Goodbye Utah!

Our journey is getting closer to its end so we get some, lets say, final thoughts. We were wondering, for example, what were the three most beautiful places we’ve seen so far. Southern Utah (we’re not able to be more specific no matter how hard we try…) is on top of that list and most probably it’ll stay there for good.

We are not the only ones who love this place. Huge crowds of tourists, especially from Asia, that tours through Utah confirm, how important this place is on travel-map of the world. We’ve never seen so many rental rvs driven by Germans, French, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese (although Asians prefer cars, rv-lovers are mostly from Europe and States).

We have a few guidebooks with us - Lonely Planet, RV for Dummies, we also use leaflets and brochures we pick up in visitors centers, and of course used internet as much as we could. Utah has lots and lots great information materials for visitors. Lonely Planet outside big cities and national parks is pretty much useless, at least the one we have. Squeezing whole States in one 1000-pages book is mission impossible. "RV for Dummies" shows a few main routes but it’s aimed more at travelers with more money looking not only for beatiful places but also for nice rv parks and good restaurants.

The most useful from our point of view are guide books written by Boondockers Welcome founder, Marianne Edwards. They are pdf only and you can buy them on her website. The website itself is a bit tiring in navigation but her books are really helpful and easy to use. 

We have two of them - New Mexico that was free to download from Boondockers Welcome website and Utah we recived directly from the author. On top of routes, trails and attractions Marianne writes about free campsites, the best and cheapest places to eat, etc. All she writes about is from first-hand experience - for many years she’s been going on shorter and longer trips all over States (she is from Canada) with her B-class, and even now we almost met - when we came to Utah she was just leaving. During her travels, together with her partner she tries not to spend monthly more than 1000-1500 USD. This was pretty much the same we were aiming for.

Her books are 17 USD each and well worth the price. They allow to save a lot of money and see the places that are not the most popular touristic destinations but are absolutely worth seeing.

In Utah we stayed mostly on free campsites - there are no boondocking hosts south from Salt Lake City. When looking for places to stay we used mostly Marianne’s book and freecampsites.net. It was not so easy with the latter one, as finding internet (on T-Mobile at least) in Utah is almost impossible.

In New Mexico places without 4G or at least half G on the phone were rather an exception, but here there was nothing. Even in touristic centers - towns like Kanab there was WiFi sometimes in Subway ot other local restaurant, but very often place would advertise itself that it has a connection but once we got there it wasn’t working. So if you’re off to Utah and want to buy some pre-paid with internet, don’t even think about t-Mobile. You’d be better off with AT&T or some provider using their network.

But this is the price of enjoying empty spaces. It was here, in Utah, that we got to stay the most often far from civilization and sit by the fire all evenings long. We loved Dixie National Forest, which is very friendly for travelers like us. 

What surprised us was that no matter where we stayed we never found perfect peace and quiet: there were planes flying over our heads constantly, and during the day finding a part of sky not not cut by contrails was quite a challenge. As we were 6000 feet above sea level we could often hear them. There is also a railroad going through Moab area. Maybe not as busy as transcontinental one along Route 66, but still quite noisy. Civilization …

During our stay in Utah the temperatures were sometimes a bit over 100F and for some strange reason none of those wonderful rocks give any shade at all. If it was that hot in May/June we don’t even want to imagine what it is like in July and August. Plus the kids… With two of them, one going through cranky-all-the-time phase, the other getting frustrated over wanting to move but not being able yet, it was a challenge. But neither the weather, nor the kids could spoil our delight over this beautiful, unique place on Earth. We know we’d love to come back here someday to explore this area more thoroughly.

We spent in southern Utah little over two weeks and this were two weeks of mindblowing delight: at every turn there were new colors, new shapes, new rock formations, every one of them beautiful and surprising. It’s just hard to believe that this place exists at all, that Mother Nature created something so amazing. All the national parks we visited were breathtaking, we’d like to go back to all of them with more time and kids older so we could hike all days long. We’d love to explore the areas outside national parks too, like forests of Dixie or Pariah Wilderness. We’d like to check whether all the backroads are so beautiful, or maybe, as there are no crowds of tourists there, even more beautiful. The Wave was an icing on the cake, but the whole cake was delicious.

The Wave