A Week in Idaho

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

We enjoyed our stay in Salt Lake City and are glad to have the motorhome's annual service done. We spent a total of 26 nights in Utah but it's time to move on so we can make it up to Washington state for the couple of things we have planned this summer. We have 10 nights and about 630 miles before we need to be in Kennewick Washington. That's a little faster pace than we have been doing but not too bad. We haven't reserved any camping spots along the way figuring the area we will be traveling through isn't that much of a tourist destination. Plus the two spots in Idaho we are thinking of staying at are both Elks Lodges that don't take reservations.

Our first stop is Jerome Idaho - about 230 miles from SLC. It's mostly expressway driving and isn't that bad of a drive. We did stop at one confusing rest area/truck weigh station along the way for a break. As I pulled past the scales to get to the truck parking area, the guy at the scale flipped on the red traffic light to get me to stop. He walked out and stopped to examine our towing connection. I just assumed he was verifying we were compliant but he came up and told us one of our connections was dragging on the ground and nearly worn through. After we pulled into a parking spot, I discovered that a cable tie or two had broken and the trickle charge wire was rubbing on the ground and had indeed already gone through the outer jacket and one of the wires. This is what keeps the Jeep's battery charged while we are towing. Hopefully we won't have a dead battery when we pull into Jerome.

The Snake River Elks Lodge has 4 spots with electric only but it is 50 amp. We come prepared with enough fresh water to hold us over for about a week. The place is adjacent to the "93 Golf Ranch". In fact the parking lot is used for the golf course, the Elks Lodge and the camping spots. One other motorhome is parked there when we pull in. Our Jeep started up without issue, but I will need to make up a replacement cable before we continue on. It's not a busy camping spot. There was the motorhome our first night and they were replaced by a fifth wheel the next night and we had the place to ourselves the third night. During the early evening, the parking area was mostly full of cars from golfers.

Sunset at Snake River Elks Lodge

After getting setup, we head into the lodge bar to register. At $10 a night, it seems like a good deal. The bar itself is different than ones at other Elks Lodges. This one had big windows looking out onto the golf course. Most others have been more cave like with dark confining spaces. The bartender was quite nice and gave us some good advice of things to see and do. She was even willing to call in some favors of locals to get us on a kayak trip. We declined that offer but did have a couple beers. Since it was "Taco Tuesday" with a self serve taco bar, we decided to come back for dinner a little bit later and another beer.

Just several miles south of the lodge is the town of Twin Falls which turned out to be a much larger place than I was expecting. They even had an electrical supply store so I could get the things I needed to replace my charging cable. The Snake River goes thru the heart of town and just to the east is Shoshone Falls Park. It's just $3 to get in and was a nice place to visit and explore. The falls were going reasonably well but apparently during high runoff times, the falls are several times wider. One of the geocaches in the park is a 5/5. The numbering system represents the cache owner's difficulty and terrain rating of the cache with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. We have only done three 5/5 caches because they generally require some special equipment to handle the terrain aspect. Since we were walking right past the place, we figured we should at least look at the situation. It turned out this one was slightly overrated for both difficulty and terrain. Not that it was an easy climb up the hill and it did take a bit of a scaling of a cliff to reach the container. I would say it was more like a difficulty 2, terrain 4.

Wide View of Shoshone Falls

Just a Hint of a Rainbow

Looking Downstream

From here we headed further down the trail that followed along the river but a couple hundred feet above the water. It had turned into a rather hot day but we wanted to make it down to the spot where Evel Knievel attempted to jump over the Snake River back in 1974. I vaguely remember hearing about the stunt but I can't say I remember much about it. Of course I was only 13 at the time and I barely remember what I had for dinner last night!

Sign at the Jump Site

Evel had wanted to jump the Grand Canyon but the government would not permit it, so he ended up finding something comparable. The Snake River is about 1600 feet wide and he leased land on either side. He built a huge ramp on top of a hill and had a steam powered "Skycycle" but the parachute opened early and landed on the rocks near the river on the same side he launched from. All that is left now is the huge hill and some of the concrete supports that held the ramp. Yes, it's just a big mound of dirt, but one with some history.

