Our first night in Rodger was a success, but he smells very dusty. So we spent the morning at the campground, cleaning him and then doing more laundry. There’s a place down the road that we used to hoover him last year when I was sick with covid. I remember it was cheap, only $2 to vacuum for as long as you like. But when we arrived to vacuum him, the guy said it was free. I still don’t quite understand why. But we were happy and gave Rodger a really good hoovering, and he smells much better now.

And then we were on our way. As usual we have only a vague plan; to head towards Colorado avoiding freeways. As we left Cedar City, the scenery instantly changed to incredible. Dramatic rocks and hoodoos and all the things I love about America. We climbed up into the mountains and stopped at a lookout. There was a lady at the top walking around with a TV aerial. It seemed an odd place to want to watch TV, but who am I to judge. Mike was more curious and went over to see what see was doing. 

It turned out she wasn’t desperate for a TV signal, but was actually tracking rare North American condors which had transmitters attached. There were about 3 of them flying around. So the moral of the story is, don’t judge until you know the full story.

We kept on climbing into the mountains, and it got much cooler. At over 10,000 feet we came to Cedar Breaks national monument. We had no idea what this was, or that it was even here. Mike was going to keep driving, but I said we should stop, see what it was. And WOW!. It was a viewpoint over the top of the grand staircase which spans 150 miles. I’m hopeless at describing but it was like looking into a mini grand canyon. I’ll post a photo on facebook, or you can wait for the video. We continued driving and stopping at these incredible overlooks. America really knows how to show off its stuff with little effort from the viewer. Sure, we could have taken a walk, and we probably will at some stage, but for now, still jet-lagged and acclimatising to the altitude, this way of sightseeing is fine.

We continued on, up and up to almost 11,000 feet, before we started our descent. It’s a long weekend here and we were a bit worried about finding somewhere to camp, but then I remembered this isn’t Europe. There’s a lot more space, and less people. We stopped at a gorgeous boondocking site just outside of Capitol reef national park. We actually stayed here last year, and it’s still just as nice. And there were only two others camping here which was a surprise. We might do some walks in the park today, and camp here another night. We’ll see how we feel.