South Routes

TRIP SOUTH ITINERARY & PACKING SPECS Here is Departure Plan: 1. We sign up to have everything turned off on a Friday. 2. All the pipes are blown on a Friday. 3. We camp in our trailer Friday night. 4. We save enough water in buckets to use our toilet on Saturday. 5. We further winterize the drains on Saturday. Here is the Itinerary: John takes his Saturday morning ride. We depart at a civil hour, arriving at Brigham City Walmart at the appointed time and place. On Sunday, we leave early from Brigham City and we drive to Big Rock Candy Mountain. We arrive in Candy Mtn. early enough for John to do a 14 mile ride before Happy Hour. On Monday morning John does another 14 mile ride on the Candy Mountain Pathway. We then depart Candy Mountain around lunch time and drive to Bryce. We find a place to camp in Bryce in settle in for a few days. John rides the Legendary Bryce Pathway while Susun perfects her art. We leave Bryce & drive straight-through to Verm...

We're definitely not staying up here as long as we did last year! (Christmas Day 2017) It isn't creative or "out there" but it has always served us well.  We've driven it too many times to remember.  This year we added a new wrinkle: The Brigham City Walmart parking lot. OK, here how it goes. We leave Idaho Falls mid-afternoon on a Saturday and drive to the Brigham City Walmart.  It MUST be a Saturday.  No other days will do. We don't unhitch the trailer.  We wake up as soon as possible Sunday morning and get on I-15 early, early, early!  This way we get to drive through the white knuckle gauntlet of Salt Lake City with no white knuckles.  Sometimes there are so few vehicles it seems like it's our own private interstate highway!  We beat feet through the 100-mile Belly Of The Beast, as we are wont to call it and arrive at a convenient pit stop in Payson, Utah, well before lunch time.  It's as blissful as can be, at least for hauling our ...

A typical scene on the Mirror Lake Scenic Byway. The High Uintas beckon as the centerpiece of a creative central route south.  We've done this route in bits & pieces but never all strung together. Here's how the top two-thirds of it would go: Idaho Fall to Alpine, Afton, Smooth, Geneva, Salt River Pass, Border, Cokeville, Sage,  Randolph, Woodruff, Evanston, The High Unitas Mirrow Lake Scenic Byway, Kamas, Heber City, Provo Canyon, Springville, Spanish Fork, Thistle, Ephriam, Manti, Gunnison, Salina and Sigurd. Mirror Lake Scenic Byway At Sigurd, we'd face a major decision: go left to Capitol Reef or right to Bryce.  We're Old Hands at both those route choices so it will probably depend on the weather at the time.  Even if we go to Capitol Reef, we almost always end up in Bryce anyway.  Bryce has a magnetic pull on us that goes back 17 years. Once we're past Bryce, it's a binary route home.  Once we're at Kanab, we either head over ...

Shown in the photo above is The Split Mountain Campground in Dinosaur Nat'l Monument north of Jensen, Utah.  By the time we would get there, those pull through sites would be first-come, first-served for $3 a night. On August 14, 2018, we put together a "very" tentative, possible South Route just about as Far East as we could push it. Here's the staccato synopsis:  Idaho Falls to Alpine, Hoback, Pinedale, Farson, Rock Springs, Green River, Manila, Vernal, Jensen, Dinosaur, Rangely, Loma, Cisco, Moab, Monticello, Blanding, Bluff,  Mexican Hat, Kayenta, Navajo Nat'l Monument, Tuba City, Cameron, Flagstaff, Rimrock. We plan to document each of the route sections, camp sites and other info "soon."