Golden Spike National Historic Park is located just north of the Great Salt Lake at Promontory Summit, Utah. We were in route from San Diego to West Yellowstone and weren’t sightseeing at all, but had to check this site out because of the historical significance.
Rancho Jurupa Regional Park, Riverside County, CA
What a nice surprise. We picked up our Airstream from storage and brought it to our house so that we could load it up for our travels and give it a bath. By the time we hit the road, we finally made it to Rancho Jurupa by 5pm.
Rancho Jurupa had full-service concrete sites. Their electric, water, and sewer worked well and we were able to obtain an end site. Our only complaint was no WIFI, but there were a lot of over-the-air television channels. Jake loved all the places to walk, watching the ground squirrels and bunnies. There were wild grapes and even a lake. Completely unexpected for Riverside County.
Oasis RV Resort, Las Vegas, NV
We have stayed here numerous times over the years. They have full-service sites, plenty of over-the-air channels, cable, and adequate WIFI. We love the grounds for taking walks. There are numerous small private dog runs to prevent dog fights and to give a dog the chance to play off leash. There are putting greens around the property, a very nice pool and spa, and a small restaurant. Overall, it’s a very nice property other than the road noise.
Cedar Mountain RV Resort, Fillmore, UT
This was another layover stop for us. In general, we rarely travel more than 3-4 hours a day because life is about the journey. We like to have a lazy morning, travel, then a relaxing evening with time to walk Jake and cook a healthy meal. They had full service and good WIFI. The main problem was all the crushed gravel making it difficult for Jake to walk on and their dog parks didn’t have a gate on them, which seemed to defeat the purpose.
We had a nice sunrise and sunset.
Aspen Grove RV Park, Tremonton, UT-Golden Spike
What a beautiful RV park and fantastic owners. They’ve been RVing full time, so they know all the things RVers want; concrete sites, good spacing between sites, no noise, and cable TV. Aspen Grove’s WIFI was slow, but there were plenty of over-the-air and cable channels for evening entertainment. It was nice to see a rainbow.
Golden Spike National Historic Park, UT
It is a less popular National Park, but worth going to. The Union Pacific Railroad’s westward construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad was the theme of “Hell on Wheels”, a TV series that lasted 5 seasons. The Central Pacific Railroad started in Sacramento and met the Union Pacific from Omaha in Promontory, Utah to connect the two rail lines, finalized with the Last Spike or Golden Spike made from 17.6 karat gold in May 10, 1869.
The spike wasn’t driven into a railroad tie, rather a tie made from polished California laurel. The hole was pre-drilled and Leland Stanford pounded it in with a silver hammer. There were three other ceremonial spikes made from gold and silver. The golden spike was immediately removed and is currently on display at Stanford University.
The railroad line was not a coast to coast east-west line. It took years to develop connecting lines to achieve this. Passengers had to take a ferry to cross the Missouri River. Later a railroad bridge was built. Not long after the golden spike was driven in, a new line called the Lucin Cutoff was built to save mileage and grades through the Utah area. The main line trains no longer passed over Promontory Summit. By 1942, the steel rails through Promontory were salvaged for the war. In 1952 Congress established the Golden Spike National Site. The original locomotives and cars are gone, so a company in Costa Mesa, CA created replicas. Even though the trans continental line was an incredible feat that the nation needed, there was incredible greed, corruption and ineptitude of railroad executives and the policymakers who blindly enabled their schemes when the USA reserves were low after the Civil War.
The area is beautiful with distant views of the Great Salt Lake. Chinese arch was beautiful.
