Tuesday, October 20, 2015 (Travel to Zion River Resort, Virgin, UT)

We were up bright and early this morning...and after our coffee, it was time to get our butts in gear...it's travel day! We were all packed up, hitched up...and heading to the sani-dump shortly before 9:00. We seem to have a glitch with our newly installed but modified grey water dump valve...it's not opening. Geez!! About a half hour later we were saying goodbye to Antelope Island.
It was a pretty darned beautiful morning considering the thunderstorm we had last night.

 On the causeway leaving the island. Back in the 80's when the lake was high this causeway was all busted up by stormy wave action.

We headed back over to I-15 south...and the drive through the busy Salt Lake City area. This is the Utah Transit Authority's (UTA) 'FrontRunner' train...

And what would driving through Salt Lake City be without road construction?!! Actually, for the most part, the drive through the area wasn't too bad...it just took forever...about 11/2 hours before we were through the heavily developed areas of Salt Lake City.

A very long coal train...

We stopped for lunch at noon at a truck stop. Before getting back on the road, Steve did his walk around and noticed a bolt was missing from the boat-loader. Well, actually the bolt was just sitting there...the nut and washers were gone.

A sea of yellow....

Juniper forest...

Hmmmm...those clouds look serious!

A lighthouse...here? (for you Suzanne :) )

We took the exit off I-15 to Hwy 17 toward Toquerville...

And then onto highway 9...

...to Virgin...

And Zion River Resort RV Park and Campground...

It was shortly after 4:30 when we pulled in. When we went into the office, they knew exactly who were were and Mason, the General Manager, took us for a walk to take a look at the site they had for us...just to make sure we could fit (the pull-through site is 60 feet long and our total length is 66 feet).

We either had to park the fifth-wheel at the very back of the site and hope that we could angle the truck back under the overhang of the fifth-wheel...or park the fifth-wheel at the very front of the site and pull the truck in across the back (there was a gravel spot where the picnic table and firepit are). Mason said that is what a lot of folks do. We assured her we could make it work and walked back to the office to finish our registration.

We decided to pull the fifth-wheel as far as we could to the end of the site and park the truck at the back. The cement pad is level so didn't require any leveling...we got unhitched, slides outs and we both got to work setting up. Steve had pretty well gotten all set up except the satellite dish when it began to just pour out. So we hunkered down inside waiting for it to let up. It wasn't too long before he was back out setting up the dish...

View of our site from the berm above the Virgin River...

Steve captured these great pictures of the sun going down on the mountains... with a very muddy Virgin River in the foreground...

While registering at the office, we also signed up to take the shuttle they run from the RV park to Zion National Park.  For $7.00 each, return, we thought we'd take it tomorrow and "get the lay of the land" at Zion. We'll get ourselves oriented and then plan out the rest of our week here...looking forward to it!