Looking Up the Hill Where Ramp Had Been

Side View of Hill

Just a little further east is another waterfall and power plant. This one is not as large and definitely not as visited as Shoshone Falls but it was still interesting to see.

The Other Falls in Twin Falls

The next day we head back into Twin Falls to check out the visitor's center. There is a great viewing area to look down on the river and see people kayaking. The bridge that takes Route 93 over the Snake River is one where BASE jumping is permitted. Unfortunately there wasn't anybody out that appeared to be looking to jump and I wasn't able to talk Chris into trying it!

A Few People Kayaking the Snake River

The Perrine Bridge - 486 Feet Tall

Centennial Park is not far from the visitor's center but is down at water level. We find a small trail that gets us partway back towards the bridge, but it peters out so we head back. There was one section of an overhanging cliff wall where dozens of swallows had built mud houses attached to the cliff. We stopped to watch them fly in and out. It was unclear how they know which one is theirs. It almost looked like they were first come first served.

Dozens of Swallow Homes

About 10 miles east of the lodge is Minidoka Internment National historic Site. This place was an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II. It housed just over 9000 at its peak. Today there is not too much left to see but they do have a reconstructed guard tower and a few of the old foundations of some of the buildings. We walked around and ended up in the visitor center which really just looks like a house. In fact there is very little signage identifying what the building is. I suspect this is one of the lonelier assignments for a ranger.

At Minidoka National Historic Site

We stayed three nights at this Elks Lodge before heading further north and west. Just past Boise is the town of Caldwell where there was another Elks Lodge. This one had 8 camping spots. There is water and electric. Although the electric is only 30 amp and the water is at every other site to be shared with your neighbor. There were four of us there the first night so we all ended up in every other spot. On a couple of the nights, there were one or two more rigs. When another motorhome is pulled into the spot right next to you, things are tight. While sitting at our dining room table, I might not have been able to just hand the salt and pepper to our neighbors but I could easily tossed it to them! This lodge charges $15 a night which is still reasonable.

On our first full day we head into Boise. We found a park called Hillside to Hollow Reserve. It must be somewhat new since the maps don't show it in green like most parks are, but it is a popular place. Especially for people with dogs since they do not have a leash law in the park. We only realized it was there because of all the geocaches hidden there. The hills in the park are big and the trails tended to not have any switchbacks so the climbs were rather tiring. Once at the top you were presented with a great view of Boise, but then you needed to come back down and head up the next one.

View of Boise from Hillside to Hollow Reserve

We had fun but we could see dark clouds coming in from the west and we figured we should head back before we get wet or struck by lightning. We took a trail that skirted around the hills so we didn't need to do as much climbing. Of course there was one more cache that was "only" a few hundred feet away. The trail to it was probably two or three times that distance and that extra time was the difference in us getting back to the car dry versus what ended up happening. We were only wet, not soaked. And there wasn't any lightning, but our car was only one of two or three that remained. Given there were probably 40 or 50 when we got there, everyone else had the good sense to get out before the rain. By the time we ate our lunch, the rain had passed so we when into Boise and found some of the favorite geocaches.

The next day we drove to the World Center for Birds of Prey. This is a great place that is open to the public and is only $7 per person. They have all sorts of indoor and outdoor holding areas for a wide range of birds of prey. All of which are not able to be released for one reason or another.

Entrance to World Center for Birds of Prey

Staring Intently

Colorful

Ready to Eat

You Looking at Me?

One of the volunteers working there had a couple different presentations we attended. Three times a day, they bring in a bird to a small presentation room so you can see them up close. We ended up doing two of the sessions since they bring out different birds for each show. The two we saw were Gus, a peregrine falcon and Cody, a Harris's Hawk. They were both fascinating to see.

Gus Shows Off His Wings

Aimee with Cody

There is also another large building we toured that is dedicated to the sport of falconry. Falconry is where you train a bird of prey, like a falcon, to hunt for you. It is a rather ancient sport and the building there has the largest collection of information and displays pertains to falconry. The center has outside demos of birds of prey flying right over your head on weekends during October. This would be really fun to see. Maybe something else for our bucket list.

