Jug Hollow Dispersed Camping

We made our way down US-191 from Wyoming into Utah, bounced our way through Jug Hollow Road into the peninsula overlooking Flaming Gorge Reservoir. We chose a campsite at the coordinates 40.98756,-109.55877, about 5.5 miles from the highway. The road going in was a bit rough and washboarded, but I would not recommend driving on it if it has recently rained. We left 2 days after a storm, and there was evidence of the difficulty many others had incurred due to the slickness of the bentonite clay.

This area is part of the Ashley National Forest, run by the US Dept of Agriculture. Stays are limited to a maximum of 16 days. Pack-it-in, pack-it-out, no trash receptacle, no fresh water or dump station. We saw many boats and kayakers enjoying the reservoir, but it was colder than we’d like, not to mention the wind strength.

About those winds... they can be quite punishing. Late afternoon gusts occurred almost daily for an hour or two, but we were awakened one morning at 4:00am thinking the motorhome was going to blow over. We pulled the slides in and hunkered down for a couple hours until it let up.

There are marinas in the distance on the other side of the lake. We watched the lights twinkling late into most every night. There was a boat parade that Saturday night, followed by fireworks.

Our internet with T-Mobile worked great when we got there, but the next day, we had no download speed at all. A call to their customer service found the tower was experiencing issues and a trouble ticket had already been submitted, but they had no estimated time of completion to get the service running again. It never did work well after that.

On day two, as we drove around seeing if we’d like to move to another spot, we encountered a herd of pronghorn grazing the flats, and another couple raced past us on our return. They move much faster than I thought anything could, as they are the fastest land mammal in the country. It was still nice to see them up close.

From our site, we would watch the clouds tumble and roll over the mountains. We also saw a large patch of snow high above. The rain we experienced was met with a dusting of snow up there. The sunsets were pretty fine, but one particular sunrise after the storm was more intense than any I’ve seen before.

Being that we stayed through the Labor Day holiday, the entire area was a little busy, but there were still spaces available. We would walk the road on occasion and meet some of the others staying, everyone having an enjoyable time despite the strong winds.

After driving around the area, we saw many considerably more private campsites that I would choose to stay next time more so than here. They would have easier access, but they would not be on the water. I’m not saying we didn’t enjoy the stay, but I would be wary of being stuck after a storm and not being able to get out. If the forecast was clear with calm to no wind, I’d gladly come back again.

I didn’t sleep well last night, which could explain my impatience and crankiness this morning as many attempts to figure out how to network our computers kept resulting in more failures. I had Al call MacsTech in the nearby town. Eric was happy to help, but asked to call us back once he was finished with his current project. He accessed our computers remotely and got them successfully networked! I am SO GRATEFUL! Now I still need to move my files over before this one dies on me. If I could get this old one fixed, I gladly would have spent more than I paid for the new one to do so, but the cheap plastic housing is discontinued and cannot be repaired.

After the computer stuff, we went for a drive on some forestry roads, meandered around lots of cows, went through a couple old train tunnels, then made pizza for dinner. Another motorhome invaded our private little spot about an hour after dark. They are fellow Wisconsinites heading back to the homeland in the morning, so who am I to turn them away? Maybe we will chat with them a bit tomorrow before they head out.

Al says that it was a so so day. He knows it could have gone better if he would have been more motivated to get things done and more willing to talk freely, but he is so grateful the computers are all talking to each other finally. Tomorrow is another day to do it better, maybe this time he will make plans.

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