from rscottjones

I’m off this morning on another road trip adventure, this time heading north towards Utah and Idaho.

Yes, I know…yet another trip.

Many casual acquaintances don’t understand how we can travel as often as we do. They think we either have massive amounts of time off, or are quite rich. Sadly, neither is true. Trust me, we wish it were—we’d travel even more if we could.

However, we have optimized as much as possible given our own life situation. And tomorrow’s trip leans heavily into one of those optimization strategizes.

And as a result, the trip requires no time off, and it’s cheap enough that we’ll pay for it as part of our every day “discretionary” spending budget. Let me explain:

This will be a “drive ahead” trip, wherein I leave a day or two early and drive all of our camping stuff towards our destination. And then Jen flies in, right after work, on a cheap flight. I pick her up, we do the stuff we want to do over the course of her time off. Eventually, I deposit her at an airport (sometimes the same one, sometimes a different one), she flies back, and I make my own way back.

• Side note: I need a better name for these trips: Wheels then wings? Freeway before flight path? Roadway to runway? Tires and tarmac? Look, someone help me out with a good suggestion.

While it’s great to avoid spending a bunch of her time off just driving to the area we want to explore, this strategy really shines when we can line up 3-4 days off, like this weekend. She’s flying out on Wednesday night, right after work. Thursday is Juneteenth (a federal holiday), and Friday is her “alternative work schedule” day off (she works an extra 30 mins longer each day in order to get every 10th day off). And she gets the weekend off. She’ll fly home late on Sunday night, and head back to work on Monday morning. I’ll make my way home by Tuesday afternoon, or perhaps Monday night if I hurry.

So on a trip like this, she gets to explore northern Utah and southern Idaho for four full days while taking zero hours of vacation time, and doing so relatively cheaply. After all, this strategy means we’re not paying for two flights (each of which would be more expensive because we’d have to pay for a carry-on), plus hotels, plus rental cars, plus more meals out (camping really is an amazing travel hack).

Instead, we’re driving our own vehicle, camping for cheap, snacking out of the cooler, and only paying for a single ticket on a budget airline, since all Jen needs to bring is her wallet and herself. We leverage my time freedom and willingness to drive long distances and camp so that we can travel, frequently, without dipping into her vacation time, or often even our travel fund.

So that’s why you’ll often see us bombing out to adjacent states once or twice a month.

The rough plan for this trip

Ok, so that’s how we manage trips like this. But where are we actually going, and why, you ask?

Well, I’m on my way north to a campsite booked at Bryce Canyon National Park. I haven’t been there in a while, and it’s much, much cooler than Phoenix right now (or the central Utah deserts for that matter). On Wednesday, I’ll meander my way up to Salt Lake City, via a random county I need for my visit-every-county quest, and will meet up with a social media friend I haven’t met in person yet for happy hour. Jen will arrive around dinnertime, and in the one exception of the trip, we’re staying in a nearby hotel (we have a four free hotel night stays that expire this summer, so it made sense to use one of them here).

On Thursday, we’ll head west past the Bonneville Salt Flats to Wendover Air Field to visit the Enola Gay Hanger (as part of our Manhattan Project quest). From there, we cross into Nevada (within the weird time zone carve-out for West Wendover), then make our way north through a few Nevada counties Jen needs, ending at a hot springs resort, where we’ll camp and soak (ok, “resort” might be overselling the place).

On Friday, we’ll visit Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument, and drive the Thousand Springs Scenic Byway, stopping at a number of the waterfalls (and marking off an Idaho state park for Jen). We’ll stop into the Silver Creek Preserve, one of the earliest and most successful private easement preserves and riparian restoration projects in the country. From there, we’ll poke into the BLM-managed portion of Craters of the Moon National Monument, on our way to Arco.

