We have had a good week in Salt Lake City, and really enjoyed our time here. We look forward to coming back again.  Pony Express RV Resort is an excellent base for exploring the area, though we actually have not done any “exploring” while we’ve been here. Most of my time has been spent doing genealogy research at the Family History Library, and Terry has been busy finishing up a project for her son’s wedding.

Salt Lake City is an interesting town. Many of the city streets are very wide, 132 feet to be exact, designed by the early settlers, with room enough for a covered wagon pulled by a team of four oxen to turn around.

The Mormon influence is obviously very strong, but one of the first things we saw coming in from the west on Interstate 80 was a billboard advertising a topless “gentlemen’s club.” A local business owner told me that just a block or two away from Temple Square, the centerpiece of the Mormon religion, State Street is known for drugs, prostitution, and gang activity.

We have a long day ahead of us today. We’re headed for Gypsum, Colorado, where we will stay at River Dance RV Resort for a few days while we attend Terry’s son’s wedding in Vail. The route my Microsoft Streets & Trips computer mapping program suggested was U.S. Highway 40 into Colorado, and then state routes southeast to Meeker and on to Rifle, where we would pick up Interstate 70 into Gypsum. That’s about 370 miles from where we are.

But, I have learned that one cannot always trust mapping programs, or GPS units, for that matter. In talking to several people who are familiar with this area, we decided to take a longer route that they tell me is a much easier trip – Interstate 15 south to Spanish Fork, where we’ll pick up U.S. Highway 6 and follow it to Interstate 70, near Green River, Utah, and on to Gypsum. This route is about 25 miles longer, but looks to be an easier trip.

That’s a longer trip than most fulltimers do in one day, and we prefer shorter days on the road ourselves. But we can handle it, and we want to get in and settled so we’ll have a couple of days to relax and enjoy some family time before the wedding.

I’m not sure what kind of Verizon service we’ll have in Gypsum. Their coverage map shows they have high speed EVDO, but I have learned that one cannot always rely on what the maps show. Then again, here in North Salt Lake the service has ranged from super fast to just a little bit slower than sludge. So if you log on tomorrow and there is no blog, be patient and I’ll get it up as soon as possible. Likewise, if you send me an e-mail and don’t get a speedy reply, be patient and I’ll get to you as soon as I can.

After the wedding is over, we have to make a fast trip across the country. We want to stop in Forest city, Iowa to have some work done at the Winnebago factory, and then we have to get to Traverse City, Michigan for Terry’s annual oncologist checkup the first week of August. From there, we have to rush down to Elkhart, Indiana to get all of the last minute details handled before our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally the end of August.

Several blog readers have invited us to stop and visit on our trip east, but I’m afraid there just isn’t time. One of these days, I’m going to stop all this busy-busy nonsense, get myself one of them there recreational vehicle motorhome thingies, and just relax and travel!

Thought For The Day – Yes, I do understand your problem. I just don’t  care.

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A cold front dipping south brought very strong winds to Apache Junction, Arizona yesterday afternoon and evening. At our spot here in Pacific Manor, we are on an end site, with a six foot high block wall on one side and the rear, but even with that our old bus was rocking on its air bags so much it would have made a landlubber seasick! I told Miss Terry I wondered how much more we would have felt without the wall blocking the wind. I’m sure glad we weren’t out on the highway someplace.

We’ve been in some nasty winds while traveling, and the best thing to do is just find a safe place to get off the road and wait it out. We’ve done that many times, not only in high winds, but in other storms as well, and we’ve always been amazed at how many RVs we see still going down the highway.

We’ve also been in RV parks when the weather was dangerous, and seen RVs pulling out first thing in the morning. Why? Where do they have to get in such a hurry? I guess if you’re still working and have to get back to the job, it might be a reason. But I’ve seen fulltimers doing it too, and I just don’t understand it. I’m a dyed in the wool coward, and I avoid putting myself in dangerous situations any time I can. Life has enough hazards as it is, without driving into them.

Which reminds me – do you have a weather radio? If not, why not? They only cost a few bucks, and can save your life. Our CB radio has a weather channel feature on it also, and whenever we’re on the road and things start to look ugly, I turn it on to see what we’re heading into. I also monitor the CB to hear what the truckers say about the weather, and more than once we’ve heard about a bad situation up ahead and found a place to pull over and wait for things to clear up.

Our time here in Apache Junction is almost over, but we’ve enjoyed spending time with Terry’s family. Here is a photo I took earlier in the week of Terry sitting on the right, her sister Dani in the center and sister Lisa on the left, with her dad and mom, Pete and Bess Weber, standing behind them. That Weber family sure turns out some good looking women, doesn’t it?

A while back, my pal Judy Bayless discovered that I had about seventeen minutes a week that I was just wasting by doing things like sleeping and eating, so she turned me on to genealogy. Since then I’ve been playing around on the Ancestry.com website, and have found quite a few relatives, even a few that didn’t serve time in prison, much to my surprise.

The Mormon Church operates over 4,500 Family History Centers worldwide, with a tremendous amount of information on genealogy. You don’t have to be a member of the Mormon Church to research your family tree at these Centers, they are open to anybody free of charge. The staff at the Centers are happy to assist both new and experienced genealogists, and they do not promote church membership to visitors.

There is a large Family History Center in Mesa, and yesterday while Terry and her mom were out running some errands, I stopped by to see what they had to offer. Unfortunately, their computer system was down and I couldn’t get much done. But I can see that it is a great resource for anyone wanting to explore their roots. If you’re into genealogy and are spending some time in the Phoenix area, check it out.

Every week people ask me how Sandy Baleria is doing. Miss Terry and Sandy keep in contact by e-mail, and though it is a long and lonely journey she is on, she has managed to turn her grief over Dave’s loss into a positive thing to reach out to others who are suffering. You can read about it in my post on Sandy on my Todays Hero Blog.

Thought For The Day - Talk slowly but think quickly.

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