9/26/2017 - Driving East - Day 2

Tuesday - Whew, Joe put in one hard day of driving today -- and he drove every mile of it.  Basically, he was in the saddle 12 hours, 7:00 to 7:00, or rather, 8:00 to 8:00 since we are in a different time zone.  We got an early start, crossed the Utah state line about 5 minutes later, and headed across the Utah salt flats.  We passed the turnoff to the Bonneville Speedway, and drove for miles through the flat area, dusted in white -- we assume salt, and there was a lot of standing water on parts of it.

We passed a Morton Salt plant along here too.  That seemed fitting.  If you enlarge the photo, you can see their logo on the front of the building.

 We drove along the edge of the Great Salt Lake for a few miles, with mountains on the other side of the road. 

We hit Salt Lake City about 9:50 MST (I will switch to that time zone now). This city is surrounded by mountains.  You can see their tall downtown buildings in the distance, with the pretty mountains in the background.

 We took the 215 bypass, but we still drove in this metropolitan area for over an hour.  These mountains were snow-capped, so they must have been a little higher.

We finally made a fuel stop at a Flying J truckstop at Springville (the southern end of the SLC suburbs), and Joe did his tire check.  He wanted to do this yesterday but didn't find any air at the truckstop we stopped at.

We got on I-15 and took it south to US 50, then southeast to I-70.  U.S. 50 and I-70 run together the rest of the way across eastern Utah and across Colorado.  It's a scenic drive, and it was beautiful.

We did see some wildlife after we got on the I-70 part.  We saw a herd of elk, maybe 10; then some wild mustangs, and some donkeys or burros but we don't know if they were wild, and then some antelope.  And a prairie dog at a rest stop.  We were moving along too fast for any wildlife pictures, but it was sure nice to get to see them.  And I got to see some fall colors through here.  (You can see that I didn't have time for any driving - I was busy)

We left the mountains and trees behind and got into cliffs and rocks for a while.

We made a pitstop at a rest stop and the Indians were out with their pottery and jewelry.  We looked it over, and even found rings we liked, but we didn't buy anything.

As the sun got lower and shadows began changing the colors in the cliffs, I took more pictures.

We finished Utah and crossed the Colorado state line at 5:50, and fueled again in Grand Junction. 
This is an ever-changing landscape and a wide variety of scenery.

And we made it 168 miles across Colorado.  We were driving right along the Colorado River for miles and miles, but it finally got too dark to see. Part of this section had a double decker highway -- the opposing lanes of traffic were offset just a little, and raised a level so we were practically driving beneath them.

We made to the Walmart in Avon, elevation 7,516, temperature 56 degrees at 8:00 p.m. when we stopped.  I'm pretty sure this is a ski resort town, but it was too dark to see when we arrived.  And we are not very many miles from Vail.

So we got 610 miles in today, plus yesterday's 482, so that's 1,092, almost halfway there.  We didn't even look for a laundromat tonight, so now the second laundry basket is filling up.  May have to wait until Vincennes to get that taken care of.

Off to bed we go, so we can do it all over again tomorrow.

9/25/2017 - Heading East - Day 1

Monday - Right after the conclusion of the horse show last night, we got word that Joe's Aunt Nellie (Lucille's 93-year-old sister) had passed away.  So first thing this morning, we started heading east, to Indiana. We didn't even go over and say goodbye to the horses. We were dumped and on the road by 7:25, heading up Hwy 20 to I-80, then across eastern California and all of Nevada.  We had planned on taking scenic Hwy 50 across Nevada before our plans got changed, and even though this wasn't a scenic route, it was still quite pretty. We first saw snow-capped mountains in the distance around Truckee, but before the day was over, we were driving right next to mountains that were completely covered in snow.  We crossed the California/Nevada state line about 9:00.

We came through part of Nevada's Basin area where we saw a lot of white soil -- we assume this is salt.  We even saw some areas with steam, it looked like the geysers in Yellowstone, but don't know if that was what it really was.

As we left the basin area and started climbing in elevation, we had some really beautiful views of the mountains.

This also put us in the heavily-populated area of wildlife, especially deer, although we did not see any.  But they have some animal overpasses in place and are building more.

 This was the prettiest part -- and here's the road ahead.  Looks like summer here is over.

We have 5 hard days of driving ahead of us, approximately 2100 miles, so we need to put in between 400 and 500 miles per day.  We made a good stab at it today -- logging 482 miles. And I drove about 100 of them.

We pulled off in Wendover, Nevada, 2 miles from the Utah state line, about 5:00.  But it looks like there is absolutely nothing between here and Salt Lake City, so we called it a day.

I had this grand plan, I found a casino here with laundry, according to my casino camping book.  So rather than dry camping free, we pulled into the RV park, which cost $35 ($5 more than my book said).  And there was no laundry.  The guy at the registration desk said there was one across the street, and we drove up and down the street twice (this is basically a one-street town) and could not find one.  We did see one that looked like it had been out of business for a few years.

