Utah 2026

We left Pahrump after 3 nice days of exploring and headed for St. George, Utah.  On the way, we stopped for fuel just north of Las Vegas because it was quite a bit less expensive than California.

It was still no fun fueling up.

As we headed north out of Nevada, we had to cross through a small corner of Arizona. This is one of the most beautiful stretches of roadway that we have ever been on, because the freeway cuts right through the mountains, following the course of the Virgin River.

After arriving at our RV park in St. George and setting up, we were hungry and headed out to find some place to eat dinner. We came across a barbecue place called Dub's BBQ that looked interesting. We knew we had arrived at the right place, because when we got out of the car, we could smell that really good odor of wood barbecue. We weren't disappointed and we had a great barbecue dinner that we shared. The portions were so large that we took half of it home.  My plate is already full and the big plate in this picture is what is left over.

The next two days were spent driving around the beautiful mountainous Utah countryside. Words can't really describe what we saw so instead, I will just show you some pictures.  Some of the pictures look a little washed out because sometimes we had to shoot through the windows of the car or motorhome and we got some glare.

On our second day of driving around, we went to the south entrance to Zion National Park. This was on a Friday morning. We were shocked to see a line at the entrance gate. There were four lanes of traffic, and they were all backed up five or six cars deep. When we finally made it to the kiosk, we were happy to be able to use our America The Beautiful senior citizens pass to get into the park for free instead of spending $35 per car.

Immediately, after entering the park, we headed for the visitor center so that we could get a good overview of what we were about to see and so we could use the bathroom. This was the beginning of the realization that most of Utah must come to Zion on Friday mornings.

The visitors area parking lot probably held 1000 cars and every parking place was full and each of the driveway rows that went to the parking spots were bumper-to-bumper with cars trying to find a spot to park. It took us almost a half an hour just to get out of the parking lot and back onto the roadway into the park.

We came to the entrance of the first tunnel along our route into the park.

We had traveled on this road once before in our first 39 foot diesel pusher motorhome, which was 13 feet tall.  Our current motorhome is 13'6" tall.

On this trip, when we entered the park in our car, we saw a sign that said that no vehicles taller than 13 feet were allowed into the park. That caused us to remember our first trip through the park in our old motorhome.

On that trip, as we drove on the road, we came to this first tunnel. There was a checkpoint set up prior to entering the tunnel, where we spoke with a ranger, who was manning a handheld stop sign. The ranger told us that the sides of the tunnel were too low for our motorhome and the only way we can get through the tunnel is to drive right down the centerline.

He then called the other end of the tunnel and told the ranger there to stop traffic. Once the tunnel was empty of oncoming traffic, we were allowed to proceed. It was really scary trying to stay exactly in the center of the roadway and not scrape the top of the motorhome on the curved edges of the tunnel.  On this trip, the ranger was still there stopping traffic when necessary so that motorhomes that met the height requirement could get through as we did, driving right down the center of the tunnel.

As we continued into the park, we still both needed to make a pitstop, but we were unable to find any place to park.

Every pull out or wide spot in the road was jam packed with parked cars. We never saw any people around these parked cars and presume they had gone hiking on the numerous hiking trails. After driving several more miles into the park, we finally found a place where we could turn around and head back to civilization where we could find a rest room.

As we approached the area where the tunnel was located, we got trapped in a line of stopped cars. After about five minutes of stop and go behind these cars, we came to a vault toilet at a turnout.  There was still no place to park, so we continued to wait in the line of traffic. It turns out that the traffic was backed up for almost a mile from the mouth of the tunnel and the reason traffic was stopped was that there was a motorhome coming through from the opposite direction so the tunnel was closed for traffic in our direction. As soon as the motorhome was clear of the tunnel, our traffic began to move smoothly.

We finally found a place to park at the Park Headquarters, which was closed to the public, but there was a restroom a short walking distance away and that finally brought smiles to our faces.

    

As we drove out of the park past the entrance gate, we saw an unbelievable line of traffic waiting to pay their $35.00 to get in.  The park people seemed happy to be taking everyone's money, but they must have known that there was no way that the facilities inside the park could accommodate the crush of people that were already inside, and that these additional visitors were bound to be disappointed.

The previous picture doesn't do the line of cars justice and when we realized just how far the backup was, Suzie made a video.

After leaving Zion national park, we began to drive back to St. George.

Just outside of the park in the town of Virgin there are a whole bunch of tourist attractions and we stopped at one to see what kind of goodies they might have.

Suzie made a pitstop and came out with a photo of the facilities. She said it was barely wide enough to turn around in, and she's not sure how some of the larger ladies would have made it.