Sample Falconry Hoods

Next we headed into downtown Boise for a few more caches we had wanted to try the other day but ran out of time. One was in a park near the library right next to the Boise River. At first it didn't look good that we would even be able to physically get to the cache. The river was very high and moving extremely fast. There were these three foot tall plastic wall sections all along the length of the walkway that were some high tech version of sandbags. The problem was, we needed to be on the other side. We could tell the river was no longer a threat to the cache area and we eventually found an opening in the wall that allowed pedestrians and bicyclists to pass through and cross over a bridge.

The Boise River was Raging

The cache in question was modeled after one we saw in West Virginia last fall. It is a gadget cache. In this case a birdhouse looking container that was looked with a padlock. The whole thing was painted with a grid of letters. Your mission was to figure out which letters to use and then rearrange them into a word that was the combination for the lock.  It only took us a couple minutes before we were signing the log.  As we were just closing the cache up, it started to sprinkle. Not enough to keep us from one last cache next to the library.

One morning we had a big thunderstorm come through the area. It wasn't terribly windy but the lightning and thunder were intense. Plus the rain was coming down in buckets. While sitting in the rig, the motorhome was shaking from the thunder every bit as much as if we were driving down a bad road. By the time it was over, the parking lot at the lodge looked more like a lake.

The View from Our Rig After Rainstorm

We took advantage of the fact that this region of Idaho is wine country. The climate and soil conditions seems much better suited for vineyards than that of southern Arizona. Chris had picked out two wineries that were open on our last day in the area. Our first stop was Huston Vineyards. When we pulled in, we were the only customers there. We were immediately greeted by a big friendly black lab named Hershey. This dog was an expert in getting attention. I gave her a minute long belly rub and as I walked away she was still laying on her back as if to tell me I wasn't done.

This place worked out well for us. We prefer dry wines and favor white wine. This region make Riesling which is one of our favorites from back home in the Finger Lakes of western New York. Tastings were $5 unless you buy something. We found two wines we liked so you might say the tasting was free.

The next stop was Fujishin Family Cellars. We walked in just behind three other women. We were having a good time tasting the wines here. The women said this was their third stop so far so they were in a happy mood. Tastings were free and you can try up to 6 of their wines. We picked up one more bottle and then headed out to do a bit more sightseeing.

Elaborate Bridge in Downtown Caldwell

Waterwheel

Pizza Joint Spans the River

Salt Lake City

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

When we got to Warner Truck Center in Salt Lake City, we tried to figure out where we could and should park for the night. The service place is actually a 24/7 operation, but they were closed because of Memorial Day. I suppose everybody deserves a day off every now and then. We found a place to unhitch the car and leave the rig while I drive the premises trying to find a place to settle down for the night. This is a huge place with probably over a hundred new Freightliner Trucks for sale. I couldn't find a better spot so I came back and positioned the rig so we could put out the one bedroom slide. Our spot was far enough off the Main Street to avoid traffic noise but several semis were parked on the same side road and had their refrigeration units running all night. Even after putting in earplugs, it was not a very restful night.

The next morning I went in with my 5 year maintenance list and talked with the service guy. He figured they could have things done by mid-afternoon. It didn't make sense to just sit around there all day so we hopped in the jeep and went exploring. We decided to head southwest of town and try to get three more geotour caches in for another Utah county. So far we have completed 6 counties but need to do 10 of the 29 in order to qualify for their geocoin prize. We have a full week in SLC and the counties around here are not too big so there is a chance we can get it completed. If not, it's unclear how long before we would be back in Utah so it seemed like it was now or never.

