Day 9 (Jackson, WY to Bryce Canyon)

Day 9 (June 18) started a little late for us. Julie and I slept in a little and got going about an hour later than we would have liked. For the most part, the ride from Jackson, WY to our KOA in Cannonville, UT was rather boring. We took the back-roads mostly; of the 550 miles, we were only on interstates for about 200 miles. We did have our first encounter with a weasel on one of the secondary roads about an hour south of Jackson. [Let me qualify this statement: we had our first wild encounter with a weasel. I have certainly met many “weasels” in my lifetime, just not an actual weasel.] It was quite an ugly little creature. Thankfully, it was trying to cross the road and we outweighed it in the RV by some 15,000 pounds. Anyway, it crossed safely and we continued into Idaho very briefly, then back into Wyoming, and finally into Utah. Once we arrived in Utah, I must admit it was somewhat disappointing. I’ve always envisioned Utah as being a beautifully, snowcapped mountainous state. Our first impressions were of a slightly rolling hill region full of farms. Until… we arrived near Provo. Our route took us into the Provo Canyon area which is absolutely stunning. We descended into the canyon along the shores of Utah Lake, a crystal clear, freshwater lake that appears to be completely devoid of any development except for the state park facilities. If this was in North or South Carolina, I’m sure there would be a private boat dock every few hundred feet. As we made our way out of the canyon into Provo (the home of Brigham Young University), a truck carrying several inflated inner tubes was slowly making the climb up the roadway in front of us. As we approached the truck, at least five inner tubes (which were not secured!) became airborne and flew into our path and the paths of two other cars. As the tubes came bouncing toward us, Julie and I both let the “s***” word fly, and one of the tubes popped underneath the RV. I pulled over to the shoulder to survey the damage—none to the RV, only a popped inner tube—pulled the wreckage from the chassis, then continued on our way. The remainder of the trip was rather mundane. We did, however, stop at a general store only a few minutes from our KOA in Cannonville to gather a few supplies—we were running short on bread, milk, and beer, among other things—at an inflated price until we could more fully restock at a Wal-Mart closer to the Grand Canyon. We finally pulled into our campsite at around 6:30 pm, hooked up, and got dinner going (tonight’s meal included lemon-pepper grilled chicken with sautéed asparagus and watermelon). After catching up on e-mail, our blog, etc, we called it a night in anticipation of tomorrow’s activities…