I cannot believe the weather. After a cool night with the temperature down into the high 30's we woke to another clear sunny day.

Descending Cove Mtn Road we had great views of the Great Basin below and could clearly see the remains of flood waters from recent rains. Connecting with 119 and 24 we drove through wide open grass covered valleys before taking a short break at Koosharem Reservoir.

Turning onto 25 we climbed to Fish Lake and Fishlake National Forest. A spectaularly beautiful lake set among large stands of Aspens. Most of the Aspens were still without leaves. There were few cars and only a few boats on the lake. Obviously the summer tourist season has not yet started.

A short stint on Highway 72 brought us to a junction with Fire Road 206 and the start of the our off-highway travel for the day. The first 8 miles of FR206 was up hill and heavily corrugated but once up onto the plateau the road was in good condition. There were few patches of snow and the road was mostly dry. Quite a contrast to Cove Mtn.

After about an hour of pleasant slow driving through the pine and aspen forests of the mountains we found the trail down to Cathedral Valley and the desert.

From the top of this descent the view is quite unusual, with typical mountain scenery (grass, pine and aspen) in the foreground and in the distance massive colored cliffs of desert mountains.

The descent gave me a chance to experiment with the ER's gears, switching back and forth between 1st gear high range and low range, trying to find the best way to control the speed of our 17,000 lb monster. A few tight turns, some small creek crossings, and a couple of thousand feet of descent and we were in Capitol Reef National Park.

We paid short visits to Upper Cathedral Valley Overlook and Upper South Desert Overlook before finding our way to Cathedral Camping Ground where we spent a leisurely afternoon drying our washing and turning a roll of silver bubble insulation into sun shades for the trucks windows.