3rd July - Across Utah - Pocatello ID to Moab, ~400 miles

Campground in Pocatello
The Pocatello KOA campground was simple and clean and quiet. Finding it at 10pm at night wasn't too bad other than the feeling that I was driving the wrong way into suburbia as the campground is past a section of housing just off Interstate 15 that felt like I was going to pull into someone's driveway and then suddenly the familiar KOA logo is there.

Good showers but no pool so the kids were a bit disappointed. The kids would not fall asleep (T and K that is as J is a fast sleeper). T had tried the above the cab sleeping area the first night but readily gave it up and took the sleeper sofa from then on.

Leaving Idaho
We left Pocatello Idaho and headed south to Utah on Sunday July 3rd via I-15. First missed stop -- J has a Guiness Book of Records and the entry for Idaho is the worlds largest man-made geyser. It is in Soda Springs - just about 40 minutes east off the planned south route so I had thought we would have time to make it. But since we stopped in North Pocatello rather than further south as I had planned we really didn't have time if we wanted to make it into Moab Utah for the night. So first bypass of something I had wanted to do. Moral of the story is you won't be able to do all that you plan and some new detours will pop up.

The drive south up into the mountains on I-15 is a bit steep but not too windy which was nice.

Entering Utah on a Sunday
hmmm I somehow forgot that having fun on Sundays is against the law in Utah.
I had planned on taking the kids to one of the family fun centers or waterparks along I-15 driving through Salt Lake City. I guess the city is a bit more, uh, conservative about allowing family fun on the sabbath than I had imagined. They were all closed on Sunday but would be open on the Fourth of July.

We stopped for lunch and the boys wanted to play so we let them play at a McDonalds playspace, which apparently the Lord approves of family fun at a large corporation but not at a waterpark.
the area we pulled off at was the exit for the Golden Spike historic site where the two sides of the transcontinental railroad met. But again it
was enough of a detour to defeat my itinerary. We had a long way to go still and I did not want to try to drive east from Provo through the mountains in the dark.

Everywhere along the freeway from Ogden to Salt Lake to Provo there are billboards for breast augmentation and nose jobs. Apparently the women in this part of Utah are in need of much bigger breasts and have horrible disfigurements on their faces.

Head East!
Just south of Provo is the small junction town of Spanish Fork where Hwy 6 takes you up into the mountains of central Utah. A short stop here to fill the tank and then up into the mountains. There were some very scenic valleys and streams running alongside the highway.
Eventually you drop back out of the mountains and get down into flatland at Price. We pushed a little further and stopped for dinner around 8pm at a quaint little steakhouse in the small town just pace Price. A good break and a decent steak. I considered just grabbing a spot at the tiny little motel RV park combo at the edge of town as it had a pool and the kids had been thinking of the waterparks we had planned at stopping at... But we decided to push on.

Darkness descended on the plains like a dark descending thing. The family didn't notice as they were watching Big Bang Theory episodes and some Firefly but little J decided to sit up front and help Daddy count how many cars we would pass going the other way between each mile marker (a pretty good game actually with a high score of seven and an average of about one).

Then the desert storm appeared in the distance at about 9pm or so. Great flashes of lightening lit the night sky. For J who loves all things weather this was a delightful break from the dark driving. The storm was never upon us directly but just at the right distance to be safely fascinating.

Eventually we made it to the Moab cutoff and just a short 30 min drive further to the entrance to Arches National Park. Two miles further is the bridge over the Colorado River and immediately after that was the entrance to our RV park. Quick setup for the night and we were now in striking range of one Utah's best destinations for our fourth of July adventure - the Arches!