BEST GREEN INVESTMENTS 2011

This snow storm was moving fast as it blew across the top of the Ruby Mountains above Lamoille Canyon, dumping yet one more load of snow in the area.

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8. Monday 25th of April 2011
Stormy weather but we didn’t care. We wanted to visit Lamoille Canyon out south of Elko, which is at the northern end of the Ruby Mountain Wilderness. My wife and I have plans in late summer to camp in the canyon and day hike this lovely wilderness and/or take a short backpacking trip together there.

We thought it would be fun to scout as far up Lamoille Canyon as we could make it this early in the season, just to get a feel for the lay of the land. We didn’t get far. Avalanche danger and snow and rocks on the road, but what we did see we liked…a lot. So plans remain to revisit this are in late summer.

Back in Elko, my wife headed back to her “penny slots investment seminar” at the Red Lion casino, while I gathered all of my loose change and visited the local used bookstore in Elko (named imaginatively: “The Bookstore”). I scored heavily, and left the little book store with an arm load of used book “treasures”.

The rest of the day in Elko was spent, shopping, eating pizza, relaxing and resting. It was just the right thing at the right time on this road trip. By Monday night at bed time we had all of our gear organized for the next morning, when we would start our drive back home.

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CEDAR MESA ROAD TRIP 17-26TH APRIL 2011 ~ Mr. & Mrs. Oldmantravels

In all we spent ten days and nine nights on the road, camping in the back of our pickup truck two nights, sleeping in our backpacking tent in Grand Gulch, and the other six nights luxuriating in the comforts of a motel room. Gas prices ranged from a low of $3.56 a gallon to $3.89, which was the highest we paid on this trip. We saw several $4.00 a gallon signs along the way.

Our figure 8 route took us through portions of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada. We drove a couple of roads we had never traveled; met some truly wonderful people; took many interesting day hikes to places we had never been, and tried out some new internal frame backpacks on a short backpacking trip into Grand Gulch.

Most of our activity, and time spent, was centered around the Cedar Mesa area of Southeastern Utah. Though the weather forecast did not look favorable for the first portion of our time in Utah, it turned out fine. It wasn’t until the return portion of our road trip, where we ran into several storms (thunder and lightening storms, a nasty hail storm, and a few snow storms thrown in).

If any of you are interested, in for whatever reason on following the travel portion of our road trip, you can connect these dots to form the figure 8 route we traveled, from start to finish: Home in Eastern Washington; Pendleton; Boise; Salt Lake City; Spanish Fork; Price; Green River; Hanksville; Natural Bridges National Monument; Blanding; [several days spent in the Cedar Mesa area]; Moab; Cisco; Mack; Rangely; Dinosaur; Vernal; Duchesne; Heber City; Salt Lake City; Wendover; Elko; Lamoille; Mountain City; Owyhee; Mountain Home; Boise; Pendleton; & home.

1st electric vehicle (Telsa Roadster) to plug into the complimentary charging stations available at Canopy Airport Parking