Wind and Rain and SNOW!

The wind started to blow shortly after we got up this morning. Fortunately, it died down when it started to rain. We stopped at the Pilot Truck Stop in Green River and refilled our diesel tank. Diesel here in Utah was $3.979, eight cents a gallon higher than we last purchased it in New Mexico.

We headed west on I-70, which took us through the eastern part of the Capitol Reef. This "wrinkle" in the earth is quite spectacular -- even through the rain.

One of these days we're going to have to detour to the Capital Reef National Park Headquarters and take another look at the interesting geology of this relatively unknown park.

We spent almost the entire day at pretty high altitude. I think the highest we were was a little over 8000 feet.

This is Ghost Rock (or is it the one on the other side of the highway?) Rest Area where we took a short break. This area has rock with a lot of grey and whites in it.

Interspersed with more of the red sandstone rock. This area looks like sand dunes, but they are solid rock...

Then you run into areas that have bands of both. This is near what was labeled the Salt Wash.

 

It continued to rain. Then Forry said the rain was beginning to look "soft" and it started clumping on the windshield...

We could see it piling up along the edge of the road -- and on the windshield! (The brilliant blue is the tint on the top of the windshield.)

We drove through a good twenty miles of this nasty stuff before it finally turned to rain. You could see it beginning to stick on the mountainsides. At least it wasn't sticking on the road yet.

We cut over on State Highway 50 when we got to Salina and connected with Interstate 15 near Nephi. That took us north to the KOA at Provo/Springville. This is the largest campground we've been in for a while with over 900 sites. We got a nice pull-through site and quickly set up the electricity and water. As fast as I worked, I was still soaked when I got back inside -- water was just pouring off of Auntie Violet's roof. It rained steadily for about another hour before it finally tapered off.

After we took a quick nap and got warmed up (first thing Forry did was plug in our little electric heater!) and the rain stopped, this is what we saw when we looked out the windows --

 

When we listened to the news tonight, we heard that this was the front-runner of an unexpected very severe storm that is heading for the Midwest and even further east. The weather people are very concerned that it will be causing multiple tornadoes as it makes it way east.