From the start of this blog, I always said I would post honestly – the good, bad and the ugly. This post has it all. Wednesday’s prime rib dinner at the Rupert Elk’s Lodge lived up to its billing. The prime rib was excellent, the corn on the cob was fresh and our baked potatoes were well seasoned and perfectly baked. The salad bar wasn’t the greatest, but everything was fresh. We couldn’t eat it all, so we brought home some leftovers for steak and eggs for me and steak salad for Donna.

Thursday morning it was time to leave Rupert. Our first stop was the dump station in town. I had filled our fresh water tank before we left the Elk’s Lodge and after dumping, we hit the road with empty holding tanks. Our route had us heading south on I-84. We turned off onto ID81 to take a shortcut into Utah where we would pick up UT30 west.

As soon as I hit the exit ramp, I sensed trouble. I saw a line of vehicles stopped on the overpass and the truck ahead of us was stopped at the top of the exit, waiting for traffic to clear. Once we were stopped, I could see the source of the hold-up. A tractor-trailer rig with an over-sized flat bed trailer failed to make the turn onto the northbound on-ramp. The extra-long trailer was hung up on the concrete barrier. I feared we would be stuck for a while before we could continue. The thing was, the direction we wanted to go was opposite of the trapped trailer.

A couple of gentle toots of the horn got the attention of the trucker in front of us. He saw I was indicating a right turn. He was able to move forward and left enough for us to squeeze by. Trouble no more, we were on our way. The shortcut on ID81 was a good choice. There was very little traffic – we only saw a few cars every 10 minutes or so. The speed limit was 65mph, so we weren’t going any slower than we would have traveled down the interstate. The road surface was good. The only downside was the narrow road with little to no shoulder.

The long drive southwest on UT30 had similar road conditions with even fewer cars along the way. We’d left the Idaho farm country behind and were driving through a mostly barren landscape. There weren’t any real towns – just a few clusters of houses in a place called Rosette – they even had a post office there. Eventually we crossed the border into northeast Nevada and found the town of Montello. No stoplights in Montello. The road designation changed at the border to NV233.

We finally hit I-80 and headed southwest toward West Wendover. A few miles down the interstate, I heard a loud bang – it sounded like something had hit under the front of the coach. I checked the side mirrors to see if there was anything in the road and didn’t find anything. Then Donna said, “We need to pull over – I can see a basement door open.” She was looking at the driver’s side view mirror and from her vantage point, she could see something that wasn’t in my view.

I stopped on the shoulder and walked around the front of the coach. What I saw qualifies as ugly. It wasn’t a compartment door she was seeing. It was the front body panel mounted under the driver’s seat from the front of the coach to just behind the front wheel well. I looked it over and found the rear bracing of this panel was bonded with a type of epoxy to two braces in front of the wheel. At the front of the panel, it folds toward the center of the coach at 90 degrees and has four rivets holding the front of the panel.

We heard a noise earlier on ID81 but didn’t see anything out of order. I thought the sound may have come from a farmhouse we were passing at the time. In hindsight, I think the bonded braces broke free there. This allowed the panel to flex back and forth from airflow and on the interstate, the rivets gave way. Now the panel was slightly bent away from the coach and would flap in the wind until it completely broke off.

I thought I could secure it well enough with duct tape and gave that a shot. We got back on the interstate and I kept our speed at 55-60 mph. It held for about four miles, then went bang again. I pulled over and this time, I opened the front generator compartment, cleaned the bulkhead there with rubbing alcohol and ran the duct tape around the front edge of the panel with the tape adhering to the bulkhead. This seemed more secure but it only held for about another four miles. This was getting real ugly.

I didn’t like working on the driver’s side of the coach on the interstate shoulder. Fortunately, the traffic was light and most drivers moved out of the right lane giving me plenty of room. But at one point, I looked up to see a car traveling at about 80 mph barreling right past me about two feet away!

