Great Alaskan Road Trip: Week 2 Roundup

Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end.  Here’s where we are overall:

• Total Miles driven: 1267
• Total days on the road: 11
• Total Miles hiked: 17.5

Here are some interesting stats for this week:

• Fuel stops: 1 (diesel: $4.02 / gallon in Blanding, UT)
• Technical issues:  2  (Kevin broke the powercord for his laptop, I forgot to put the grate on when cooking and scorched the stovetop)
• National Park Service sites visited: 3 (Natural Bridges NM, Canyonlands, Arches)
• Bighorn Sheep sighted: 1 (in Canyonlands)
• Bears sighted: 0 (still hoping)
• Semi Trucks pulling oversized covered wagons: 1 (no photo, sadly)

We weren’t planning on cooking much inside the van on this trip.  Kevin grilled some amazing steaks the other night, and we’ve also gone to restaurants for dinner twice this past week.  But for the most part we have been eating simple dinners (some bread, some cheese, olives) or sandwiches at our campsite(s).  But on Wednesday night I got ambitious and decided to make a fancy dinner (i.e. boil pasta).
I started up the stove no problem and put the stockpot on the burner.  But I forgot that we had stowed the grate that holds the pans up off the fire (it rattled when we drove).  After a while, we could smell something slightly burnt but we chalked it up to using the stockpot for the first time.  Only when I pulled the pot off the stove did we see the full extent of the damage.

Yep, the surface is scorched and I kinda melted the sticker near the knobs.  I will definitely remember to put on the grate next time!  But at least it’s not broken, and the pasta tasted just fine.

Of course, Kevin’s laptop’s broken power cord issue was completely MacGuyver-able.  Nothing that a little duct tape couldn’t fix.

We are now all checked in at Utah Lake State Park.  It’s a nice place and the campsites are well spaced out so you aren’t on top of your neighbor.  Utah Lake is pretty large -- there’s a marina here, with quite a few sailboats (no catamarans, though).  We went for a walk and I took a few photos of the lake, but then it started looking like rain and we realized we had left all the “hatches” open on the van.  So we had to hurry back to make sure the inside of the van didn’t get wet.  You’d think we’d know better by now, but some things never change.