Palisade State Park and Spring Snow

Our next intended destination was Park City, but when we checked the weather forecast, we saw that was snow was predicted for the day after our planned arrival. It was only supposed to be a couple of inches, but we’d had enough snow already, so we decided to find a mid-point to visit for a few days and avoid the snow. This idea didn’t exactly work out as planned – more on that later.

We picked Palisade State Park in Sterling UT as our intermediate stop. The reviews all said it would be pretty, but we were still astounded at the gorgeous turquoise blue color of Palisade Lake. It looked like the Caribbean! The park itself is great – a mixture of full and partial hook-up sites, all very spacious and level. There is a nice trail that goes all the way around the lake, and there is also a golf course attached.

There is a dock in the park with lots of colorful canoes and paddle boats available for rent.

I would have given anything to go swimming in this gorgeous water. But it was still just a little bit too cold for that. The water was unbelievable clear – in the picture below the rocks in the center are actually under the water.

We did a little exploring in the nearby town of Manti, which is home to a beautiful Mormom temple. The Manti Temple was completed in 1888 and was the fifth temple constructed. You can see the temple from miles away. I would have loved to see the inside, but you have to be Mormom in order to enter – and a Mormom of good-standing at that!

We originally intended to spend 3 nights at Palisade, and planned to leave on a Sunday. The weather report for Sunday was that there might be a little bit of snow – but only 1-2 inches was predicted. No problem, we thought, we can easily get out of here if there’s just a dusting. Well, by late Saturday night the sky was darkening and the wind was absolutely howling. I attempted to take a picture of the ominous-looking clouds, but it was difficult because the wind was so strong the trees were getting blown around like crazy – as was I! Once I saw lightning, I decided I’d better head inside.

During the night we heard a little bit of rain on the RV roof, and assumed that the snow forecast had been wrong. We fell back asleep thinking we’d wake up to a little bit of dampness, but not much else. Boy, were we wrong! When I woke up, I lifted up the window shade and screamed in disbelief – we had gotten about 6 inches of snow!

We figured out pretty quickly that we would be spending another night at Palisade. It continued snowing most of the morning – all in all I think we got about 8-9 inches of snow. So much for our bright idea of avoiding the snow in Park City…

 

What a difference a day makes…

The next day the sky and the roads were both perfectly clear, but a lot of snow remained on the ground, which made for some great picture-taking. We were able to make our departure to Park City, where, as we found out – they had not gotten any snow at all!