We have been finding that many of these Utah Geotour caches are in interesting locations and the 3 we did in Tooele county did not disappoint. Our first stop was at the Benson Gristmill in Stansbury Utah. This is one of those pioneer village type places that looked really interesting but unfortunately we were here too early so the gates were closed. The cache was outside the fence so we were able to make the find. Our next stop was in Grantsville - the Donner-Reed Museum. Apparently this area was where the ill fated Donner party started having serious trouble crossing the Salt Lake area. Many of the parties artifacts were collected and are now on display in the museum. But alas, we were too early to do anything other than find the geocache and move on.

Looking Over Fence at Benson Gristmill

Our next stop proved to be our most memorable. The small town of Ophir. And when I say small, I'm not exaggerating. The population was 23 in 2000. It was a mining town back in the day. It is up a canyon road into the higher elevation of some mountain. As we turned off the main road, we crossed the standard cattle grate. Much of the area in Utah is open range for cattle so we have become accustomed to these things. The livestock warning sign was also pretty typical of the areas we have been traveling of late.

It is only about 3 miles or so to town where the cache is hidden, but it took us at least 20 minutes to go that distance. At first, we came upon a handful of cows on the road. Not a big deal, they were off to the side and other than passing them slowly as to not spook them, it was uneventful. But at each turn we came across more and more of them. Some were heading uphill as we were, while others were coming back down. None of them respected the lane markers! When they were three or four abreast, it was quite challenging to navigate around them.

Nicely on the Shoulder of Road

Unsure of Us

MOOOve Over!

Some of the larger ones had horns. Not quite big as long horn cattle but dangerous looking nonetheless. One of these was heading down the hill, in its proper lane I might add, but as I slowly approached, it veered across the centerline forcing me to use what little shoulder there was before it dropped off to the gully beside the road. Most of the cattle were predictable with the exception of the young ones. Once they saw us coming, they would start to trot along and swerve this way and that reminding me of toddlers at a grocery store.

Within a few hundred feet of the cache, there was a traffic jam. The only thing that eventually clear it up was the cowboy on horseback keeping them moving up the street through town. It was unclear whether this is a daily routine or if it was a semiannual event to move the herd from a low pasture to a high pasture. The town itself was quite cute. Lots of old restored buildings with remnants of its mining history. We were not able to stay long since we had lost cell coverage and we needed to be able to take a call if there was some issue with our rig. Under better circumstances, I think we could have spent an hour exploring what was here.

In the Town of Ophir

We had missed a call from the service department so we headed back to finalize what we wanted to have done, headed for a late lunch and by mid-afternoon we had our rig back as promised. Good for another year of travels. We had booked a spot in the KOA in town. At 9 miles, it was by far our shortest travel day! Obviously we didn't bother to hook the car up and we just headed over separately. The site we were in was pretty nice but a little tight with our neighbors. Their picnic table was right next to one of our windows and one of them liked to smoke while sitting there. One surprising thing was how fast the wi-fi was. About 60 Mbps down and 45 Mbps up. That is unprecedented in any campground we have stayed at and rivals some of the faster public libraries we have  visited.

Our campground is only a couple miles from Temple Square. The beautiful 35 acre home of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. According to the online schedule, there was supposed to be a rehearsal of the Bells on Temple Square one day and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir the next. Chris wanted to see either of them so we picked the handbells. We arrived early enough to explore the place. We stop at one of two visitor centers on the property. Two young ladies greeted us and I could tell they really wanted to talk religion with us but we managed to keep the discussion to which areas are open to viewing.

Monument on the Temple Square Grounds

Vulcan Mind Meld?

There are lots of people there. Probably 1/3 of them are nicely dressed and are there to give tours or explain their beliefs. The Salt Lake Temple itself is not open to tours but is an impressive building based on its outside appearance.

Beautiful Salt Lake Temple

Pond on Backside of Temple

The Salt Lake Tabernacle is a dome like building with a surprisingly plain interior. To us it looked like a fairly modern building but was actually built in the 1860's! The impressive feature of the building is the organ and apparently the acoustics. This was where the handbell rehearsal was to take place. We arrived early and were greeted by the orchestra practicing. We ended up watching them for half an hour before realizing the handbells weren't going to show up. Oh well, these things happen.

