House with a musical review. So all we had to do for dinner was walk down from our campsite. The wait staff keep leaving  he floor to join with others to sing all sorts of show tunes. This accompanied you while you ate. The menu was a little pricey but you had excellent food and a fun time!

We are now on our way home. We will drop out camper off at storage facility and then drive home. It has been a great trip since we left on June 30th.

Our next trip will be to Europe staring Sept 26th until Nov 1, 2014. Our blog will be silent until then.

Red Canyon, Utah

On Tuesday 8/5, as we approached Bryce Canyon from Salt Lake City, we arrived at Red Canyon. We now understand that some people get to Red Canyon and think its Bryce . The rock formations at Red Canyon are impressive.

Bryce Canyon, Utah

We were tired when we arrived at Bryce even though it was mid afternoon.  We decided to have lunch at the “cowboy Buffet” at Bryce City just outside the park and then go to visitor center. There we watched two movies about Bryce.  Then, we relaxed at our campsite in the National Park (North Campground). Our campsite was very nice, private and affordable – only $7.50 a night with our Senior National Parks pass.

The next morning we reserved seats on the afternoon 3.5 hour tour of southern Bryce viewpoints not on the regular bus shuttle. We spent the morning going to Mossy Cave and Fairyland viewpoints  on the east side of the park.

Bryce is a very spectacular place!

The next day, we visited Inspiration Point at Sunrise and we hiked along the canyon rim starting a short walk from our campsite. After we passed through a couple of the southern viewpoints, we took advance of the bus shuttle service to take us back to our campsite. We spent the afternoon taking showers and doing the laundry.

We visited Bryce Point viewpoint at Sunset.

We decided not to go to Zion National Park this trip. We will go there next fall or spring. Instead we headed for Lake Powell for an overnight on the beach there. From there we will to Flagstaff for a day and then home to Vail.

After a wonderful 2 full days touring Yellowstone and leaving plenty more to see on future visits, we left Henry Lake and headed for Salt Lake Area for an overnight Walmart stay. It was raining as we left, poured at various times but a glorious rainbow greeted us as we  arrived at our Walmart campsite in Springville, UT just south of Provo.

At 6 am the next morning, Fred awoke and noticed there was an IHOP sign within walking distance. As he approached he noticed no cars parked there. He thought “Don’t tell me this is only IHOP not open all night!”, Then he found out that it was under repair. There was an open coffee shop nearby. The owner informed Fred that the IHOP was closed for a 2 day upgrade process. Fred ended up at a truck stop a mile away where he found only a McDonald’s.  A truck stop with out a decent greasy spoon, what is the world coming to?

We left for Bryce Canyon hoping to get there in time to get a park campground spot. We should be there by 12:31 PM by GPS. It is now 10:46 am.

Here are our recent Pic’s

We headed out of our Henry Lake Idaho campsite for West entrance to Yellowstone at 8:15 AM with an ambitious plan to cover the Norris Geyser Basin, Mammoth Springs and then do rest of North Loop.

After we viewed Gibbons Falls, we spent considerable time and energy at Artists’ PaintPots. These had outstanding geothermal features that were wonderfully presented by the Parks Department. You can find the pictures below which only partially covers what we could see.

When we had trouble parking at Norris Geyser Basin and visitors center, we decided to come back here on our way back from the loop. We never did make it back. After spending considerable time at Mammoth Springs, we were tired. We did see more of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone but again we skipped the north and south rim drives as well as views of the famous falls. We decided to save these and other locations skipped for our next future visit here next year. This assumes that we will be spending several months at Star Valley next summer.

We did stop at visitors center at Canyon City to go over the exhibits and watch two different Yellowstone movie presentations. It was 5 Pm when we finished so it was a long day without Fred’s nap.

On the way home, we stopped in West Yellowstone, Montana for dinner. We picked Bullwinkle’s. It was a very good restaurant with good atmosphere. Fred had a porterhouse steak while Milly went for chicken and ribs combo. Fred ate Milly’s chicken which was broasted. (Milly hates fried food and Fred convinced her that broasted wasn’t fried – sorry Fred ) Fred ended up with a doggy bag – 1st time that he could recall.

We leave in the morning headed for Bryce Canyon, Utah. We will stay a night near Ogden, UT.

We planned to cover much more territory than we did today. There was so much to absorb!

At the Geyser Basins on the trip south from the west entrance to Yellowstone, the Geysers and venting vapor plumes were everywhere and very spectacular.

There were crowds everywhere we went but they moved quickly so we weren’t really hampered in our quest to see these marvelous products of nature. By the time we viewed and walked around the lower and Midway Geyser Basins, we were tired and our camera battery was running out.  Yet, we hadn’t even seen Old Faithful yet.

We were unprepared for the size and level of commercial activity at the Old Faithful site. There were cars and people everywhere. The visitors center was very nicely done with huge windows from which you could watch Old Faithful. We looked forward to seeing a movie presentation about  the Geysers and the old fellow but the auditorium projector was broken.

When we saw Old Faithful go off relatively on time, it was a real treat! It was spectacular. The park service did a good job framing Old Faithful within this “commercial” space.

We decided to head home “early”, we thought. When we got back to Henry Lake campsite it was 4 pm. We had a full day since we had left at 8:30 am. Fred napped while Milly went for a walk.