31 May - Welcome to Willard bay State Park near Ogden UT

31 May
We departed Grand Junction at 08:27 am and arrived at Willard Bay State Park campground near Ogden UT at almost 3:00 pm after driving 330 miles.  This is the seventh campground on this trip,

This was a really long day for us as we try to shoot for about 200 miles per travel day.  That may not sound like much, and it's not if you are motoring on down the road in your little sedan.  But when you are pulling an RV that is nearly 42 ft long and weighs right at 15,000 lbs, and you are driving a one ton long bed dually pickup that eats Prius cars for lunch, you have to be "on your game" 100% of the time.  Then compound that with heavy traffic that is weaving in and out of lanes, 6-8 percent grade through the mountains, needless to say I am emotionally drained when we get to our destination. Then we spend the next hour getting the RV set-up.  Ah, finally it is cocktail time! Thankfully Doreen got some intel on an alternate route that cut about three hours off our planned route.  I would have been toast at the end of a nine hour drive!  Six was long enough.

Not considering the length of drive, scenery really varied as we drove from Colorado and through Utah to the Ogden area.

Desolate?  Miles and miles of nothing.  The terrain reminds me of Iraq.

More nothing.  Little vegetation, and if there were critters, they did not make themselves known!

Some rain coming in over the mountains

Some more mountains with a different look that others we've seen.

The snow really makes the mountains look beautiful.

 We are north of Salt Lake City and Provo, closer to Ogden.  I did not realize it was almost 100 miles from Provo to the campground!

So we arrived at the Willard Bay State Park campground and got checked right in.  There are several different campgrounds within the state park, but we chose the one with full hookups for our RV, called Cottonwood Campground.  I can attest it is accurately named!!

Looks like snow, but it is cottonwood seeds!

Cottonwood seeds everywhere.

The campsite is really nice, especially compared to some that we've had so far.  We actually have grass and Liberty is very thankful!  Here are a few shots of the campsite:

Pull-through site is welcome.  Electric hook-up is only 30 amps so we will load-manage as needed.

Old Glory flying high and proud.  Nice shade trees in the grassy area,

Each campsite has it's own pavilion on a paved slab with a picnic table. 

Fire ring will be nice.  We have yet to have a campfire on this trip.

Grill set-up for dinner.

After dinner we headed out for a walk and found the trails that lead to Eagle Beach.

Wild roses, the State of Iowa flower, along the path to the beach.   

We are very close to the Great Salt Lake, but this beach is on the Willard Reservoir which is fresh water. We brought some inflatable inner tubes for floating and they should get some use here!  Very short distance from our campsite to the beach.

Nice beach and park area.

No dogs allowed, so Liberty will stay in the RV when we visit the beach.

A view away from the beach, across I-15 to the east

 We have not finalized the complete list of sights to see while we are here, but we plan to visit the Great Salt Lake, take the Mormon Tabernacle tour, visit Hill Air Force base and a museum there and possibly visit the winter Olympic training center.  The RV needs a thorough cleaning, I need to spend some time scrubbing the bugs off the front of the RV and the truck is filthy.   We are also looking forward to take a couple down days and just plain relaxing.