Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area, Utah - June 3rd to 5th, 2021
You don't have to see everything about an area to thoroughly enjoy it. Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area was no exception. Although we only saw a small fraction of the recreational area, we had a wonderful time.
After having a picnic in Ashley Valley Community Park in Vernal, Utah, we headed north on US 191 to the Flaming Gorge Dam. It was a scenic drive, well, except for the large phosphate strip mining.
The dam is impressive. It is over 500 feet tall, creating the Flaming Gorge Reservoir which stretches 91 miles of the swollen Green River to the north, most of which is in Wyoming. This forms the Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area for people to enjoy boating, fishing, and hiking. We continued on to the small town of Dutch John in search of ice cream. There are only two stores in town, the Dutch John Resort at Flaming Gorge and Trout Creek Flies. We walked into Trout Creek Flies expecting to only find ice cream novelties in the freezer case. To our surprise they had soft serve ice cream, with waffle cones as an extra bonus. Score!
Our destination for the next two nights was at Red Canyon Campground, just 16 miles back west from Dutch John, off of highway 44. The campground is on the south rim of Flaming Gorge, next to the Red Canyon Visitor Center. We cannot see down into the gorge from our campsite, but the rim is just a short walk away, about 100 feet. The Canyon Rim Trail passes right by our site. Most of the camp sites have some shade from the scatter of pine trees. When we arrived in the evening, the only shade at our site was about 50 feet from our van, so we set up our camp chairs and camping table there for preparing our dinner. We tried to minimize the trips back and forth to the van, but always seemed to forget something. We got our steps in for the day. The shade with a view was worth it, though.
The vault toilet in the campground was the smallest we've ever seen. There was a men's side and a women's side. The door on the women's side did not close all the way and would not lock, but Right Buddy (RB) did not worry about someone walking in on her because her body was in the way of the door opening much at all.
The next day was very relaxing. We went for a short hike in the morning followed by a short bike ride in the afternoon.
While we ate our breakfast outside, we watched the people walk and cycle by on the Canyon Rim Trail. The lovely couple from Texas in the neighboring camp site generously offered us their extra water. The campground had notified us earlier that they were having trouble turning the water on for the season. However, our neighbors had not received the notification that the water was successfully turned on the night before. We do appreciate their nice gesture all the same. After chatting with them for a little while, we parted ways.
For our morning hike, we headed down the Canyon Rim Trail. For the first mile and a half, the trail follows the canyon rim, hence the name of the trail, with overlooks every now and then. The trail then veers away from the canyon and into sparsely populated woods with a variety of wildflowers in the sunny spots.The trail goes by a couple of other campgrounds and a side trail that leads over to the Red Canyon Lodge. The trail ends at the Greendale Overlook on highway 44, but we did not go that far. We turned around after hiking for an hour. Our total hike, hike #14 of our 52 Hike Challenge was 4.9 miles with an elevation gain of 404 feet in two hours.
After a leisurely lunch back at our camp site, we hopped on our bikes to pedal back down Red Canyon Road. Our first stop was at West Green Lake to check it out. Just as we were turning into the parking lot for the lake, RB spotted a group of big horn sheep laying in the shade of a tree about 30 yards from the road. While she was snapping off pictures, they all got up and started walking our way. That was our cue to move on.
Our next stop was the Red Canyon Lodge in search of ice cream, our true motivation for the short bike ride. Sure enough, they had a couple of flavors of hand-dipped ice cream, moosetracks and huckleberry. We both chose huckleberry, and so did the gentleman that came in behind us. While we were waiting for our ice cream, we had a lovely conversation with the gentleman. He and his wife were staying at a bed and breakfast on a ranch nearby for a week. They were going on different hikes in the area each day. The huckleberry ice cream hit the spot, a good choice.
Red Canyon Lodge sits on Green Lake. They have small boat rentals along with cabins near the lake. We strolled down to the lake to take in the view that was nicely reflecting off the surface of the water.
Our final stop was the Red Canyon Visitor Center. The sheep were still hanging out near West Green Lake as we passed by on our way back to the visitor center. From the visitor center, there is a short nature trail out to a point with a gorgeous view of the canyon in both directions. We didn't stay long because a thunderstorm was blowing in. We hustled back to our campsite to take down our Moon Shade that we had left out to shade our van to keep it from heating up in the sun. After the storm blew over, we made dinner outside.
From our camp site, the trees blocked our view of the sunset, so we grabbed our small stadium seats (paid link) and headed over to the overlook by the visitor center to enjoy the sun set. We hung out on the point for about an hour, enjoying the view. While we were sitting there, we heard wings flapping. We looked up to see about a hundred crows all flying as a group in the same direction over our heads. It seemed like such a strange sight as they all flew off into the distance together.
After setting our alarm for the morning, we turned in early. The next day was a long driving day and we didn't have campground reservations for the next three nights. Our destination? Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. After spending a relaxing time at our first two stops for the season, we were ready to do some serious sight-seeing.
Check out our related video: Flaming Gorge National Recreational Area, Utah
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