The south end of the beach at Hua Hin, Thailand.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Hua Hin, Thailand.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Maldives on March 23rd.

Saturday, May 30, 2020

National forest boondocking

We left Duchesne, Utah at around 9:30am and headed for the town of Vernal where there is a free RV dump station and water fill. Got that done, and then went looking for some drinking water to fill our 5 gallon jug. Usually, we can find self serve purified water places, and they are quite common in Texas and New Mexico but not so much here in Utah. Or at least not in the towns we have been in.

Ended up buying two single gallon jugs of spring water (on sale at $0.79 per gallon) to get us by until we can find somewhere to fill the big jug.

We found a place in Vernal near a city park and relaxed for an hour and a half and had some lunch.

Yet another nice day!

High of 87F (31C), low of 50F (10C). 

However, the high temperature was in Vernal which is at 5,300' altitude. We ended up in the mountains at 8,200' where it was much fresher!


Coming in to Vernal.

Whoops... somebody messed up!

From Vernal heading north on the 191, the highway climbs steeply. It gains about 3000' in less than 8 miles.





Some nice views as the highway climbs.

Sherman had to work hard, but he made it to the top!

I had read of a cave site along one of the forest service roads and so that's where we headed first. I had a few different boondocking possibilities in mind, and I was also aware that it was a Friday afternoon and many other campers would be heading into the hills for the weekend. So we didn't want to waste too much time exploring when we should be staking out our campsite.

We made it to the cave opening and there was a whole lot of bird noise coming from a crevice in the rocks way above.

Mommy raven feeding her little ones.

The cave opening.
Still snow on the ground!


We made it inside the cave opening, but couldn't go exploring. Apparently this cave goes quite a long distance, but you need ropes and gear and we're not quite into that!

Looking back out.

The creek runs into the cave itself from another entrance.

We walked a little further up the forest road and there was one good boondocking spot already occupied, and a couple more further up that were not. However, they weren't very good spots. Would have been usable if we were desperate, but we were not.

We carried on to another spot, but it was too close to the highway. And another that had lots of space, but it was already busy with the motorized toy crowd. This is a popular area.

But we finally got lucky.

Yep, this will do.
GPS 40.79263, -109.473438

View out the front windshield.


View out the side window.

A male cassin's finch.

It's still a little bit close to the highway, but otherwise it's a great spot. And there are hiking and biking trails here. And surprisingly, a strong cell signal! Our Mexican Telcel SIM card normally connects to T-Mobile, but when it's not available it uses AT&T as a backup and that's what we've got up here.

We think we'll stay for two nights!

Yesterday's drive 87 miles (140 kms).

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And in Canada...



4 comments:

  1. Persistence pays off! Glad you finally found a nice boon docking spot. Another beautiful photo of a finch...they sure are pretty little birds .......I really enjoy all your bird pictures Kevin. Thanks and safe travels.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We did find a great campsite indeed! It was very quiet and the only ATV traffic that we saw was yesterday late afternoon, early evening for a couple of hours. Way better than what it would have been at one of the other boondocking spots that we checked out.

      We are glad that you are enjoying our bird pictures. We love seeing some of the different birds from the ones that we have at home.

      Delete
  2. A sweet spot for sure.....I'm getting envious.....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was a great spot, we could probably of stayed there another day or two and found places to hike or bike but there was more we wanted to explore further north, so we moved on.

      Delete

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