Salt Lake City is an INTERESTING Drive

Today we wandered on out of Shoshone-Bannock territory and headed southwards on I-15. The plan was to hit Salt Lake City sometime in the late morning and see how the traffic treated us. Our strategy is to find a transport truck and tuck in behind him in a centre lane and just meander our way along. Most folks don’t like following those big trucks, probably because they block the visibility, but my opinion is that they make great road clearers, and you can actually keep a safe distance back from them without the other folks forever cutting in front of you and occupying the space you need to stop if anything untoward should happen. That said I have always said SLC is about a ¼ mile wide and a hundred miles long, so it is a little stressful. As it happens we set the cruise for about 8-10 MPH slower than the traffic around us and they just flew by giving us all the space we needed. Never had to touch the cruise the entire trip through. We slipped into the Wally World in Orem, Utah to do our re-provisioning, it was a big parking lot with lots of room for our big outfit. With that done we got back out on the road. As we had been coming south we had been discussing our planned visit to the Moab area. It seems that every RV’er on the planet is over there and sites are hard to come by, even if you are inclined to pay someone $150/night to park your own home. We couldn’t come up with a landing spot over there so called an audible and decided we would keep heading southward into Nevada. Brenda’s CRPS is flaring up and sometimes a little CBD cream can help with that, and with Utah not being a weed friendly state we decided Nevada was our next stop tomorrow. Today we are holed up in Fillmore, at the KOA here. Pretty nice spot, far enough off the highway to be quiet and a good spot to fill what needs to be filled and empty what needs to be emptied before we slip out into a desert somewhere tomorrow. Stay tuned and hopefully you will know where that is just a little bit after we figure it out.

Just an interesting side note, as we have been coming south the price of Diesel Fuel here in the USA is higher than in Fort McLeod, Alberta. The first time we paid less than we did in Fort McLeod was here in Utah, and from all reports it is climbing back up once we leave and head into Nevada and Arizona. Now on the surface our prices look higher but with the exchange figured in, it is Alberta and their UCP government that are giving their citizens a break on the cost of getting to and from work.

Heading West

Well we have left Matagorda Bay and Magnolia Beach in our rear view mirror and headed west. Our route only hit San Antonio with a glancing blow but the freeway system there reminded me of my Great Grandpa's description of the old traffic circles in Edmonton, designed by Dante himself. I swear there is no rhyme nor reason to them in fact at one point we were whirling around a corner from one freeway to another and I thought, there goes a rig just like ours, then it dawned on me that I had just about passed myself going the other way.

One of the small towns we transited on our way in towards San Antonio had a lot of low hanging branches over the streets and one of those branches knocked the antenna for our cell booster for a loop so we have another on the way to a friends place in Thunderbird Farms.

Last night we stopped at a familiar spot, the Circle Bar Truck Stop, near Ozona, Texas. We stopped there on our way east and woke up with about 100 trucks parked in close quarters. While walking the dogs I had noticed a back corner that the big fellows couldn't access so last night we wiggled our way back into that corner and slept like babies while the big CATS and Cummins purred away at a distance. We noticed that the trucks start slipping in off the highway about sundown and don't leave till daylight. Not sure why so many leave the road at night, back home the truckers seem to like those less busy dark hours, but it could be the hundreds of dead deer we pass along the highway in West Texas give them a little incentive to get a good night's rest.

We were on the road early this morning and that put us into El Paso just over the noon hour. I am not sure if it was a normal day or maybe the federal holiday honouring George H.W. Bush brought more folks out onto the freeway but it was exciting. I have always said Salt Lake City is a city built along an interstate and is 100 miles long and a 1/4 mile wide. The traffic there is legendary, in fact many go a long ways out of their way just to miss SLC.

Well, El Paso is about the same, a city jammed between a mountain and a Wall and the I-10 is everything I-15 is to Salt Lake with a little Mexican spice added for effect. My strategy of picking a semi going the right speed and then just following along behind him worked pretty well and kept that oh so precious space in front of us so we don't have to hover over the brakes. The little fellows don't seem to like following those semi's and leave a good amount of space behind them.

We are in Las Cruces at the KOA tonight and plan on staying here tomorrow and getting those tanks that need emptying empty and fill those that need filling filled as well as catching up on our laundry before we head back out to an old favourite boondocking spot.

West Texas has some wonderful vista's in fact maybe to many vistas as we crossed that vast wasteland but I didn't get the camera out so I will leave you with one last sunrise shot from Matagorda Bay.