Utah - Day 10 - along the Wasatch Front

Palisade State Park, Sterling

Sunday, 10 October 2021

today's route

Today's drive covered only 182 miles, but it looks and felt a lot longer.  I made that loop around to the southwest because I wanted to see more of the scenery than I thought the interstate could provide, but I looped back again so as not to miss all the mountains I could see on the map.

On UT-36 I passed several farming towns: Erda; Tooele (pronounced "too-illa" - name originally spelled Tuilla (pronounceable) and nobody knows how it got changed to Tooele (unpronounceable)) where there's a 3 O'Clock Drive; Stockton, established 1863.  Lots of farms and cows.

At the junction with UT-73 I saw this view:

Pretty dramatic, huh?

As you can see, a flat flat straight road heading eastward toward the mountains with the remnants of yesterday's storm clouds hiding the sunrise.

This area was very rural - not even much in the way of farming communities.  No traffic on the road.  Nothing but scrubland bounded by mountains.

Near the not-visible town of Fairfield I saw what looked like an underground house.  It was much too big to be a storm shelter, but I couldn't see anything except a low mound of dirt with ventilation shafts sticking up.  Maybe the home of a survivalist who's expecting a coming Armageddon?

I saw a sign saying "Deer Migration Area."  That didn't make sense to me because I've never heard that deer migrate, so I looked it up.  And in a way, I was right, because this website   https://bigdeerblog.com/do-deer-migrate  says in most parts of the US, deer never move more than a mile or so from where they were born.  But in the West, they can move fairly long distances and in fact, the mule deer migration in Wyoming is the "greatest large mammal migration" in the Lower 48.  I think there's a video attached but didn't watch it.  This is Utah, not Wyoming, but Utah's in the western US so I guess this may well be part of a deer migration route.  Odd.

Now on UT-145, I passed a farm with a sign saying "Hoofbeats to Healing."  Their website says with their horses they aim to improve the quality of life for people of all ages with emotional, physical or developmental disabilities.  Sounds like a worthy cause.

I crossed UT-68, aka Redwood Road, and remembered that as the name of a major road in Salt Lake City.  It's where I found the park with the recycling bins.  Turns out this piece way down here is the same road, and it runs for 70 miles from north of SLC down almost to Provo.

When I joined I-15 at Provo, I started seeing highway signs for Las Vegas.  This struck me as odd - Las Vegas is not only in another state, it's down at the southern tip of another state.  I-15 has a substantial run, beginning at the Canadian border in Montana, running south through Idaho and Utah (and the southern tip of Nevada) on down almost to Los Angeles CA.  Yet from the signs you'd think all roads lead to Las Vegas, like it was Rome or something.

For the rest of the drive south I had mountains on both sides of the road.  On the east it was the Mt. Nebo Range and the San Pitch Range, both of which seem to be part of the Wasatch Range or the Wasatch Plateau (which sounds like it'd be flat but includes an awful lot of mountains).  On the west, I have no idea what I was seeing, because my trusty AAA map only shows mountains a long way west or a long way south.  They were pretty, whatever they were.

I passed orchards, sheep, lots of horses, some cows.  The town of Nephi hosts the Ute Stampede Rodeo in July.  Nephi, by the way, is apparently named for a prominent connection with the Book of Mormon and is pronounced nē-fī.

It was here that I left the interstate for 40 miles on UT-28.  I'd figured Gunnison might be a good place to stop before going on to the state park, because a park ranger had told me she lived in Gunnison, rather than in one of the closer towns.  And I did find a not-so-well-stocked grocery store there and got some gasoline.  But their main park, donated by the Lions Club, had lots of signs saying "No Pets Allowed," which I thought wasn't very friendly.  Maybe Gunnison has a lot of irresponsible dog owners who don't clean up after their pets, but it was frustrating to my dogs as well as to me to see this big expanse of nice grass we weren't allowed to set foot on.  So I walked the dogs on the sidewalk alongside the park and let the dogs trespass the length of their 6' leashes.  On the way out of town I saw that the city is just discriminatory: it owns an equestrian park - and let's face it, horses make bigger messes than dogs do.

Lots of magpies everywhere.  They're really dramatic birds, good-sized with long tails and black-and-white coloring.  Easy to spot, hard to miss.

And on through the small town of Sterling to the state park.  It's stretched out along a small lake that's very nearly dried up, reminding me that Utah has been experiencing its worst drought on record this year.

I emptied my waste tanks, filled my water tank, put a small pot roast in the slow cooker, walked the dogs a couple of times, and decided to stay here through the bad weather.  I was surprised to find I had an internet signal and, after all, I'd already paid for 2 nights.  The fact that the weather forecast made it look like I might have to stay here for at least 4 nights was a little intimidating, but I figured we'd be fine.  We've stayed through bad weather before and I'd bought supplies.