If not, you should book your tickets right now for the next one. You’ve got to see it at least once in your life. It’s nine days in October and is guaranteed to mesmerize, assuming it’s not too windy.
The Balloon Fiesta grounds are about a mile from Coronado Village, and dozens of balloons touched down or landed throughout the RV park. Martin even filmed one landing in front of our RV.
There are morning and evening sessions at the Fiesta. We went to a morning session, but all flights were canceled due to high winds, so we walked around the balloon fiesta grounds and booths. The other session we attended was an evening glow, where balloons light their burners while attached to the ground.
At the beginning of each session, when the balloons are being inflated, you can walk right up to them and even help hold them open while air is blown into them before the burner ignites.
Below are photos of balloons in and around Coronado Village and the afternoon/evening we attended the Evening Glow session.
Rosewood Mobile Home & RV Park is a 55-and-over RV park located in Bellflower, CA. We visited the park even before we purchased our RV. When COVID-19 started, we decided to move from our apartment into a 43-foot Grand Design Solitude 375RES that we had just purchased. We really enjoyed living in this park for the brief two-and-a-half years we lived there.
Every time we go back to southern California, this is the park we try to stay at.
Some photos came from a video I took using my drone, and some from Rosewood’s website.
PLEASE NOTE: This post got the better of me, and I went down a rabbit hole. I still have a minor cleanup, but I wanted to post it as soon as possible. Sorry for the rough draft version, but it’s better than nothing. I hope you find her as interesting as I did. This cabin is one of my favorite places to visit. I find it absolutely beautiful.
Josie Bassett Morris’ Cabin at Cub Creek (40°25′31″N 109°10′29″W) near Jensen, Utah. Source: Allen
Photos By: 365RVLiving.com and courtesy of the J. Willard Marriott Digital Library at the University of Utah (https://collections.lib.utah.edu/)
Josie Morris’ cabin is one of my favorite places I’ve ever visited—so much so that we’ve made the trip out to it from Vernal, Utah, for the second consecutive year. While researching the cabin for this post, I found Josie’s and her family’s story captivating. Their story is truly a fantastic part of the American West. I can easily imagine living there in the late 1800s or early 1900s. I love this small cabin’s mature trees, solitude, and isolation.
Petroglyphs and pictographs on rocks along the road to Josie’s cabin. Source: Allen
It’s several miles down a small county road just off Old Hwy 149 inside Dinosaur National Monument. The last few miles of the road are a well-maintained dirt road, but any car can drive unless it has recently rained. On the way to the cabin, ancient petroglyphs and pictographs were created on nearby walls by the Freemont people living there from around 200 AD to 1300 AD.
There is a small parking lot at the cabin, and two easy hiking trails start there: the Hog Canyon trail and the Box Canyon trail. The Hog Canyon trail is the longer (1.5 miles) and more diverse of the two, while the Box Canyon trail is significantly shorter (0.5 miles) but still beautiful. Please be aware that there is a lot of Poison Ivy along the Hog Canyon trail.
Originally from Arkansas, Herbert and Elizabeth Bassett moved west circa 1877 with their three-year-old daughter, Josie. She and her younger siblings, Samuel Clark Bassett Sr, Ann M (Bassett) Willis, Elbert Bassett, and George Crawford Bassett, grew up in Brown’s Park (originally Brown’s Hole), an isolated mountain valley on the Green River near the Colorado/Wyoming/Utah border known for cattle rustlers, horse thieves, and outlaws.
Due to poor health, Herb, a scholar and musician, could not perform hard labor. Elizabeth, a strong, outdoorsy woman, realized that she needed to provide a living for the family and became a cattle rancher and rustler. She ran the cattle and sheep ranch and raised thoroughbred horses while Herb taught the children.
Josie’s mother, Mary Elizabeth (née Chamberlain) Miller, Attributed to Surreywd2541, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Elizabeth and Herbert Bassett were comparatively wealthy and educated for homesteaders. By all accounts, they had an unusually open-minded marriage for the time. Elizabeth advocated for women’s right to vote, was interested in feminism, and believed one’s roles should be based on talent and interest rather than gender.
When large cattle companies began to push out small cattle ranchers and homesteaders in Brown’s Park, the Bassetts organized other locals to fight back. They hosted many guests in their home, fostering a strong sense of hospitality, generosity, and community. Some of their guests included Butch Cassidy, Harry Longabaugh (aka. The Sundance Kid), and the “Wild Bunch” gang. They all were close family friends and often stayed and worked at the ranch to “cool down” following their illegal escapades. The Bassetts were known for supplying Butch Cassidy’s gang and other outlaws, such as “Black Jack” Ketchum and Kid Curry, with beef and fresh horses.
Butch Cassidy (seated far right), “Sundance Kid” (seated far left), and three other members of the Wild Bunch in the famous “Fort Worth Five” photograph taken in 1900. Mouse over a person for the name or click them for more information. Source: Wikipedia
Josie and Ann were both considered very attractive and had a wild side. By 1893, Ann was involved romantically with Butch Cassidy, and Josie was involved with Elzy Lay, Cassidy’s closest friend.