I knew I had to do something besides duct tape. I rummaged around and found two small screws. I put them into the rivet holes – holes in the panel no longer lined up with the holes in the bulkhead, but I was able to pound them in with a hammer. Then I duct-taped over the screw heads to hold them in place and re-taped the panel.

Back on the road this held. We stopped at the Pilot-Flying J in West Wendover where I topped up the tank with 69 gallons of diesel at $4.01/gallon! Gulp, $276 worth of fuel brings our fuel costs to about $500 since we left Mount Vernon, Washington. This Biden economy is killing us.

Donna bought another roll of duct tape at the travel center and we continued east into Wendover, Utah. Our short run in Nevada was done and we went east on I-80 to Utah exit 4 where Donna found a boondocking spot on BLM public land off Leppy Pass Road.

I added another screw to my temporary fix and re-taped it.

We saw a few other RVs in the area but we were spaced well apart. We were at an elevation of about 4,300 feet above sea level. I never realized the Bonneville Salt Flats had this much elevation – it definitely is enough to affect the power of naturally aspirated engines. I disconnected the truck and we took a drive out to the Bonneville Salt Flats Speedway area. The speedway was first used in 1912 for timed top speed events. While we were there, an organization was preparing the course for a motorcycle speed event. There was great movie about a motorcycle at Bonneville called The World’s Fastest Indian made in 2005 – it’s a story based on the life of New Zealander Burt Munro starring Anthony Hopkins

They used to have a straight track nine miles long with a black stripe for Speed Week – a week-long event to set speed records sponsored by the Southern California Timing Association (SCTA). Speed Week was canceled in 2014 and 2015 due to poor conditions from heavy rain. Mud washed over much of the flats. Between the leaching of salt into the aquifer and mining operations, the amount of salt has gone down greatly over the last 50 years. Where the salt surface was once more than two feet thick, it’s now only about two inches thick and the track is less than three miles long. The speed track is no longer striped, they use flags and markers for the course.

When we returned to the coach, I re-hooked the truck to the coach. Another coach came in and set up about 100 yards from us. At first it looked like they were going to stop right next to us. Really? It’s wide open here on the flats.

Friday morning we found a couple others had pulled in during the night – SUVs with people presumably sleeping inside. We pulled out and drove east on I-80 for 80 miles and hit UT138 south. This route bypassed Tooele (pronounced TOO-illa) and had very little traffic. I was a little worried as most of the route had no shoulder and if my temporary panel repair broke, I had no place to stop. We made it without incident and stopped for the day at Fort Deseret State Park. It’s a quiet place to dry-camp for the night, but’s it’s the strangest state park we’ve ever encountered, I wrote about when we stayed here last year.

Saturday morning we continued south on UT257 which became UT129 at Milford, then UT21 at Minersville. We drove through the town of Beaver and found I-15 south there. The interstate immediately climbed and we reach the summit at 6,500 feet above sea level.

We left I-15 shortly and my repair was still holding up. We took UT20 which was a steep climb up 7% grades to the summit 7,920 feet above sea level. The descent down the east side is even steeper at an average grade of 8%. We found Paradise RV Park a few miles north of Panguitch, Utah. It’s a nice RV park with very low rates and no real amenities. Donna met the neighbors who’ve been coming here for years. They said over the last few years the ownership became absentee, only coming around to collect fees and the place is slowly deteriorating, though still pleasant. We paid $134 for a week including tax and might extend over the Labor Day weekend.

Donna grilled chicken wings, thighs and drumsticks for dinner and served it with sauteed veggies we found at the local grocery. We also bought some veggies and great watermelon from a roadside stand in town. The couple operating the stand were full-time RVers for 13 years before settling near here and they grow their own vegetables which they sell.

We’re near Bryce Canyon and plan to explore this week. The temperature reached the mid-80s today and is supposed to get there again tomorrow before we have a cooling trend with rain probable on Tuesday and Wednesday. We are finally away from the smoke and have decent air quality after breathing wildfire smoke since early July.

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