Jordanelle State Park and a fast trip across Utah

We spent three nights at Jordanelle State Park. This was our second visit to the park, as it's a convenient place to stay when visiting my sister in Park City. Our last visit was in July of last year. See that post for more information on the park and the surrounding area.

The park is beautifully maintained, as they have an ambitious group of volunteers. Most of the sites have a view of the lake, though this lake (reservoir) is suffering from the same lack of water that most others are this year.

The dark water line on these trees shows how much lower the current level is than it has been in recent years.  The exposed shoreline is now down to such a low level that the beach is all mud, so I attempted to keep Shiner up on drier, firmer ground when we went exploring. Somehow she still managed to sink up to her elbows in lovely, black swamp mud. Even after a good hosing down she was perfumed faintly with dead fish and pond weed. 'Guess that's the price of having a country dog who likes to explore!

We spent the two full days here visiting, catching up on laundry in the park's little two machine laundromat, and completing the repair on the damaged kitchen vent.

We're still recovering from the germs, so plenty of recuperation time is still on the agenda. The surrounding hills here are covered with beautiful fall colors, so it's a great place to sit back, relax and just admire the scenery.

Monday, we made a 9 AM departure from Jordanelle State Park, north on hwy. 40  then east on I-80 through the canyon. With it's fiery red canyons filled with brilliant yellow and red trees it made a grand exhibit as we left the state.

All too soon the red canyons faded into layers of beige and green, sedimentary layers deeply eroded into interesting shapes, with sharp outcrops of harder stone here and there.The low hanging autumn sun makes the shadows on the eroded hillsides even more outstanding.

As we entered Wyoming the highway flattened out to the rolling, sagebrush covered range land of the northern Great Basin. This is definitely cowboy country. Not much but range land, cattle, and prong horns.