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Monitor and Merrimac mileage 323 miles
We all seemed to have a rough night sleeping. Susan’s side of the bed sunk into the middle she kept rolling to the Claire’s side. She eventually had to use pillows to prop up around her to keep her in place. Claire’s mind went on one of its wild trips and Pam’s bed was too soft and also had a sink hole but at least she had her own bed.
Unfortunately, Susan’s bad night started the beginnings of a migraine. Breakfast was good and we met two guys that were working in the area and were asking us about our travels. We sat around and talked about traveling throughout breakfast and for a bit afterwards.
After breakfast we headed to Walmart to buy our beginning trip supplies. Dorothy (our GPS – Claire’s phone) gave us directions. I think she was sick as she sent us to the road behind Walmart that had no access to the parking lot. We saw the entrance and headed that way. Who has ever seen a Walmart without a big sign on the road? There were NO signs what so ever. We make it to the road and
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Shafer Canyon Road there is a big drainage dip across the road and of course, no warning for it. Claire slams on the breaks and we cross it without scraping the front of the van. This is not a Super Walmart it does not have a bakery, deli or anything fresh but it does have checkout stations on both sides of the store. We buy all the rest of the stuff and head to the check out. This was the slowest lady we have ever had and on top of that when she rang up the bandanas they rang up full price. It took her about 10 minutes or more to correct this. Pam drove from Walmart to our next stop, Safeway, to buy all our other food. Pam discovers the drainage dip in the middle of the parking lot. We were surprised that she didn’t scrap the front of the van.
We drove from Glenwood Springs and headed to Canyon Lands. No Canyon Lands is not a takeoff on Candy Land. We are not playing games here. On the drive we drove over the Colorado River several times. Really, this is the Colorado River? At least at those crossings, it looked
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Mesa Arch more like a creek. Just past the Utah border we found an overlook into a small canyon and we stop to view the scenery.
As we are driving down the road we saw a sign for “Free Alien Coffee”. What? We didn’t stop. Later on the drive we started hearing this strange noise. Pam and I said “what’s that?” Susan said, “It’s the ice”. Pam and I look at each other and raised our eyebrows. It’s in the 80’s outside… Yes, there is snow on the mountains in the distance but we wouldn’t hear that???? We say “what??” Susan explained, she was talking about the ice in the cooler. We all laughed.
Before we get to Canyon Lands we stopped at a view. This turned out to be the Monitor and Merrimac view. If you have had several glasses of wine and some bad vision, it kinda looked like the two civil war ships. What are two civil war ships are doing in Utah? Who knows???
We spent the next several hours in Canyon Lands National Park. Luckily the yearlong park pass we bought last year is still good. That park pass has saved us so much
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Pam rock climbing money. In Canyon Lands we saw the Shafer Canyon Road and turned down it but realized it wasn’t where we wanted to head. We wanted to be at the overlook area. Pam got to practice her 3 point turns on a dirt road with drop offs. Luckily we made it and headed back to the overlook area. We hiked down into the canyon to get a better view and took some wonderful pictures. From the overlook area, we could see where that road went that almost ventured on. It was a very narrow long curvy road and the write-up states that it was “improved” in the early 1900s. Before that when ranchers lead their cattle and sheep down the curvy road, it wasn’t uncommon for one of the animals to fall off into the canyon.
Our next stop was Mesa Arch. We did the hike out to the arch and it was much prettier than expected and the view through it was spectacular. We were glad we hiked to it even though it did get warm. Pam took some time out on the hike back out, to do some rock climbing.
Another stop in Canyon Land was at
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Grandview overlook the Grandview Point Overlook. We could see down into the bottom of the canyon. On the drive back out, we stopped at a few more places to take pictures. Several of the final areas were such a sharp cut, Susan said “it looks like a block of cheese they cut with a knife.”
After leaving Canyon Land, we drove to Arches National Park. On the way, Pam was passed by a bus from the “Nada Bus, Inc” company.
We arrived at Arches National Park around 5:30. We wanted to make sure we could see the arches we were most interested in so we headed to our first stop of Balanced Rock. On the way we said the scenery reminded us of the Flintstones. Of course, we had to since the song. Balanced Rock is a big rock balanced on a more slender tall rock. We hiked up to it and around it. On the back side the large rock seemed much wider and looked more like a flat screen TV on a stand. We said it was Fred’s TV.
Our next stop was Delicate Arch. We did a short hike to a viewpoint to get a good
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we say these are the 3 sisters view. The bugs were out and starting to bight so we headed back to the van. We covered ourselves with bug spray and headed on to Skyline Arche. The description was a short hike on a flat, well-defined trail. Now that description was BS. It was not too long but - “flat” no, and worse “well marked” are you kidding me??? It was still a good view of a beautiful arch so we were glad to have hiked it. Our final stop was to the “Windows”. This was a longer hike and we could actually go inside the arch. We met a couple from Raleigh while we were there. On the drive out we saw the Double Arch and took some pictures from the car.
We then headed to Moab and stayed at a Homewood suites Inn and this hotel was with points. The hotel was very nice and in a great location. We looked at Trip Advisor again and found another good restaurant “the Desert Bistro”. We called and made reservations, then checked in to the hotel, changed quickly and took off to dinner. They sat us at a bar table that was long and skinny and we
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Balanced Rock enjoyed our dinner thoroughly.
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Patty
non-member comment
It looks like y'all are enjoying the trip!
Claire, I hope you didn't do much damage to the ankle? Was it the one that was already injured?