Orchestra Practices at Tabernacle

Impressive Pipe Organ

Another thing that is apparently a huge deal here is the Family History Library. They house the largest genealogical collection in the world. We had been told by a friend in the Newmar club, that if she were in Salt Lake City, she would spends days going thru their collection to work on her family tree. In the past few years, I have dabbled a bit in my family history. Basically building on the work from one of my sisters. Maybe I will need to dedicate some time on a future trip to work on it some more.

Nice Landscaping in Temple Square

Flowers in Bloom

Our next destination took us a bit north of town to the adjacent Davis county and to visit Antelope Island State Park. There is a long causeway connecting the island situated in the Great Salt Lake. Our Utah park pass got us in but there was a $2 fee to drive across the causeway. There are lots of geocaches while heading out to the island but no real parking spots and when we did stop at one viewing area, the bugs were so extreme that signing the log for one cache was adequate.

On the island, we headed south the Fielding Garrett Ranch. On our way, there were 5 bison in the field not too far from the road. These things are huge and when they rolled around on the ground, a huge dust cloud was created. The ranch was interesting in that much of the equipment and many of the buildings were still present. Better yet, there were lots of informational signs describing how some of the equipment was used. There were also a number of horses in the one paddock. Apparently they are used for some of the horseback tours you can take. We really didn't have time plus it sounded like you needed to plan this in advance. It probably would have been a fun way to see more of the island. The Utah Geotour cache that is located here was hidden in one of the old covered wagons.  We felt a a bit self conscious looking the thing over so closely but there were not too many visitors that morning and I suspect the volunteers all know about it by now.

Bison as We Head to Ranch

Chris Practices Her Roping Skills to Catch a Bison

Horses Off Duty

The volunteer at the ranch mentioned that the last reported location of the larger herd of bison was just a mile or so down the dirt road further to the south. The chance to see some more bison got us to head that way. We didn't need to go very far before we saw one other car pulled over and a dozen or more bison on each side of the road. The whole herd appeared to be heading up the hill which would mean the ones on the low side of the road should be crossing the road, it was just a matter of how long was it going to take. They didn't seem to be in any hurry but they also didn't seem to mind, or even acknowledge, our presence on their island. It didn't take more than 10 minutes for one of them to head across the road. Once it had, we got in the relative safety of our car and headed down the road to where it was. Seeing one this big only 15 feet or so from us was awesome.

Why Did the Bison Cross the Road?

Grazing

Big!

Next we headed to the visitor center on the north end of the island. The interesting fact we discovered was that there are between 500 and 750 bison on the island! Each fall they have a roundup where they drive all of them into corrals where they are given vaccines and a health check as well as an ID chip. Afterwards they auction off a hundred or so to keep the herd population stable. That would be a fun thing to watch and might need to be added to our list of things to see and do on a future trip.

We wrap up the day with a trip to the Bountiful/Davis Art Gallery. I know, you're thinking we don't seem like the art gallery types. And while that is generally true, one of the Utah Geotour caches is located there. It's not a huge place with possibly 50 or so paintings and other works of art. The cache container is inside the gallery and we find it reasonably quickly since it really isn't hidden. But the thing has a 5 digit combination lock that needs to be open. The mission is to wander through the gallery and find the five pieces of art that have a small number next to them and rearrange them in the proper order to unlock the cache. We went around the place 3 or 4 times but we weren't finding numbers that made any sense. We finally asked one of the workers and her comment was "Oh, I don't think we put up new numbers since we changed all the art a couple weeks ago." That might explain our frustration in spending 30 minutes and coming up empty handed. Fortunately they were able to provide the number and we had the cache open and signed in no time.

Chalk Art Outside BDAG

Being the capitol of Utah, we head downtown to tour the capitol building. It is a big and impressive place. You are allowed to wander the place on your own. We did have a bit of a tour guide in the sense that the Geotour cache hidden here required you to find 10 locations inside the building on one of the three floors that were often only cryptically identified, and then find a date, or count the number of what was there in order to get the final coordinates for the actual container. It was actually a fun way to see most of the place. There didn't appear to be any state legislators working the day we were there so it wasn't a very busy place.

