Utah (California epic van trip, Post 11)

In Utah, the semi trucks are allowed to pull three trailers at once. I didn’t take any pictures of that, but I thought it was nuts. They were like little trains speeding along the freeway.

And it wasn’t just the truckers. When we stopped for gas, I saw this rig; a pickup pulling an enormously long RV, which was in turn, pulling a trailer with an ATV on it. The owners (a couple of big gnarly dudes) were giving me the hard stare as I stood by our van surveying their rig(s), so I had to take my pictures surreptitiously. I couldn’t get it all in one picture.

Here’s the front half (as seen through our van window):

Here’s the back half, with an ATV on a trailer attached to the extra-long RV trailer. And that sort of set-up wasn’t even all that uncommon!

For the first night, we had picked an area we had never been to before (always a risk). From google satellite view we knew there were orange and pink rock canyons, and dirt roads leading away from the highway into the canyons.

What we didn’t count on was the depth of the sand. Here’s John determining whether the van can proceed.

Yep, deep sand. We crossed the freeway and tried to go the other direction instead. More deep sand.

It was getting late, so we decided to stay the night there, even though the sand was too deep to get very far off the freeway.

It was a nice canyon.

John’s always happy at a canyon’s edge.

Here’s John trying to get enough cell reception to plan the next day’s trip. We didn’t want to continue to stay so close to the freeway.

Here’s the road we would have taken, had there not been so much loose sand. You can see the sky is still hazy from the smoke, but it was a lot better than in had been in California.

Smoky canyon sunset.

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