Overland Camping Roadtrip Blog
Travel Day 8:
Total km driven to date: 2848km
Total km walked to date: 64.1km
Fishermans Creek, Wy – Flaming Gorge, UT
353km drive
7.18km on foot
The morning started off gray and overcast but no rain at camp. Im ok with it since I got a bit of a sunburn from yesterday’s 10km bike ride with no shirt on. Got on the road early (for us…8:30) and continued south, destination who knows. We quickly get out of the hills and into the plains again. Passed a large group of cowboys herding cattle, not something you see where I’m from that’s for sure. The rain was intermittent throughout the morning, sometimes hard, which is good because the truck was getting awfully dirty and covered with bugs, free pressure wash at 65mph. You pass some interesting things on the roads around here, passed a few quads on the city streets. Not sure if its legal but there was more than one of them. Also see people towing a 5th wheel AND a boat, that has to make for some interesting backing up manoeuvres!
Garminder has really been letting me down lately, not sure if I need another map pack but he knows pretty much nothing about rural Wyoming and according to him Colorado isn’t even a state therefore I can’t search for any cities in CO. We stop in Rock Springs, Wy and do some Google Map searching, Google is much better than Garminder but is a data hog (I have a US plan but Maps uses so much its hard to run on 3G). I decide on US 191 since it takes us right by Lake Powell, UT and is only about 2hrs from Rangely. As soon as we get on 191 the landscape changes from prairies to the redrock hills that I expect of Utah. This portion of 191 is called the Flaming Gorge byway and I can see why. We stop at the first lookout to take a couple of pics (even though its still gray and ugly out) and stretch our legs. We head down hill into the rocks for a little hike and not 30ft from the road we run into a big snake. It wasn’t a Rattler but both Ax and I are snake dumb so that scared me so back in the truck for us (of course I snapped a pic, maybe one of you desert folks can tell me if we were being chicken for nothing).
I saw a sign for the Flaming Gorge recreation site/campsite so we left the highway for 8km of dirt road ending in a very rundown looking campsite that they wanted $18/night for. No thanks. I had lunch beside the lake in the rain and then headed back towards the highway with an eye out for a small road sneaking off the main. Ends up being a great little campsite nestled in the Mesquite overlooking the lake. By this time it’s 4:30 which is our usual stopping time so we park and head out for a hike thru the sage brush and mesquite towards the lake about 5km away. Of course the rain isn’t done and I quickly learn that the mud is only about a half inch deep and bone dry underneath but builds up on your boots like cement. Great workout but who expected it to be rainy in the desert! Back to camp for dinner and of course leave it to Axel to find a big bone somewhere, an occupied dog is a happy dog.