Utah State Capitol Building

Inside the Dome

One of the Legislative Chambers

State Seal on Floor

The actual cache was hidden in the visitor's center at a separate but nearby building. We found the key needed to unlock it, but had to ask where the container was. It turned out to be located behind the worker's desk area since the gift shop was closed. We talked to the woman working there and she told us we might want to check out Ensign Peak that is up the hill behind the capitol building. It was over a mile up there and somewhat steep so it was a good thing we drove up instead of walked up.  Once there, we found a cache at the lower level of the park and then headed up to the overlook.

The view was pretty good of the city. Another trail took you up a couple hundred additional feet in elevation to the top of the hill but we decided the view was fine from where we were at.

View Above Salt Lake City

At this point in time, we have completed 6 counties in the Utah Geotour. So close but still have four to go. We head head one day to try to get two more counties. We are glad that the ones near Salt Lake City are smaller in size so the task is not too bad. One of the first we attempted was a fun one. At the posted coordinates, you find a tupperware container on a tree with a doorbell button inside. The idea is to push the button and listen for the wireless doorbell located in the woods nearby. The only real problem is the location is very close to the interstate so the noise from the traffic almost drowns out the bell. Initially I overshot the location and could no longer hear the thing. Chris pointed out she could hear it closer to her and I headed back and made the find. We really enjoy finding creative hides like this one.

View of Expressway From Doorbell Cache

At Another Geotour Cache

We had identified a driving loop that would take us past the closest 3 Geotour caches in both counties. Things were going well until we got to the Heber Valley Railroad Station. There were likely at least 100 cars parked here and many more people than that. We headed to the cache location but discovered there was some sort of kids show being put on by an entertainer. We isolated where we believe the cache to be but several children were sitting on the planter where it was hidden! It didn't appear that the show was coming to an end any time soon so we packed it in and had to go with plan "B".

To remedy our lack of a find at the railroad station, we headed to Jordanelle State Park. If nothing else, it helped us justify the Utah State Park Pass we had purchased. The park is situated on a reservoir created by a large dam. Many people were here being a nice and warm early summer day. This cache was a bit more challenging. The park had put in plaques representing the sun and each planet of our solar system. The idea was to go from one to the next as you work your way out to the now demoted Pluto. We really expected them to be along some walking path or hiking trail but at each plaque, there were the coordinates for the next one and they were all over the park. In fields with no trails, in the middle of the campgrounds and there was really no good path from one to the next. We eventually walked all the way to Pluto and found the cache at the sign. I suspect that at this point only geocachers visit these places in the park.

Overlooking Dam at Jordanelle SP

Sailing on the Lake

The last place of interest this day was a stop in Park City Utah. This is a very trendy and touristy town. And being a nice weekend day, it was very crowded. The Geotour cache here was a very interesting and well done cache. You were provided with a starting point and 49 small images. The idea was to go to the start and look for the thing in the first picture which gets you going in the right direction. Then you just keep following the pictures. The longest distance between things was maybe 100 feet or so but this is a very busy area with one shop after another lining the streets. Many of the pictures were rather closeup shots of something less than one square foot in real life.

The pictures did a pretty good job of indicating where you needed to turn and cross the street although there were a couple spots where we struggled to find what we needed. The final picture took us to where the actual cache was. It was only off a side walkway from the Main Street, so there were plenty of people passing but they didn't seem to be aware of what we were doing. Maybe they thought we were odd looking homeless people that needed to be avoided.

We had taken the interstate to get over and through the Wasatch Mountains on the east side of SLC. We decided to take a lesser traveled mountain road back when we were done for the day. The drive up Guardsman Pass was pretty, this is a big skiing area. I was amazed the sheer number of rental places. It looks like thousands of people must come here during the peak of the ski season. There was still snow on the ground and it definitely was chillier up here than in town. We stopped at one overlook with three Greyhound size tour buses sitting on the one side of the road. There were a few people milling about but not nearly enough to fill the buses. Not sure where they had headed but it was out of our view. Unfortunately we got further up and discovered the road we had planned to take was still closed from snow cover. We eventually made out way back to the KOA.

