Day 11 - Moab, UT

Monday, May 14, 2018

Weather:  Sunny and low 80s during the day; clear, moonless night in the high 50s.

Steps: Shaun - 9,834, Shannon - 8,727

We had to get up at the buttcrack of dawn today to be at the Navtec Expeditions Center at 6:30am for an all-day off-roading tour of Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. We arrived on time, but then we had to wait for the guide and pick up another couple before heading into the first park, Canyonlands.

Our guide was a long-time resident of Moab who was very colorful. He had worked in what seemed like every job over the years and had a story for everything. Of course, he was in good company with Shaun.

We started the trip by going back down Potash Road, the road we had explored a few days before, but rather than turning around when the pavement ended, we continued on. We were able to see the evaporation ponds used to extract the potash from the water, which has been pumped underground to create a slurry that brings the potash to the surface. The ponds are dyed blue to speed up evaporation. Once the water is gone, the potash is scraped up by big machines and is used as fertilizer.

We also got to see the petroglyphs that we had been unable to find when we drove down Potash Road the first time. When we finally spied them, eye-level, right where the sign said they were, we felt like idiots, but oh well, we saw them today! Oh, and we saw some dinosaur tracks too.

In Canyonlands, we went up the White Rim and Shafer Canyon Trails, with tons of switchbacks and beautiful vistas. It wasn’t too bad in terms of road roughness, and along the way, we saw the place where Thelma and Louise’s car went over the cliff (spoiler alert?). 

We also got to walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs where a layer of rock had been uncovered that still had impressions from their feet. Really cool.

Our group ate lunch off the tailgate of the jeep, and then headed to Arches. The “roads” were A LOT rougher there, and we got knocked around quite a bit. We visited Delicate Arch and the Windows Section, and then bumped and jerked our way to Tower Arch. We found what looked like a Jeep convention in the parking lot, but it was cool to see the arch with the tower overhead.

To end the tour, we traveled down a slightly less rough road to the Eye of the Whale Arch. It was low on the wall, and while we eventually found it, the whale part was hard to see. Since we were still out in the middle of nowhere with a ways to go before returning to the Navtec Center, Shaun had to pee behind a bush. Classy. 

Overall, we would give the tour a 7 out of 10. We enjoyed exploring parts of both parks that we wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to see, especially in Canyonlands, where so much of the park is backcountry. Our guide was a character, for sure, and knowledgeable about a wide variety of things, but more of a jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none type. 

We ate at Arches Thai for dinner, which had good food but slow service, and then relaxed for 90 minutes until we had to meet our group for our astronomy trip. We caravanned with the group to the top of the mesa above Moab and made a square of the cars in a campground parking lot to block the lights from cars and people on the road.

Our guide, Alex, talked while he set up a computerized telescope. He showed us nebulae, star clusters, colliding galaxies, and Jupiter with four of its moons visible. There were ten of us in the group, so after each person looked in the telescope for a minute or more for each sight, we ended up being out until midnight. It was fun and interesting, though, so we thought it was worth it. Afterward, we went back to the apartment to drop into exhausted sleep until an early wakeup the next morning.

Day 10 - Moab, UT

 

Sunday, May 13, 2018

Weather:  Partly cloudy, with big poofy, pretty clouds. Windy in afternoon with more clouds. High of 82.

Steps: Shaun - 12,795, Shannon - 11,232

We got a late start on Sunday morning and didn’t reach Arches National Park until 11:30. By the time we arrived, there was a LONG line to enter the park. We made it through eventually and went to the visitors center (I know, shocker). We watched a movie about the park and how the arches are formed that had good information, but the effect was kind of offset by the overly dramatic music that went with it.

We liked the auto tour at Capitol Reef so much that we decided to do one at Arches too. This one was narrated for us and took us around to lots of arches and beautiful vistas, while explaining the natural processes and history of the park.

We visited Balanced Rock, which is pretty much just what it sounds like, though the rock is more attached to the spire than balanced. We just looked at it from below rather than hiking up to it, and then we went on our way.

We did hike to Double Arch, though we didn’t go all the way inside the space formed by the two connected arches. There were plenty of people already there to give it scale in our pictures, and it was incredible enough from afar.

Across the parking lot from Double Arch are the North and South Windows and Turret Arch. We hiked about two miles around to each of these. When viewed from certain points, the North and South Windows look like glasses, and they are often called “The Spectacles.” Turret Arch probably takes its name from the spires around it that look like towers on a castle wall.

We ate a small lunch in our car in the Windows Section parking lot and then traveled on to Sand Dune Arch. As the name suggests, the arch was tucked into a canyon that was deep with sand, making the short hike up to it a touch difficult but still worth it. Also from the trail we could see Broken Arch, though only from strategic points.

