Moab, Utah

Good morning, my friends. We have arrived!!! Let the off-road fun begin!!! We're just waking up and drinking our coffee, but we'll be heading out soon to drive Shafer Canyon Road, which is a part of Canyonlands National Park. We ended up in Moab some years back when we had to run for our lives from a big storm in Colorado. Our entire itinerary was wiped out that trip, and we ended up in Moab where we rented a Jeep and drove Shafer Canyon Road. That was nearly 20 years ago, and we've wanted to come back ever since. Finally...we're here. 

But let's just back up to yesterday's drive. We drove east for a distance before heading back west. We were trying to avoid a terrible stretch of road on I-15 through Salt Lake City. The lanes are narrow. It seems interminably under construction, and people are driving FAST. As it turns out, it was a pretty drive, but it added quite a bit of mileage to our trip. We saw some barns.

The image below isn't great, but I left it in because of the horse.

The road took us through Park City, Utah. You might recognize Park City as being the home of the Sundance Film Festival. Park City started out as a mining town. Wikipedia tell us that Park City's population declined following the shutdown of the area's mining industry. Nevertheless, the city rebounded during the 1980s and 1990s through an expansion of its tourism business. As of 2021 the city brings in a yearly average of $529.8 million to the Utah Economy as a tourist hot spot, $80 million of which is attributed to the Sundance Film Festival. The city has two major ski resorts. They were the major locations for ski and snowboarding events at the 2002 Winter Olympics. In 2015, Park City Ski Resort and Canyons resorts merged, creating the largest ski area in the U.S. In all, the resort boasts 17 slopes, 14 bowls, 300 trails and 22 miles (35 km) of lifts. You can see some of the groomed slopes from the road.

We also passed through Heber City where we stopped at a traffic light, and I snapped this picture of some hanging petunia baskets. Pretty.

Moving on, we passed through some pretty country near the Deer Creek Reservoir. There, we noticed a small glacier on this east side of the Wasatch Range.

And a tunnel!!!! Yahoo!!! 

Ahem. Settle down, now. 

Okay, and we passed by this big waterfall. Signs indicated this is "Upper Falls." I couldn't get a very good picture, but I went in search of one online only to discover that the world is filled with waterfalls known as "Upper Falls." I found a lot of pictures, but none that were identifiable as this particular one. So, I'm afraid my picture below will have to suffice.

Moving on, we started seeing some fall color.

Eventually, we rejoined the route we would have taken had we taken the shorter drive through Salt Lake City. Turning east, we were traveling US Hwy 6. We started seeing the red dirt characteristic of eastern Utah.

We stopped at a rest stop we hadn't visited before where we learned that US Hwy 6 is also known as the "Grand Army Highway of the Republic."

Well, doncha know I had to inquire of The Google about this. Here's what I learned:

[The name honors] the American Civil War veterans association, and [US Hwy 6] is a main route of the United States Numbered Highway System. While it currently runs east-northeast from Bishop, California, to Provincetown, Massachusetts, the route has been modified several times. The highway's longest-lasting routing, from 1936 to 1964, had its western terminus at Long Beach, California. During this time, US 6 was the longest highway in the country.

In 1964, the state of California renumbered its highways, and most of the route within California was transferred to other highways. This dropped the highway's length below that of US 20, making it the second-longest U.S. Route in the country. However, since US 20 has a discontinuity through Yellowstone National Park, US 6 remains the longest continuous U.S. Route in the country.

And that's probably more than you needed or wanted to know. The rest area is known as the "Fork Rest Area." There's more information about it at that link. Behind the building where the restrooms are located there is an installation designed to mimic an early 1900s era train depot to honor the nearby town of Tucker. It includes a replica roundhouse and non-functional steam locomotive. The rest area was voted one of the most beautiful buildings in the state of Utah in a contest sponsored by the American Institute of Architects. It is also one of the busiest non-freeway rest areas in the state.

It also had some pretty landscaping.

All along our route, we were impressed with the amount of blasting it must have taken to cut roadways through this rock. In the image below is a particularly steep rock face.

We also drove through the tiny town of Helper. I only include it here for how it got its name. Helper is situated at the mouth of Price Canyon, alongside the Price River, on the eastern side of the Wasatch Plateau in Central Utah. Trains traveling westward from the Price side to the Salt Lake City side of the plateau required additional "helper" engines in order to make the steep (2.4% grade) 15-mile (24 km) climb up Price Canyon to the town of Soldier Summit. The town was named after these helper engines, which the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad stationed in the city.

As we headed south, we recognized this escarpment from a previous trip. This is the thousand-foot-high wall of the Book Cliffs that parallels the highway just to the north. Winding for 250 miles across Utah and Colorado, it is the longest continuous escarpment in the world.

Here's another image I took as we drove through back in 2021.

In another photo from a previous trip, you can see what was on the other side of the road. This is the area known as "Desolation Canyon." The Book Cliffs-Desolation Canyon wilderness is a merging of three different worlds: the great rampart of the Roan and Book cliffs, the high alpine forests and meadows of the Tavaputs Plateau, and the inner world of Desolation Canyon.

And let me just tell you, Desolation Canyon is aptly named. There is nothing out here, and it looks completely inhospitable to life.

We weren't far from our final destination by then. As we headed south toward Moab, we noticed the green in the cliffs. The green coloring is indicative of copper.

And we know we're almost there when we start seeing these kinds of formations.

Here, we were nearing the turn into Arches National Park.

And very soon...WE'RE HERE!!! After so many days of driving, it was good to be here.

Smitty snoopervised the goings on outside while we got set up and hung the catio.

This little fellow welcomed us. He was tiny. I only noticed him because I saw him move.

We enjoyed some preprandial libations.

Nearby, I noticed these black-eyed Susans. They've been lining the road almost our entire distance since leaving home, but this was my first opportunity to get a picture.

So we'll be here in Moab for five nights (four now). It'll be good to stay in one place for a while. We're going to do some off-roading in our Jeep, and we'll have to spend a little time on "life things." We'll need to pick up a few things at the grocery store, and I'll need to do at least one load of laundry. For now, we'll just soak up the sun and enjoy a respite from the road.