Ballard RV Park, Thompson, Utah

 

Tuesday turned out to be a good weather day for travel but we weren’t sure where we were going from Provo. More rain was in the forecast and we didn’t want to boondock in the mud in Moab so I called around and found that Ballard RV Park, about 35 miles north in Thompson, had a vacancy for two nights. I swear I remember taking photos of our site there but they don’t seem to be on either camera card so not sure what happened. It’s just a gravel lot and the sites are fairly close but we were happy to have a place to wait out the rain. Plus they have two very nice washers and two dryers that are free to use, and we were in need of doing some laundry.

It did rain most of the night and was supposed to again on Wednesday, but it turned out to be a fairly nice day. After laundry we took a drive a few miles up Thompson Canyon Rd, just behind the RV park, to check out some rock art and a ghost town in beautiful Sego Canyon.

Three types of rock art are found here. This is a Ute panel which has unfortunately been vandalized.

Fremont style, also vandalized.

And our favorite, and most unusual, Barrier Canyon style.

From the pictographs it’s about a half mile to a fork in the road, with a right turn leading to an old cemetery.

Another mile farther takes you to the ghost town of Sego, a coal mining town established in the 1890s and in operation of some sort or another until 1947. The only building still standing is the former American Fuel Company Store.

More decay. This wooden boarding house did not hold up as well as the company store. I read that it collapsed in 2011.

Bridge over a wash.

Jim tried to find something on this old car to identify its make but had no luck.

This is just a beautiful area, and we wished it hadn’t been so wet and muddy in the canyons, as you could hike for miles. Instead we walked on the dirt road and found some higher ground that was dry. I think we only saw three or four cars all afternoon.

It definitely lifted our spirits being back in one of our favorite parts of the country. Jim was especially happy to be out of the trees.

Our plan was to move on to Moab on Thursday but it began raining during the night and was a steady rain all morning. Not to mention that it was cold. Jim called the office and they said we could stay another night, so by noon when the rain was still pouring down, we decided to drive down to Moab for lunch and a visit to the recreation center. By the time we got there the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing.

We had a fantastic meal at Arches Thai, a belated celebration of our wedding anniversary which was actually on Tuesday. After our workout, as we were driving back to the RV park, I noticed there were only a couple cars in line at the entrance booth to Arches National Park so we decided to drive in since we had not been there in many years.

We drove to the Windows section and walked the mile loop trail. We forgot that Arches is so spectacular, and were really glad we decided to make a brief stop there.

On our way home we drove down the three roads north of Moab where we have camped previously to scope things out. With all the rain they were rutted and muddy, so we decided to skip Moab this time around and go directly to Virgin, where it was predicted to be much warmer and dry. But that’s for the next post…