Advertisement
Published: August 10th 2008
Moab
On our way to hippyville!We were off to Moab and Arches via Scenic Byway 128. Thank you Grandpa Linscott for the route recommendation, it was a beautiful drive along the Colorado River. The drive along the bright red canyons really let us know that we had entered into Utah. Another great thing about this route is that there are quite a few Bureau of Land Management campgrounds the closer one gets to Moab. We stopped at the campground closest to Moab the first night and snatched up the last site in the grounds. The weather, unfortunately, has not been cooperating with us and the first night was no different. The clouds looked pretty foreboding, so we decided to sleep on the air mattress in the car. This was fine until it got really muggy in the car. The obvious solution would be to open the windows, however my irrational fear of the bats flying around outside prevented us for opening them any further than a crack. That was fine for me, not so much for Cody (who was baking like a toasted cheeser). Apparently, bats don't all have rabies and have no desire to bite humans (whatever!). Needless to say we did not stay a
Scenic Byway
A good example of the type of scenery and cliffs along the drive next to the Colorado River. Notice the lack of clear blue sky. 2nd night, but more to come on night 2 later.
Everything I had ever heard about Moab made me think it was an outdoorsy hippies' dream town. My expectations were not disappointed. They actually have to specify in the grocery store restroom to not use it for bathing! But, that aside it is a cute little town at the edge of Arches National Park. We got some great chai and coffee at the Arches Bookstore on main street and enjoyed waiting for the weather to improve by walking around the quaint shops (we got out of Moab only buying 1 book).
Finally, the clouds cleared and we made it to Arches on Wednesday afternoon. Another stamp in the passport! So first things first, we have been told by a number of people that it is a requirement to hike out to Landscape Arch, as no one is sure how much longer it will last. In 1991, a 60 foot long section came crashing down from the center of the arch, thus making it only 6 ft. thick in its thinnest section. Luckily, we can now say that we have seen Landscape Arch still intact. Second arch on the
Scenic Byway
More scenic vistas along the river route. Nice and hazy. list, and the model for the Utah license plates, Delicate Arch. This hike was a bit longer, so we took the sissy way out and hiked to a viewpoint, that gave us a distant view of the arch, since it looked about to rain. Still, quite impressive and with binoculars as good as if we were actually there 😊! The final section we hiked to were the Windows Arches. We enjoyed these arches the best, as we could climb around a bit. Cody, of course, wanted to scale to the highest points, but I, being a party-pooper, nixed that idea. Overall, we really enjoyed it here, even though there were mostly grey, stormy skies.
And now...night 2 in Moab. The campground from night 1 was filled, so we moved further upriver to an even cheaper campground. I now know why. With the clouds still overhead, we planned to sleep inside the car once more. Due to a necessary run into town for cell phone reception, we were again setting up in the dark. As we began to get ready, it started out with a few flying ants. By the end, the entire interior of the car was covered in
Scenic Byway
Obviously before political correctness was an issue. Nowadays it would be called "African-American descendant William Canyon." them. So naturally, I threw a fit. I was standing outside on the picnic table as I watched Cody try to shake everything out and rid the car of flying ants. We will now refer to this as a "Princess Moment." We soon realized that as long as the lights were on in the car, the ants would keep coming in, and I sure as heck wasn't sleeping with them in there. So we packed up and headed into Moab at 10:30 PM to find a nice, quiet corner of a La Quinta parking lot. After getting gas and using the restroom in the convenience store, we again started shaking everything out and cleaning the ENTIRE car. All said and done, the estimated time of falling asleep: 2:00 AM. Ah, good times. And it was just as hot as the night before.
In the morning, we headed off to Capitol Reef, finally on speaking terms, again. 😊
Advertisement
Tot: 0.191s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 63; dbt: 0.0869s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
