Torrey, Utah: We spent the last two days doing a leisurely drive south from western Wyoming. Traffic south of SLC was a mess, due to construction. We’re here to meet relatives and friends who are flying in from the coast. They arrive tomorrow.
Our group of 7 will spend the next two weeks touring several of the great national parks of UT and northern AZ, driving around in our truck-pulled 5th wheel trailer (pix here) plus a couple of rented class C motor homes. For those who wouldn’t know a class C from a vasectomy, those are the smaller motor homes which have the front end of a van as their cab and the RV is built on behind that. You’ll see them rented by Cruise America and El Monte Rents, among others.
Torrey is the base camp for Capitol Reef National Park, one of the lesser known NPs. This part of UT is largely empty, with the occasional small Mormon farm town looking much as it did in the 1950s when I first toured this country with my parents in a ‘41 Chevrolet.
Most of Utah’s population lives along the I-15 corridor between Logan and Provo, I’d guess 85% of the total. That region is modern and densely populated, compared to most of the mountain west. Get beyond that area and population density drops off dramatically.
When you’re traveling by auto in the interior west and you see various sized irrigation canals in a region you can be pretty sure you’re in an area settled by Mormons. They were fantastic canal builders, maybe better than the Israelis as the Mormons did it all with the muscle power of men and animals. Their very hard work made this dry land bloom, not much grows here without irrigation.
