Today while I’m at work, my new boat is arriving. On Friday evening while we were out fishing, the trolling motor arrived. It turns out that the particular model I bought is not quite what I was expecting – it’s a 24V motor rather than 12V. This means that I need two batteries instead of one. I was prepared for a 12V scenario, as my trailer adventures a couple of years ago left me with an extra marine battery. WalMart will come to the rescue there – their batteries are cheaper than elsewhere and their core charge (which you pay when you don’t exchange an old battery) is only $9. I’ll get a matched set of batteries that will also work for the trailer in a pinch.

The real fun begins in four days. I have from July 17th through July 25th off of work. A plan that’s been a full year in the making will come together (shut up, Hannibal) on Friday July 18th – five nights in two campsites at Mirror Lake with another family. If you don’t reserve the campsites the moment they become available, you basically don’t get one, so we reserved ours last summer.

It turns out that there are two roads to Mirror Lake. There’s the way that I’ve always gone, which goes through Wanship, passes Rockport Reservoir, hits Peoa and Oakley, then finally Kamas, where you make a left turn onto 150. I got a different path when I put it into Google Maps, though – take 40 towards Heber, but turn onto 248 before you reach Jordanelle, which puts you straight into Kamas. You then make a right turn onto 150.

It was that right turn that clued me into the fact that this was a path I’d never seen, as I very clearly remember the left turn. The “new way” is about 9 miles and ten minutes shorter, but (after poking around on Google Earth) it looks like a road with more hills and not as much scenic countryside. I’ll be pulling a trailer, which makes hills bad, and I’ll have kids in the car, which makes boring countryside bad. Do any of you have experience with both roads, and if so, which way would you recommend?