Moab, Utah

There isn't a lot to say about yesterday's drive. It was short. We stopped off at Starvin' Arvin's for breakfast at the encouragement of my friend Sharon, formerly known as "Unknown." It was a good way to start the day, so thank you, Sharon. After that, it was a quick trip across what remained of Colorado and then we crossed into the great state of Utah.

Yeah...I don't know what's going on with that car, unless they were trying unsuccessfully to moon us.

Ahead was just straight highway, and little else.

Out my window, it looked like this:

After about an hour, we turned south toward Moab, and layers of mountains came into view.

As we got closer, the red pinnacles of Arches National Park began to show themselves. We are on the west side of the park here.

There is a small airport outside Moab. As we approached, we saw dozens of skydivers taking the plunge. They're a little hard to pick out in the next image, and there are probably more I missed.

Passing by, we began to see some colorful hillsides. The green in the image below comes from copper. The red from iron.

Even closer into town, we were passing by the north side of Canyonlands National Park.

We've visited both Arches and Canyonlands twice before, and so we won't do that this time. If you're interested, you can read my old posts from those visits. For Arches, you can click right here. For Canyonlands, click right here. And those are all the pictures I have from yesterday. From here on, I'm going to be recycling some old images from previous trips. Recycling is good...climate change, you know.

As we approached Moab, we could see it off in the distance.

We had a fairly frustrating check-in, which might be hard to explain in writing. We had long-standing reservations for a 55-foot site. We were going to have to do some jockeying around because our plan was to take the camper off the truck for the first time this trip. But we are also towing a trailer, and so we needed to first unhitch the trailer. We left the trailer at a space designated for trailers and drove to our spot only to realize it was "pull-in" only...not "pull-through," but "pull-in" as opposed to "back-in." I hope that makes sense. If we were to back-in, all the hook-ups would be on the wrong side of the camper.

On the other hand, backing in was the only way this whole thing was going to work because if we pulled in, we couldn't get the truck out from under the camper. There was a wall on the other side of the space. Not only that, but the space was 55 feet long only if you didn't count the tree parked around 12 feet from the wall, making those 12 feet unusable. We could take the camper off the truck (and we did), and snake our hoses and cords underneath to reach our hook-ups (which we did), but it means a rather unseemly kink in our sewer and water hoses. It's not so important with the water, but the sewer...well, just think about gravity and how that all works, and you'll understand the problem.

Then the next problem was what to do about the trailer, which was parked a distance away, out of our view. It would be easy enough to steal the whole trailer along with the ATV's, although ballsy for even the most committed thief. We were more worried about the 5-gallon containers of diesel fuel and gasoline. Those would be easier to steal, and at today's prices, fairly valuable too. It seemed as if there wasn't enough room left at the site to accommodate parking it where we were located.

So that's a lot of whining about a relatively minor manner, but it's one of those frustrations one experiences while traveling. A little like being assigned a smoking room when you specifically requested nonsmoking.

We had some lunch, took naps, and then drove into town to shake it off. We love Moab. This is at least our fourth visit. Driving into town, it looks like this:

On the left side of the image, is the sign for Eddie McStiff's. It was happy hour, and we desperately needed some "happy." We took advantage of their half-price appetizers and margaritas. We walked up and down the  main drag, stopping in at the Red Dirt Shirt store. The shirts are dyed using the red dirt from the local landscape. On a previous visit, we were informed me they opened their original t-shirt store on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. Hurricane Iniki left them with a warehouse full of white t-shirts dyed red and the Original Red Dirt Shirt store was born. Now there are stores located in Hawaii, Arizona, and Utah. There are lots to choose from, and it's fun just to read the messages on the shirts. If you want to see some of them, you can click on that link I've given you.

Moab is a fun little town with something for everybody. I just like some of the buildings. Here's one I took for my Windows and Walls quilt, which I swear I will start someday before I die.

When we got back to the campground, we figured out a way to fit both the trailer and our truck into the space remaining at our site, and so all is well now. Also, Smitty got out for a short walk, and so even he was happy with how the day ended. He enjoyed a good roll in the red dirt, which turned his white fur to a nice shade of terra cotta.

And, yes, even that picture is recycled. That was after his walk in Kanab several years ago. This isn't his first red dirt rodeo.

It's early as I'm writing this, and most everyone is still asleep. We're planning to do some riding today, possibly to Determination Towers, a place we've been before. It's a fabulous trail, and you can see some of the images from our last trip at that link I've given you. However, I leave these decisions up to the Resident Traveling Engineer, and since he's still asleep, nothing has been decided yet. Tomorrow, we have an appointment to have new tires put on the ATV's. They are 12 years old, and still sporting their original tires. We decided not to push our luck any further. While that's happening, we'll probably visit the one quilt shop in town.

So that's all I have to tell you for today. We'll be staying put for a few days here, and so I'll have more to tell you in my next post.