CAMPGROUND: Castle Rock State Park, Smoky Mountains Campground. 4 stars out of 5. Would give it a 5, but the $36/night price is too high. Electricity and water. Woodsy sites with picnic tables and fire pits. Decent, new bathrooms.
LOCATION: City of Rocks National Monument and Reserve. In southern Idaho, along the Nevada and Utah border.
WEATHER: Hot and sunny, cooling down beautifully at night.
It was such a pleasant morning in Green River, Utah that we ate breakfast outside on the picnic table. Then, we packed up and drove north and west. The scenery was scenic again. When we stopped at a rest stop, I watched a shepherd herding about 300 sheep with his sheepdog down a canyon. They were really baa-ing.
Our destination today was City of Rocks National Monument which our Walla Walla homeowners had recommended, and which is listed in my book "1000 Places To Go Before You Die". Our route took us through Salt Lake City. Guess who was driving! :-( For about 75 miles, I drove through urban sprawl around Provo, Salt Lake City, Ogden and lots of other bedroom communities. Instead of a bypass, the interstate is 6 lanes wide. I got in the second to the right lane and stayed there the entire time. Cars and trucks zoomed past me on both sides. I didn't want to be in the far right lane as it would turn into an exit only lane periodically and vehicles merged into it often. At one point, two semis passed me at the same time, and one was hogging the line. It was scary. We escaped the traffic about 2 hours later, and suddenly were in the wide open country.
We now have a GPS and were following it to the City of Rocks. Suddenly, it said to get off the secondary road we were on. It was a bumpy gravel road. We couldn't believe this was the correct route, but had no other option. In front of us were 2 deer running down the middle of the road.
During the 20-mile bone-rattling gravel road, we felt we were really in cowboy country. There were huge ranches with irrigation machines watering the hay. These make those curious green circles you see from airplanes when flying over this part of the country. We saw cowboy lassoing calves on the side of the road. Really cool.
We found later that this gravel road was part of the original California Trail. We imagined Conistoga wagons bumping along this road many years ago. Did I mention that the gas tank was on empty again? !!
Our drive today was a long 382 miles.
The campground in the national park area was full (as it is tiny), so we camped at the adjacent state park. We unhooked the camper and drove over to the monument. It is called City of Rocks as there are very interesting rock formations all around. The early pioneers thought that the cavemen had created a "city" from these rocks, but it is just a natural phenomenon. Tomorrow we hope to do some hiking (but not rock climbing which is very popular here)
DINNER: It cooled down enough to have a campfire, our first on this trip. It was fun to cook on the fire again. Nothing gourmet --- corned beef hash.
We stayed in Green River too! There was a nice little restaurant there serving local beer and wine from Moab.
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