From Dad's letters to his parent's.
We thought at first of cutting our stay there (San Diego) short and the same in Kingman so we could go up maybe as far as Yellowstone. Now the tendency is to spend a more leisurely week around Grand Canyon and interesting place in Arizona. Right now we plan to arrive there Sunday evening June 26th and leave either Wednesday about 3pm or Thursday, probably the latter. We will stay a day in Kingman and then just travel and camp.
We have been thinking about the trip and decided not to rush as much as usual coming to Calif. Thus we will take more than the usual 48 hours and arrive there during the afternoon on Monday. Another reason for this is that we do not want to cross the California desert in the late afternoon as we have done before. We will stop in Tuscon or Uma and rest up and clean up then drive on in the morning later.
We like our new truck (the 1960 IH). It has gone over 1000 miles now. Today we tried pulling the trailer with it and that is no problem at all. There sure is lots of room in it. (It appears that the Arizona trip was the first long trip with that IH.)
I guess it is time to tell you a little about our trip home. The first night we camped at the Salton Sea. They had some developed campgrounds but travelors with dachshunds were not eligible for these so we went further down the beach. There were a lot of four or five inch fish washed on the beach and they did not smell so good. It was pretty hot but not too bad when we got there pretty late in the evening. We just parked and slept and got up at sunrise. Quite a few campers and fishermen with motor boats.
The new cooler came in handy on the way to Dorothy and Ted's. We spent Saturday evening and Sunday there just loafing. Sunday afternoon we took a 16 mile ride up into the Hualapai Mts. It was about a 4000 foot climb and the car had to go in low part way. When we got back Dorothy said they were selling their trailer for $300 and we said we would liked to have known about it. It turned out they had not closed the deal although they had turned the trailer over to the dealer who was goin to buy it and he in turn had loaned it to some folks to use while their new trailer was being delivered. After a lot of talk we decided to leave our trailer there for the dealer (who was out of town and couldn't be reached for his opinion on it) and take Ted's. Well, it was parked up on top of that same mountain so we hauled ours up there, moved the folks there out of Ted's and into ours – which didn't please them too much, especially having no notice – and we brought Ted's down the Mt. We put my license on Ted's trailer since it had none and drove it to Texas. It has two double beds and other features which are quite an improvement over ours. It is two fee longer and something which I noticed particularly, it seems to be better streamlined so that we get 2 ½ miles per gallon more than we did with our old one. (about13 mpg now at 60mph with a full load on mountain roads.)
From Dorothy's we went to Hoover dam and rode around Las Vegas a little. (It was just 100 degrees when we were there in late afternoon.) At Hoover we went 40 miles off the track to visit Temple Bar, a fishing area. Here we rented a boat for an hour and had a nice ride on an interesting part of Lake Mead. We went through the Valley of Fire that evening and camped at Overton Beach on the Lake. Had a good place for an evening and early morning swim.
In Utah we had lots of fruit. I particularly enjoyed one stand where we bought a quart of black cherries which wer good and cold. We stopped in Cedar City for a restaurant lunch and then went to see the Cedar Breaks, a colorful canyon area 10,000 ft hight. That night we stopped about 3pm and camped at Aspen Mirror Lake, a very small lake which we walked around. It really got cold there that night. It had been 36 degrees some nights.
The next morning in Bryce canyon everybody wanted to walk down one of the trails. Coming back was quite a hike and that was enough climbing for everybody. From there we rode down into Zion canyon and walked around a little. We had to come back out the same way. The kids got a lot out of this trip. Each one insisted upon having a map and following just where we went. Bryan even drew his own maps.
The night before going to the Grand Canyon we camped at Jacobs Lake which does not have lake after all. We saw the north rim from two places. One of the roads was under repair and we missed one good view. It was very nice riding through the Canyon park area in the early morning. We saw a number of different wild animals.
Camping isn't too rough when you have two double beds in a trailer, food in the ice box, gas to cook on, cupboards for food and clothes, as much space as we had in the car and trailer and electric and gas lights.