On Saturday, we’ll tour the EBR-1 Reactor (officially the Experimental Breeder Reactor-I), the first power plant to produce electricity using atomic energy. We’ll likely stop by some other local attractions—I mean, you sorta have to visit the Idaho Potato Museum if it’s close by, right?—before camping near City of Rocks.

On Sunday, we’ll cross back into Utah, visiting Golden Spike National Historical Park, the spot where the first transcontinental railroad was completed. We’ll also pop by Spiral Jetty, which has been on my list for a number of years. We’ll probably stop at an SLC-area brewery for a beverage and dinner before Jen flies home. I’ll camp in the nearby Wasatch Mountains, before starting my journey home.

I’ll plan my path as I go, but I’m hoping to camp near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on Monday night, after having explored some Utah spots along the way. I expect to arrive home on Tuesday afternoon.

It’s not a fancy trip, but I’m looking forward to it. We originally planned most of this trip back in 2019, but had to cancel—and we’re just now getting back to it. But we’ll mark off two more national park units for Jen, a couple of Manhattan Project quest objectives for both of us, a Treasured Places area for Jen, and a number of counties for her (and one for me). And, of course, we’ll explore some other interesting spots while avoiding the Phoenix summer heat. Should be fun!

Wildfire smoke and blowing dust obscured all the great views around the Vermilion Cliffs/Lake Powell/Grand Staircase area, so no photo stops on my drive today /:

As it is, with my late start, I’ll arrive at camp around 11pm. (I find it nearly impossible to show up before dark) 🏷️25.06B

As a Phoenician, it’s always great to wake up in the cool pines in June. 📍 Bryce Canyon National Park 🏷️ 25.06B

Look at these amazing contraptions!

📍 Junction, UT 🏷️ 25.06B

Built back when roads were still cool. 🏷️25.06B

This town’s identity revolves around hiking with quilts. No, really. 🏷️25.06B

Butch Cassidy’s childhood home. Stopped here to use the vault toilet. The sheriff in front of me pulled off too, I assumed to use the toilet, so I checked out the house first. Well, upon returning to the parking lot I saw that he had transported inmates to clean the now-closed facilities. 🏷️25.06B

New Costco soda sizes just dropped. 🏷️25.06B

An (unfortunate) sign of the times? Delicate Arch as backdrop for a sketchy ATM. 🏷️25.06B

A helluva place to lose a cow. 🏷️25.06B

It’s been a long time since I visited Bryce Canyon, so it seemed like a great spot to camp on my way to Salt Lake City. As per tradition, I arrived long after dark, so I’d only have a few hours in the morning in the park. I ended up driving each of the major viewpoints, snapping off some photos on my both my iPhone and Nikon Z5 (though I only brought my 24-50mm lens on the trip). Here are some of the phone shots.

Bonneville Salt Flats 🏷️25.06B

📍 Salmon Falls Creek, ID 🏷️ 25.06B

This art installation, just off I-80 along the Bonneville Salt Flat, is apparently called the Metaphor: The Tree of Utah. Uh yeah, sorta weird.

Look, I’ve been to Pando, and if there’s any “tree of Utah,” it’s gotta be that one.

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The city of West Wendover is the only portion of Nevada legally in the Mountain Time Zone.

Why? Well, because it has the closest casinos and weed dispensaries to metro Salt Lake, so it’s more connected to folks coming from Utah than from other areas of rural Nevada.

Funny how that works…

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We stopped at Koto Brewing in Twin Falls to mark off an Idaho brewery for Jen. It’s named after a Japanese-American man who had built a successful cafe here but was interned at nearby Minidoka during WWII. Not only is the brewery named after Koto, but it’s even in the same brick building as his cafe. 🏷️25.06B

This old dam on Salmon Falls Creek isn’t leaking—but the adjacent rocks are. Evidently, the water held in the reservoir has found some fractures in the rock, and is now slowly seeping out to the canyon downstream. 🏷️25.06B

