Kevin – Tuesday. We start the day early so we can get to Salt Lake before midnight (remember that). We pack up the trailer for its mothball week and prepare to head out. Denny looks at me and sweetly asks, ‘Don’t you really want to see the ruts in Guernsey?’ Dang it. Yes, I do. And, secretly, I suppose she does too. So we haul the RV a few miles south to a rest stop where we park it temporarily, then together we take the little car into Guernsey (15 miles one way).
Guernsey Deep Ruts: If you’ve never seen a picture of this section, I don’t know what to say. You may live under a rock. This is a hilly section where the river’s course forced the route up onto these soft limestone and sandstone bluffs. The wagon wheels and the draft animal hooves ground the rock to powder and the subsequent years of wind and rain have washed the soil away. What’s left is a ‘slot’ of up to five feet deep and six feet wide cut into the rock. It wasn’t this deep in 1847 as our people passed by, but by the 1860’s? Yeah, it was getting deep by then.
After hiking the hills and making a couple of videos, Denny and I head back to the rest stop, retrieve the RV and drive up to Glendo. The RV and truck get parked in the storage area, switches double checked and the doors locked.
Our route west to Salt Lake takes us through Casper, then Martin’s Cove – a drive-by preview of our future route. Arriving at the Cove before 5 PM, we decide to pop in and speak with President Goates and his wife. We want to confirm our plans so’s not to interfere with any youth trek event and to make sure we have somewhere to park the RV for the few days we expect to be in/near the LDS Church properties.
Then, at 6 PM, we get back on the road to Salt Lake arriving at home at 12:30 AM.
We will take a short hiatus from our blogging. See you on the other side.
