July 14
We continued on to Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area which spans the desert in southern Wyoming and Flaming Gorge and Red Canyon in northeastern Utah. In this are the canyon’s walls are brick red and several thousand feet deep. The Green River carved out this canyon. A dam was built to store the river’s water, creating Flaming Gorge Reservoir, a popular area for boaters and fisherman.
We saw that large areas of the juniper pine forest had once burned leaving stark, gray tree trunks on the slopes all around. We arrived at our campsite at Mustang Ridge after 151 miles and 2 ¾ hours. As we were out of some essentials we headed to the nearest town of Dutch John to do some quick shopping. We couldn’t believe the conditions in the town. It is truly a depressed and depressing place. The people all around were definitely “simple”. At one of the only two convenience stores, one loaf of bread, due to expire the next day, was on the shelf. The cashier offered to check for more bread in the back and returned with a loaf that expired a full week ago. After Esther pointed this out to her she seemed almost indignant. We think she hoped we wouldn’t notice the date. At $5 a loaf we left bread-less. The whole town and experience left us with bad vibes.
Back at the campground we had to listen to our neighbor’s interesting music selection while his small kids ran around the woods behind our sites with BB guns, shooting at and killing lizards. We had planned for three nights here to possibly do some rafting on the beautiful Green River south of the dam. We also wanted to hike, especially on the Little Hole National Recreation Trail that parallels the river for seven miles. However, we decided to leave the next morning and forfeit the remaining two nights’ payment.
The Davids' Cross-Country Trip 