San Rafael swell – Samantha Waters

My husband and I have this little adventure thing we do when he’s home off the road.

We hunt rocks. Little ones, big ones. Crystals, quartz, amethyst, coral, vesuvianite- that I actually chopped out of the mountain myself!

When he’s on the road all summer, I usually go with a rockhounding group or drag my daughter or my grand kids with me.

I wrote a previous post about my adventures here, but this trip is the first with our new (to us) 5th wheel we bought last year.

I know it seems like a lot but if this would have been a hotel trip, this would be just the cost of the hotel. Plus, since this was our first time in the rig, we needed ‘stuff’.

Here we are on the way up the canyon over state highway 6. It’s quite a long drive but each end of it has some beautiful views- better in summer of course. This highway used to be one of the most dangerous in the US for accidents.

This first picture is looking south into the Sanpete Valley where I was raised. This north end is where the Thistle mudslide of 1984 happened, causing them to rebuild the road and blast through the giant rocks to connect to Utah & Carbon counties. The middle of the second picture is the mud that slid down and blocked the road causing a huge lake to form several miles south causing the evacuation of Thistle

One of the casualties of the thistle mudslide

It is quite a quaint little valley. When I show you the summer pictures in a few months you will see. My son was married in a beautiful back yard up this road.

Finally we hit the other end of the mountain. This is coming into Helper, an old coal mining town with so many old wooden and brick buildings that I can’t wait to go photograph soon. Here’s some pics of a ghost town close by that my daughter & I visited last year.

For now though, it’s time to fill up the 5 th wheel with fresh water. These guys at the oil shop were kind enough to let us use their hose. After, there seemed to be a strange dripping tho- but we wouldn’t discover this until a couple of hours later.💧 🌊💧🔧

A quick fresh brewed coffee hits the spot as the air is already feeling cooler.

Between stops, I’m enjoying this book about Corrie ten Boom. I might do a book review on it- if it’s even possible to buy anymore???

It’s getting late in the day and we still don’t know quite where we’re camping. We’re headed to The swinging bridge campground but we’re unsure how tight the roads get and if we can find a half circle campground for our long rig.

Later & later as we see the many camping spots already taken.

It doesn’t look like these guys could find a spot either.

Finally we found a beautiful spot, but it would be an hour trying to maneuver the 5th wheel & the 16 ft trailer holding the Razor into the soft sand.

Imagine our surprise when we finally, in the dark, open the door to our finally level rig and find the carpets completely soaked.

It seems the previous owner had cut the water hose under the sink pump. At first my husband thought it was to drain the pump for winter, but the more he thought about it, he decided it was to stick the hose into a gallon of antifreeze instead of filling the whole tank underneath with antifreeze.

Easy fix right? Not without any materials. My husband is a mechanic so he had plenty of tools but he’s not a plumber so he didn’t have a bunch of extra pipe or hose tucked away.

No worries, who needed that size socket anyway?

Ahhh time for bed. As we roll out our new memory foam mattress (remember the $345? We were surprised to find it ripped from inside the undamaged plastic in the undamaged box.