While Cassidy was in prison, Ann became involved with Ben Kilpatrick, another outlaw. By the time Cassidy was released, Will “News” Carver, a “Wild Bunch” member, had become involved with Josie. She ended their relationship when Carver became involved with another “Wild Bunch” member and outlaw, Laura Bullion. Subsequently, Josie becomes involved with Cassidy until he again becomes involved with Ann.
The Bassett girls’ relationships with Cassidy’s Wild Bunch gang developed into a complicated circle. Despite the seemingly constant changes in romantic companions between them and the gang members, there is no indication that animosity ever resulted from this.
In 1896, several powerful and wealthy cattlemen hired cowboys to harass the sisters, stampede, and rustle their cattle to force the sisters to sell their ranch. As a result, the sisters began rustling the cattlemen’s cattle. Fortunately, the cowboys only had limited success as they feared retribution from the Bassett’s outlaw friends.
One legend is that Kid Curry, the most feared of the Wild Bunch, approached several cowboys who worked for the cattlemen and warned them to leave the Bassetts alone. It’s unknown if this story is true, but it is true that by 1899, the sisters were no longer receiving pressure to sell.
Josie married Jim McKnight at the age of 19 in 1893. In 1914, Josie and husband M.B. (Ben) Morris, without much money, established a homestead claim at Cub Creek near Split Mountain (the cabin location within the current Dinosaur National Monument), 40 miles from the family ranch. Her son Crawford and his wife lived there for a time, and grandchildren visited.
Morris was a colorful local character. She married five times and divorced four of her husbands. In her 60s, she was tried and acquitted for cattle rustling and made brandy and wine from local fruit and berries during Prohibition. She lived in the cabin for over fifty years until she fell on ice and broke her hip in 1963. She died the following year at the age of 90.
Grandview Campground near Ashton, Idaho is a really nice, small US Forest Service campground about 14 miles outside of Ashton. The campground only has 9 electric-only sites, meaning no water and no sewer. The cost of a single site was $31/night and $62 for the double sites. It’s set in a beautifully wooded area of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest on the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway which is off US-20 in eastern Idaho.
The Henry’s Fork of the Snake River runs right behind the campground, but the river is not accessible from there without some serious bouldering over hundreds of yards of Mesa Falls Tuff and then repelling down shear cliffs. There is a dirt road leading from the back of the campground that intersects a picturesque, narrow footpath through the woods leading to both the Lower Mesa Falls and Upper Mesa Falls overlooks, which are approximately one mile apart. Upper Mesa Falls can also be reached by driving one mile north on the Byway.
The falls were quite spectacular during our July 2024 visit, with lots of water flowing over the 65-foot Lower Falls and 114-foot Upper Falls. You can almost walk right up to the Upper Falls via a well maintained boardwalk. There is a $5.00/day entrance fee to the Upper Falls unless you have an America the Beautiful, Military, or Senior National Park pass, then it’s free.
The tiny town of Ashton is northwest of Grand Teton National Park and southwest of Yellowstone National Park. With a population of less than 1200, Ashton only has a few restaurants, one small, family-owned grocery store, a family-owned hardware store, and a couple of gas stations.
Ashton is surrounded by rolling farmland with expansive views to the mountains. We saw lots of grain and potato crops being farmed during our visit. It was very picturesque driving over the undulating hills and around the long sweeping curves. You could see for miles.
We stayed at Grandview Campground for 6 nights and booked our reservations 6 months ahead of time on Recreation.gov. A couple of the campsites are first come, first served, so there are always campers driving through looking to grab one of the available sites. Our site, Site 6, was perfect. It was plenty long for our 43 foot RV even though it was a bit tight backing in due to rocks and trees on either side of the drive. The site had 2 stands to put grills or coolers on as well as a very nice, gravel tent or seating pad.
The campground is in grizzly bear territory, but we didn’t see any signs of them as it was 85-95 degrees every day, and they’ve probably moved up to higher elevations. The mosquitos, even during midday, are ruthless, but our 30% Deet wipes and spray kept them at-bay.
The only wildlife we saw at the campground were numerous bird species and several squirrels and chipmunks, but we were always on the lookout for bears. I so much wanted to see a grizzly in the wild. The woods were full of wildflowers at this time of year, and we enjoyed identifying some of them using the “Seek” app by iNaturalist that identifies plants and animals using your cell phone camera. Even though we were only about 100 miles from Yellowstone, we decided we were not going to go this trip due to kitchen slideout issues.
We had light rain several times plus a major lightning storm with very heavy rain that lasted for an hour or so. Penny DID NOT like it one bit. Most of the rain showers came and went within 10 minutes and barely wet the ground. The weather was hot and humid the entirety of our visit with temps hitting 85 every day except for one.
The campground is dog friendly as long as they are on a leash. Penny and Little Bit loved the walks, especially through the woods while I continuously called out “Hey bear”.
If you stay here, BE BEAR AWARE! Carry bear spray. I would assume that in cooler weather or during early spring and late fall, you have a pretty good chance of seeing grizzlies here. We thoroughly enjoyed this campground and will return the next time we’re in the area. The camp hosts were friendly and helpful and did a great job of maintaining the campground.