Chris Checks Out the Snow

Impressive Views

More Mountains

We still had a couple Geotour caches to get in Salt Lake county and had picked out a museum in town dedicated to Leonardo DaVinci. It sounded interesting so we headed there Sunday morning. BAD idea. Turns out there was the annual Gay Pride Parade just a couple blocks away from the place and the whole area was swamped with people and road closures. We eventually realized this just wasn't meant to be and formulated plan "B" again - we seem to need to do this fairly often.

We head back up into the mountains. This time to the small town of Alta. It wasn't clear there was actually a town since it seemed to just be a couple ski resorts including Snowbird. There was still some snow on the mountains and at least one lift running since we saw a few people snowboarding. After solving a bit of a puzzle, we were led to a restaurant. Of course the place wasn't open so we were unsure we could get to the Geotour cache or not. We didn't really have any option for plan "C" so we headed there with our fingers crossed. It took us a bit to find the container but having the place closed worked in our advantage since nobody was around to question what we were up to.

They Had Lots of Snow This Past Season

Great Views

We needed one more cache for this county so we headed to Wheeler Historic Farm. Unlike the desolate ski area we came from, this area was packed. We found it hard to believe this many people were here to walk around the farm. Turned out that there was also some sort of craft fair going on with many dozens of booths setup. To find the cache here, you needed to find half a dozen spots on the farm and answer some questions about what you were looking at. Since we didn't have specific coordinates to head to, you were more or less forced to walk the whole farm. That was okay since it was an interesting place. Had it not been a Sunday, we could have even paid our $1 to milk a cow. It's not clear why the cows don't get milked on Sundays. We eventually get our answers and discover the actual cache location is well off the beaten path so there were no issues looking for it or signing the logbook.

No Milking for You Today

Little Guy

Chris Finds Home Smaller than Our Rig

Nice Barn on the Farm

Nicely Decorated Geocache

We were down to needing one last county but only had one more full day in Utah. We decided to head south of town to Provo. We had driven through it on our way to SLC and thought it might be a good place to visit. Being Monday made for much less traffic at our destinations. Utah Lake State Park was a nice stop. There were lots of people out boating or fishing. A mother and her young daughter were out in the little bay on stand up paddle boards. The girl was not having an easy time keeping up with her mom especially since her board was often facing the wrong direction. I guess I shouldn't laugh since we likely wouldn't even be able to stand up on one of those things!

Mountains Behind Utah Lake

Near Utah Lake SP

This Guys is Good at Collecting Gas Memorabilia

From here we head to downtown Provo basically to just walk around and see what is there. We use several of the more favorite geocaches as our tour guide. The Startup Candy Company sounded better than it was. It is a neat old building but they are more into lollipops than chocolate.

Pretty Church in Downtown Provo

Part of Startup Candy

The drive up to Sundance was pretty. It is in the mountains northeast of Provo. Yes this is the place owned and made famous by Robert Redford. It consists of several thousand acres where there are year round activities. The chair lifts were still running but carrying people and their mountain bikes up to the top. There were others doing the zip line course. This looks like an expensive place to stay. We were definitely underdressed compared to most of the visitors. We checked out all the pictures of the history of this place and Redford's involvement. We then managed to find the Geotour cache hidden here and talked to one of the artists working nearby it. There were no Robert Redford sightings while we were there.

Chair Lift Still Running

Great Views at Sundance

We successfully hit our goal of finding at least three of the Geotour caches in ten counties in Utah. We were in the state for 26 nights and found tackling this challenge was fun and took us to some places we likely would have otherwise missed. To get our "prize" for completing this, we needed to fill out a form on a web site for each county we completed. Part of what they wanted to know was how much we spent while in Utah. We probably spent more than many people that come here for the Geotour but we probably would have spent this much whether we did these caches. Our patches and coin will be mailed to our Florida address but I will post pictures of them when they eventually catch up with us.