📍 Twin Falls, ID 🏷️ 25.06B

📍 Shoshone Falls, ID 🏷️ 25.06B

📍 Perrine Coulee Falls, ID 🏷️ 25.06B

📍 Niagara Springs, ID 🏷️ 25.06B

📍 Lemmon Falls, ID 🏷️ 25.06B

Watch your step 🏷️25.06B

It’s time for Jen to fly home, but first a celebratory beverage for an excellent and productive four day weekend away. After dropping her off at the airport in a few minutes, I’ll start making my way home, camping a couple times along the way. Really enjoyed this trip! 🏷️25.06B

We got to visit some of our favorite parkchat friends, which was really great. 🏷️25.06B

And we also got to visit with some of our ASU football tailgating friends and check out their amazing new house in the Teton Valley, featuring great views of the western side of the Tetons. 🏷️25.06B

We enjoyed our unexpected scenic drives through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks yesterday. A short visit, for sure, but always worth stopping in whenever and for however long you can. 🏷️25.06B

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Marked off Utah on my State Capitol Building quest. Now at 46/50. 🏷️25.06B

I also managed to visit two unvisited counties I had “orphaned” in Utah—Sanpete and Rich—officially completing the state. I’ve now finished 11 states and sit at 2110/3144 total counties on my quest.

(Dark green: newly completed; light green: revisits on this trip; blue: previously visited) 🏷️25.06B

Always make sure to apply your sunscreen evenly. 🏷️25.06B

My morning bumping around the Wasatch Range.
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Kind surprised it’s taken me so long to stop at Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon, but finally made it happen. 🏷️25.06B

Tonight’s night sky on the Kaibab Plateau. 🏷️25.06B

Is this a gorilla? 🏷️25.06B

A scenic drive through the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway—one of the best in the National Parks System. 🏷️25.06B

Decided that I needed to dip my toes in the Colorado River before heading home. 🏷️25.06B

Here’s 20 seconds of zen watching the Colorado River relentlessly tumble towards the Grand Canyon.

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Here’s the final map of the trip (dark green are new counties visited, light green are repeats). Still surprised we ended up in Yellowstone and Grand Teton while getting everything else done but Golden Spike NHS. 🏷️25.06B

I finally stopped by the Parowan Gap petroglyphs on my drive yesterday. Pretty interesting site, significantly enhanced by the gap itself. Worth a short visit if you’re driving I-15 in southern Utah. 🏷️25.06B

A few shots from Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. We needed to get into the primitive BLM-managed portion for Jen’s Treasured Places quest, then boogied on up to Yellowstone, so none of the classic shots from the NPS side of things. 🏷️25.06B

One of the unexpected surprises of our Utah-Idaho trip, we toured the historic airfield at Wendover, Utah. At one time, it was among the busiest air bases in the country.

We stopped by because it became home to the secret squadron tasked with training to drop the atomic bomb—an important objective in our quest to see the major sites of the Manhattan Project.

The museum was worth a visit, but not a must-do. Instead, I’d recommend the “behind the scenes tour,” which is the same price but loads more interesting. I won’t get into all the details here, but the base was responsible for a number of important facets of the last phase of the Manhattan Project: successfully preparing to actually drop the bomb.

The museum

The airfield tour

This tour was a bus tour to various important buildings on the edge of the tarmac. We toured a large hanger, a fire station that had once been the bombardier training facility, and the vault building where the all-important Norden Bombsights were securely stored.

The best part of the tour was that each of the participants was given a “role.” Jen, for instance, was the navigator and I was the bombardier; others were the pilot, co-pilot, gunner, etc. Then throughout the tour, the docent would explain each of our roles and even have us role-play particular aspects of the mission.

The Enola Gay Hanger

Of course the highlight of tour, for us, was the Enola Gay hanger, which was being used by some young cadets at the time of our visit. Tibbet’s office was on the second floor on the south side of the building; they’re currently renovating it. We also visited the bomb pits where they loaded the bombs onto the B-29s (we saw the corresponding ones in Tinian).

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