Friday 15 June

We’d got into a really well-practised routine by now and would’ve been congratulating ourselves on being away by about 9.15am despite not waking up until 8am. Unfortunately when we’d taken most of the luggage down to the car we realised that we couldn’t find Anne’s car key and Les had left his in the room. There was a bit of a hiatus while Les went and got his key and Anne finally found hers on the third search of one of the rucksacks.

A fairly straightforward day driving - about 170 miles. We just negotiated our way quite easily onto the I-80 and were commenting on the fact that we were now driving on roads that we’d seen from the light-rail train over the last two days, when we realised that we’d forgotten to put any fuel in. We stayed on the I-80 for a bit and pulled off at Summit Park where we found a petrol station with a nice small cafe/restaurant. It seemed a shame to only have coffee and we had a little trouble convincing the Peruvian couple running it that this was all we wanted. They were very nice however and the lady was keen to talk about the Royal Wedding.

We carried on the I-80 and then down the US 40 through Heber City where we stopped to look at the Heritage Railway. Further along the US 40 we stopped at the Visitor Centre for Strawberry Reservoir and decided to drive down to the main Marina where we went into the cafe and had an earlyish lunch. We both had a ‘fish sandwich’. Basically this is two pieces of battered fish in a burger bun, served of course with fries. It was strange because the place was empty when we went in but completely full when we came out. Nobody was eating on the verandah with its lovely view over the reservoir and marina, presumably because there was a 25mph wind blowing.

Earlier on we’d seen a temporary road sign advising drivers not to report wildfires (presumably because the emergency services know all about them) and not to stop in smoke areas. As we drove on the smoke and the smell from the wildfire became more obvious. Also the temperature was slowly increasing although probably not because of the wildfire. We couldn’t help thinking that the strong winds must be making the fires much more difficult to control.

We didn’t stop again until Starvation Reservoir just before Duchesne. By this time we were away from the hills and it was fairly quick going along the 191/40 to Vernal. Roosevelt was the biggest town - very strung out. Eventually got to the Comfort Inn at Vernal just before 4pm.

You can still see smoke in the air although we appear to be moving away from the fire.

Ate in our room - the food from Harmons in Salt Lake City was nicer than we’ve had from anywhere. The wifi connection was really good so we watched an old Midsomer Murders.