So I got on my phone and did a search.  Siri sent us out to the defunct military base, it looked like the buildings had been deserted about 20 years ago, windows were all broken out, so that was a waste of time.

Joe was ready to give up, but I told him to stop at a gas station and I would go in and ask.  Well, the gal in there didn't speak English.  Apparently, I didn't make her understand what I was looking for because she sent us to another gas station.  There was a CAR wash there.  After that, we gave up, so I still have my basket of laundry in the back of the car.  Maybe we will have better luck tomorrow.

We came back to the RV and watched the second half of the Arizona football game.  That went the way the rest of this night has gone.  Then we just called it a night.  We need to get another early start tomorrow.  We will take I-80 to Salt Lake City, go south on I-15 to where we connect with I-70, the continue East.  For days.  Probably take I-64 around the south side of St. Louis so we can come in just north of Evansville and make our last stop at the Flying J so we can come in with empty tanks.  I expect we will be tired when we arrive in Vincennes.

9/24/2017 - Draft Horse Classic - Day 4

Sunday - Our last day with the horses.  We ran out to McDonalds for breakfast, and I finally got a photo of the draft horse icon for this fairgrounds -- which is pretty impressive.  I think this would look good in our front yard!

 Then we wandered back over to the grounds, walking through the horse area on the way.  They were getting the horses ready for their competitions, but we did get to watch them hooking up one pair.

Just a few minutes later, the announcer came over the loudspeaker and asked that all visitors vacate this area so the owners could get their horses ready (without us bothering them, but they didn't say that).  We walked over to one of the California Highway Patrol equine riders who was cleaning up their area, very friendly guy.  They patrol the State Capitol in Sacramento, where we visited last week.  Here is their trailer.

The morning sessions started with Four-Up Amateur Reinsmanship, driving through an obstacle course and backing them up between 2 pylons.  This was a little different that what we had seen before.  The entertainment fill-in was chariot races, always fun to watch.

Next came the sledding event, the Lightweight/Heavyweight Pull Challenge.  There were only four teams in this, and they all made several pulls.  This took a long time, and it was HOT.  The winning heavyweight team pulled 6500 lbs plus 2 1/2 people (1 fell off the sled) after he clinched the win.  The pretty blonde Belgium teams won both classes. 

Then we had the acrobats again, and the sidesaddle Suffolk, then the final event, the Farm Implement class where they pull some kind of farm equipment.  Joe was interested in the different pieces of equipment displayed -- some antique, I'm sure.

At the conclusion of this, we worked our way back to the RV, and decided to run out to KFC for some lunch (we are tired of fair fare).  Then we got back in time to rest and cool off to get ready for the final sessions at 4:00, which we assume will go from hot to cold.

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We headed back over about 3:45, no long lines for this performance so last night's must have been the big one.  The opening always includes horse and wagons delivering dignataries to the grandstand, and this session's "delivery" horses were my favorites Rosebud and Angel.  Their owner received an award -- the equivalent of Miss Congeniality in the horse barn, I didn't catch what it was called, but it is voted on by all the exhibitors, for the most helpful person.  She didn't know she was receiving the award, so that was nice (she cried).

 The first event was Singles, Ladies Hitch, similar to some of the other ladies events we had seen.  That was followed by Americana, Farm, which was the horses pulling an antique type farm, agricultural or historical wagon or carriage representing early America.  Some of these got pretty creative.  The first was a really nice chuck wagon.  This won first place in this class.

 This was the most creative, and my favorite.  It had a guy in the back taking a bath, and a lady sitting in the toilet holding her nose.

Next was Pairs, Gentlemen, Hitch -- not much different that what we had seen before, but the horses are so beautiful I keep taking pictures.

Next was Log Skidding Finals, this surprised us.  We expected another pulling event, with logs instead of grain sacks.  Instead, the horse pulled two logs through an obstacle course without touching the pylons.  They use draft horses still to haul logs out of some forests where there are no roads, so this was a representation of that kind of work the horses do.  It was interesting.

Because we attended all the sessions, we saw the entertainment between the competitions multiple times.  Some of it was changed up, some was the same.  But I hadn't gotten a good picture of Bobby Kerr's finale to his mustang act because it was always too dark, so I was able to get one this afternoon.

The same with the California Cowgirls Drill Team.  I didn't get a good picture in the dark in previous shows.  These ladies really put on a show -- very impressive.

The final act was the Six-Up Ultimate Hitch Championship.  It's awesome to see these 6-horse teams trotting in unison.  There were only 4 teams in this competition, but they were all beautiful.

So the show is over.  It was a really busy 4 days and those bleachers got pretty uncomfortable.  But the competitions were great, it is a really nice venue, but the best part was being able to get up close to the horses.  We will cherish these memories forever.  The show was over about 6:30, before it started to get really cold.  We wore shorts and took sweatshirts, which we put on as the sun set.  It was hot in the bleachers this morning, when we were in the direct sun.  The afternoon session was much more comfortable.  All in all, it was a nice day, a good end to this Excellent Adventure.