They had all kinds of interesting things for sale, and one of them was this wall mounting of a Utah Werewolf for only $900.  We did not get it!

We don't have pictures but we went back to Dub's BBQ for dinner again and came home with another full meal of leftovers.

Now, we are in Richfield, Utah in a rain storm and will be at this RV park until Monday when we head off on the next leg of our adventure.

We will keep you posted on our travels and we hope you will stay in touch,

Try to get out there because there's a whole bunch of things to see and they're a lot better when you see them in person.

Tom & Suzie

Death Valley and Rhyolite Ghost Town 2026

 We are on the road again for another road trip.  This trip will be in the spring of 2026 traveling to areas that we normally never get to see because we are usually back at our home base in the Florida Keys this time of year.

We will be traveling from Hemet, California north towards South Dakota, and then east, weather permitting.  Our first stop will be at Pahrump, Nevada.

Pahrump is about an hour drive south west of Las Vegas and the drive there is across very remote desert. This was a very lonely highway with no cell service.

The scenery was beautiful in this area and is just south of Death Valley. When we arrived at Pahrump, we checked into our RV park.  It is a very nice RV park called Lakeside Casino RV resort and it is part of the Passport America travel club so our nightly rate was half price, $22 a night.

It makes the perfect location for a home base while making day trips to the surrounding sites.

This was a beautiful oasis in the middle of a harsh desert. The next day, we drove into Death Valley in our car for a day trip.  It is an amazing drive with spectacular colors in every direction.

Our first side trip after entering, the park was to drive through 20 mule team Canyon, which is where the 20 mule team borax trains used to travel. It was a very interesting drive with lots of different colors and shapes everywhere you look.

After exiting the canyon, our next stop was Zabriskie Point where, after a short hike, you have a spectacular view of the Bad Water area and a portion of Death Valley.  This was also where we got to try out our new selfie stick for the first time.  It turns out, there is a learning curve!

After leaving Zabriskie Point, we drove to the Furnace Creek area where we had a picnic lunch and then went to the visitor center.

After lunch, we continued to follow a loop road around a portion of Death Valley.  The next stop was at the old borax mill, where they processed the raw minerals extracted from the surrounding mountains into borax.

As we continued our driving around Death Valley, we came to very large sand dune area and there were people walking all over.  It was already quite hot and windy.  We just stood in the parking lot and watched because it didn't look like too much fun walking in that deep sand.

After stopping at the small store at Stovepipe Wells, we continued on our trip around Death Valley and the next stop was Bad Water, which is the lowest spot in North America!

Badwater basin forms the bottom of the valley in Death Valley, and after any winter rains evaporate, salt like residue is left, covering the shallow lake bottom.  We walked a short distance out onto the salt flat, but we left the real hiking to everyone else.

As we were heading back to our car in the parking lot, eagle eye Suzie, spotted a sign way up on the mountain side, describing where sea level was.

After a nice day in Death, Valley, we returned to our motorhome for a good night's rest.  

The next day, we headed out on another day trip, this time to Beatty, Nevada and the nearby ghost town of Rhyolite.

The first civilization we encountered, was a small store out in the middle of nowhere.

If you think the name says it, all, you would be mistaken. Besides being a gas station and truckstop, there was also a huge assortment of alien T-shirts inside the store, along with snacks and goodies for survival during the long trip across the desert. 

The store also hosted a very nice café in the back that doubles as a topless bar in the evenings and outback, was a purple building that served as a brothel with an alien theme. They said free tours were available, but we didn't get to go!

On the day that we made this trip, there was a high wind warning for our area that described a possibility of winds up to 60 mph.

When Suzie got out of the car, we discovered that the forecast was correct.

After leaving the store, we continued on through the town of Beatty, Nevada to Rhyolite.

The first building we encountered, as we drove into the ghost town was a bottle house.  It was an impressive building that took a huge amount of work to construct.

Another well preserved building was the train station.

There were several other ruins left of the town, but most of the buildings had either been moved to other locations or torn down and the salvaged materials used for construction at other locations.

After leaving Rhyolite, we made a quick stop at the Beatty Mining and Heritage Museum.

The museum was very interesting and had a huge assortment of artifacts from the old mining days.

After a really nice day, we returned to our RV park and got ready to continue our trip into Utah.

You may have noticed that there is a column on the right side of this Blog chapter that is an archive.  There you can find all of our past stories and you are welcome to browse them and/or share them with anyone you think they would inspire to GET OUT THERE.

We will keep you posted on our travels,

Tom & Suzie