Rapsure Blog

For the vacation in 2011 which we went on in May we went down the San Rafel Swell about eight miles north of Goblin Valley. The area is near the Temple Mountain wash and that is where we spent half of the vacation. Now a family vacation wouldn't be a vacation without some major event that had to occur. On the way down to where we were camping for the first few days we had a blowout on one of the trailer tires. Tire wells on camper trailers are not built strong enough to withstand the abuse that a blown tire causes. So with the blowout came the damage and we lost a box of soda, and a bag of potatoes that were set inside the storage compartment below one of the tables seats.

Now if the tire blowout wasn't enough for excitement the truck that was pulling the trailer started to blow oil out of the dipstick. Oil coming out of the dipstick is a bad thing because then you run out of oil rather quickly and before the oil runs out it begins to stay too hot. Oil that is too hot doesn't lube the best and doesn't maintain pressure in the system. Not only was the oil blowing out of the dipstick but when we got home it was discovered that the engine was also consuming coolant. To hopefully fix this the intake manifold was taken off and machined to match the head surfaces. Machining the manifold fixed the oil burning that had been going on for the past five years since the rebuild but alas the head is fractured.

The more exciting stuff though is what we had fun doing during the vacation. We went to Goblin Valley for one of the afternoons and the children ran around and played on the Goblins. We wanted to take showers and when we were done playing on the Goblins we took showers at the state park campground. We got in trouble for that and ended up paying for the use of the showers. I'm still happy that I had taken a shower and felt nice and clean. We could have used the water from the trailer but then we have to worry about how much is the storage tanks and how much water we actually have to use.

One of the adventures of the vacation was walking the Little Wild Horse trail. Now my sister brought her two young children with and they only barely made it out after much convincing. Now it really isn't possible to carry a three year old child for five of the eight miles. So the oldest child just simply had to walk the trail. The youngest I help carry out of the canyon which I didn't mind. An eight mile hike is a very long hike for children and for those who are out of shape.

An rather rare event did occur in the desert while we were camped near Temple Mountain. There was a strong storm system that came through on the day that we left and there was enough rain that it filled the washes with water. I thought it was a very cool thing to observe. So since there was so much rain I had to take pictures with the desert in bloom. During the vacation there was either wind or rain the entire time.

Once we moved down to Capitol Reef National Park the rain and the cool was quite intense for the middle of May. On the mountain there was snow and a lot of snow. Down lower in the park there were periods of heavy rain and consistent coolness. Although the weather was not cooperating with me I still went on my big long bicycle ride in Capitol Reef. The ride took me down through South Draw road. Typical of me I rode it backwards the more difficult direction. If you look at the the recommended direction on the National Park Services website they recommend going down from the Pleasant Creek campground on Boulder Mountain. I started from the park and rode on the dirt road up to the campground and back down the paved road. The ride was 54 miles from my bike computer which is two more miles than what the NPS website says. The ride ended up giving me tendonosis. While I was on the bike ride the others went and checked out the tanks and hyroglyphs.