Our target after leaving Yosemite’s East Gate was a Love’s gas station in Tonopah, Nevada. That’s right, we dream big over here in the Keyser RV! Based on a whopping two Google reviews, this particular Love’s seemed like an above average truck stop gas station to spend the night. It also seemed like a reasonable distance for us to travel before we got too tired to drive. With that said, I’m still a bit salty that we passed up those beautiful Forest Service campgrounds just east of Yosemite. Oh well, at least we shaved a few hours off the next day’s drive to Springdale, Utah, our stop for the next two days, right outside the gate to Zion National Park.
After a night of listening to people input their Love’s loyalty card numbers (beep beep beep) and random car alarms going off (beep beep beep but louder), it was time to hit the road, although not before shopping at the Love’s market. While I was tempted to get some chrome trimmed mud flaps for the RV, all we got was a bottle of ketchup.
After a couple of hours driving through the southern Nevada desert, dodging random cows on the open range, we decided to stop for breakfast at a highway pullout surrounded by Joshua Trees, pretty cool! When we can, we try to stop for our road meals at places with a nice view, and this one most certainly didn’t disappoint.
Taking a quick walk around the RV I noticed a letter pinned underneath a rock and couldn’t help but take a look. It seemed to be written by a young person and it was addressed to Aliens, it was at this point that I remember we were pretty much driving through Area 51. Not wanting to be accused of interrupting inter-species communications I carefully put the letter back in the envelope and under the rock I found it under, but not before taking a picture.
We wanted to break up the roughly six and half hour drive to Springdale so decided to stop at the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge for lunch and a quick walk. This is a pretty interesting area, it’s fed by underground springs that create a narrow sliver of fertile land in the middle of the desert.
Before we got there we just had to make a detour for what we thought might be a life altering event. We drove past a questionable looking Quonset hut on the outskirts of a little town named Cold Springs that was labeled “Alien Research Facility”, and can you believe it, it was open to the public. We made an aggressive and immediate U-turn. Expecting to finally get answers to some very meaningful questions, we walked in with a sense of wonder and raised pulses. We walked out with no answers and several $10 alien themed keychains. We were tourist trapped! Who could have expected such a thing?!
Eventually we did make it to the wildlife refuge, which of course was closed, but that was fine, all that meant was we were the only ones in the parking lot and got to take a nice walk around the ponds by ourselves (in the 97 degree heat!). We then drove a few minutes down the road and parked at another pullout overlooking one of the larger lakes in the refuge where we had lunch.
After several more hours of driving we pulled into our RV resort in Springdale. Our spot was in the back of the resort, right along the river and just under the red hued walls of the nearby mountain side. Springdale seemed like a nice little town which clearly caters to the throngs of tourists visiting Zion National Park, which was just a quick shuttle ride from our RV resort.
As a bonus to this stop, we were also meeting up with our good friends from back home, Jeanette and Stu, who are on their own Utah National Parks tour. We were going to visit Zion together the next day, but since they were also in town already, they joined us for a Lana prepared dinner with all the right macros, enjoyed next to our own little river.
Bonus Pictures
