Day 3 - Utah

We wake up in the morning and it is still just as beautiful and we are still alone among the dunes. After a great breakfast outside (still short one chair) we have a bit more of a look around and pack everything up and get ready to go. 

It is the crack of Noon once again. We decide that we are going to have to figure out how to move faster in the morning, but so far, not much progress on that front. We did enjoy our first showers in the RV. It is again washboard leaving and on our way out a pickup with an ATV comes in, indicating it really is time for us to be going. 

We continue along I-80 toward Salt Lake City. This part of the trip we have done a few times before by car, so we generally know our way around Salt Lake, but we are now trying to find a Flying J so we can dump the grey water before going up the mountains. Water is heavy, and I sense that we are not getting 20 MPG. Possibly 1 GPM.

Following the GPS and getting to the right lane for the exit you want is a bit harder in the RV than it is in the car. We find the Flying J, figure that we have to pay a $10 dumping fee, and get the RV situated. This is the first time we are attempting the system dump and flush and thank goodness our inaugural episode is at a place where there is no line of people waiting because it takes us an hour to do it. But now we know more or less what to do, and we managed not to get anything dirty. 

 Lessons: 

1. Make sure you pay close attention to the instructions when you get the RV. Write them down (we were glad we had). 

2. Make sure you have all the hoses and practice hooking them up and taking them off. Ours we bolted on (bad bad idea) we think because this had been a rental. We did not fully understand that this was a) not normal, and b) a fairly stupid idea. 

3. Have a checklist and make sure that you walk through it like a NASA launch. Failure to do things in the right order and making sure that all the connections are tight and all the valves are set to the correct position could lead to disaster. (We had been forewarned and therefore skirted disaster more than once.) 

4. Have two people make sure all valves are closed before departure. Later in the trip the grey water valve was left slightly open more than once. Fortunately that is the least bad thing that can happen. 

5. We had good advice on the kinds of hoses (sewer dump hoses, city drinking water pressurized, and non-pressurized water fill) to have, which like everything else varies by rig, but make sure you have those sorted before you leave. 

6. This is an excellent chore to turf off to your kids. If you figure out how, please let me know. 

The grey and black water being accomplished, it was about tea time and as we had only had brunch, we were hungry, short a chair, and a few other odds and ends, so we did the only logical thing, and went to IKEA. We knew about where it was from previous trips so very shortly were were in the IKEA parking lot. Take out food was all that was available, so we had another take out picnics in the RV, then went shopping. About two hours later, fortified with food, a folding chair, some kitchen items we neglected to load, and some Swedish cookies, we were on the road to Park City. 

We waived at one of our favorite ski resorts, one of our friends summer houses, and the Ralph Lauren outlet store as we glided past and ventured to places in Utah we had never been before. As we drove along and sunset started to be a possibility, we realized two things:

1. The cows do come home. We could see lines of cows slowly making their way off the pasture and presumably toward the barn. 

2. We were not going to make our primary over-night target, or the secondary-over night target, but maybe the KOA which was our third backup. This is where the crack of noon departures were making us think that the 5 hours a day of travel wasn't so conservative after all.

We entered Wyoming at 7.40 PM. 19,014 miles.

I called the KOA and they had a spot, and we made a reservation. For late arrival, after 10 (please be very, very quiet). KOA may not be the cheapest place to stop, but they answer the phone later than almost anyone else and they usually have a spot. The country side was beautiful and began the process of drying out changing from green pasture at Park City to more chaparral as we drove along (and then it got dark). We rolled into the KOA around 11ish and quietly plugged in and went to bed.