Thursday August 13, Lucerne Forest Park Camp, Manila UT

After 3 quite long and busy days, we had a very slow start, Ian was busy setting up a CB unit that he had just bought, but not much luck with getting the power to it. Might need to take it somewhere, or maybe “Schneider” to the rescue! I managed to catch up on blog and photos, some wonderful shots from Moab but struggling a bit with the laptop screen. Will have to do the final polish when I get home.

The day was heating up by the time we set off, stopped to remove some of the dust and grime off Ruakiwi at the carwash in Duchesne.

The mornings drive through to Vernal was not one of my favourites, the land was very dry and stony, small farms were trying with some irrigation but not really succeeding, and there were only a few small service towns.

Vernal was a much bigger centre, and we stopped for a late lunch in a park behind the library and managed to snavel a wifi link.

The afternoons drive through to Flaming Gorge was brilliant. We climbed up to 8200 feet, and the air cooled considerably. The area is rich in phosphate and there are a number of huge mines high up in the hills, the look out point described their operations.

The top was forested with large areas of aspen trees, and wild flower meadows. We walked into an area where there was a beaver dam amongst the aspens, hard to believe how they have sawed the trees down with their teeth, then hauled them back to form a dam.

We descended down through the Flaming Gorge, aptly named with its bright red vertical faces. And below was the reservoir that was created almost 50 years ago, a real mineral blue colour. The lake that was formed is over 90 miles long, a boaties paradise.

We are camping on a point overlooking the lake, a nice cool place to be after the heat of the past week. It was down to 22 degrees late this afternoon.