Labor Day: I-15 Jam/Back From Bryce/The towing Olympics
Took a weekend jaunt down to Bryce. On the way back last night, I saw a pretty mean traffic jam in northbound lanes approaching Nephi. Fortunately, I had done a little research on the web and read about some construction in the area. So we stayed off I-15 until Nephi. I'm interested if anyone on the board got caught in the jam; how long was it? It extended as far as I could south of Nephi...
On the return, we took the 'backest' of the back routes from Bryce. Due north through Antimony, by Otter Creek Res, through Koosharem, then connecting to the route back from Capitol Reef (though going through Salina and Gunnison rather than cutting over to Scipio as I usually do). Anyone else taken this route? It's all paved now (a lot of maps show at least some sections south of Antimony as unpaved). It's only marginally slower than other routes. And there is almost zero traffic, at least until you hit UT24.
It seemed like every vehicle I did see was either an obvious rental or a huge truck/SUV towing monstrous loads. I had hopes that higher gas prices would start curbing this towing nonesense. But they were out in full force over the weekend. ATV's are eventually going to destroy most of the public lands in this state and drive those us interested in quieter recreation towards ever more crowded refuges, I'm afraid. Just by the numbers. It's really rather embarrassing when I see all the foreign visitors to Bryce and consider what they're being exposed to when they drive around this incomparably beautiful state--emobodiments of the worst American redneck stereotypes of driving hugely overconsumptive vehicles.