Finally, we took the short hike to the Delicate Arch viewpoint because it was too late in the day to actually hike the 2.9 miles to the base of the arch.

We drove the entire length of the road and back, but we didn’t make it back to the visitors center in time to return the auto narration that night. Oh well, we can return it tomorrow.

We went back to the apartment to get cleaned up and then drove to the Desert Bistro for our Mother’s Day dinner. The food was pretty good and the setting was beautiful, as we were on the patio surrounded by pretty plants, but our waiter was kind of snooty.

From the restaurant, we drove down Kane Creek Drive and viewed three petroglyph sites, including the famous Birthing Scene on a large boulder next to the road. The boulder has rock art on all four sides from peoples over a range of time periods, and it’s really quite amazing. By this time it was getting dark, so we saw this art with our cell phone flashlights and the last grouping on our way back to the apartment with the headlights of our car. Still, it was cool to go scouting for these treasures.

We drove back to the apartment and got ready for our early day to come.

Day 9 - Moab, UT

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Weather:  Sunny, mid-80s

Steps: Shaun - 10,174, Shannon - 9,296

Saturday was a low-key day spent in the town of Moab. We had breakfast at the Eklecticafé, Shaun’s spirit café, which had a beautiful flower garden in the front. From there, we did our laundry at a laundromat, and then went out to explore all the cool shops on Main Street. We did our part to support the economy of Moab, that’s for sure.

The town was having an art walk that weekend, and a live brass band was playing on the sidewalk. We stopped at the information center, ate some gelato, and got dinner at a restaurant called Eddie McStiff’s (yes, you read that right). Of course, Shannon had to get a pint glass there to commemorate the meal.

After returning to the apartment, we planned out the rest of our time in Moab, reorganized our suitcases with our clean clothes, and planned our outfits for Mother’s Day (the following day). Our last order of business for the day was to post on Facebook to make sure that everyone knew that we were still alive since we couldn’t post to our blog.

Day 8 - Capitol Reef to Moab, UT

Friday, May 11, 2018

Weather:  Sunny, mid-80s

Steps: Shaun - 18,151, Shannon - 17,226

Friday morning, we ate breakfast on the front porch of our cabin before packing our car and heading out on our roundabout journey to Moab. We had two primary stops for the day between Tropic and Moab: Little Wild Horse Slot Canyon and Goblin Valley State Park. 

Shaun had been told by multiple sources that we had to go to Antelope Canyon while we were in the Southwest. It is one of the most famous slot canyons, known for the beautiful light that streams in at midday and the swirling walls. Upon doing some research, though, we learned that we would have to be on a tour or hire a guide to take us in, as the canyon is on Navajo land, and when we looked, the tours that weren’t super early or late were already booked. 

Little Wild Horse is another slot canyon that is only 5 miles from Goblin Valley State Park in Utah. It’s free to access and has some parts that are truly wonderful, including a narrows section that is just as swirling and interesting as Antelope Canyon. Plus, we could make our own schedule and travel in on our own at our own pace.

The entrance to the canyon is a ½ mile from the parking area, and then the canyon is 1 ½ miles each way in and back. However, when we arrived at the entrance, there was a giant lake blocking the way! We had to climb the rock wall along one side to bypass the area, which was interesting. Luckily, there were other people going in who knew what they were doing, so we just followed them. When we got to the section where we were supposed to descend to get to ground level again, Shaun got a little scared and had to make her way on her butt. She made it, though, and gained confidence after that, so that when we reached another large puddle blocking the path, she shimmied along a narrow ledge in the wall like a pro. Plus, we watched a lady carry a baby in one hand and guide a young child with the other along the same route, so we couldn’t balk after that.

The rest of the route through the canyon was super fun, with just enough rock scrambling and shimmying through narrow crevices to keep it interesting. It wasn’t too crowded, and the high walls kept the sun from being too hot, though it was really windy, which kicked up some dust.

Eventually we hit another lake in the middle of the path, but this time there were no walls to climb and we weren’t going to wade through, that’s for sure. So, we stopped to rest and eat a snack and then headed back through the canyon to our car.

Close by Little Wild Horse Canyon is Goblin Valley State Park, which is known for its crazy-looking hoodoos. The rock formations are super cool, with an almost melted appearance so that they look like fairy houses, mushrooms, chess pieces, etc. We were able to hike right up to some of them, and they had a weird feel to them, almost like they were just a hard crust around a soft inside. This isn’t actually the case, but that’s how it felt to touch them.

The visitor center introduced us to a new artist, Serena Supplee, whose art we saw everywhere for the remainder of the trip. We love how colorful and majestic her landscapes of the Southwest are, and we both bought prints of her work.

By this point, we were starving, but we were in the middle of nowhere, so we decided to eat snacks in the car and power straight through to Moab. We checked in at the main office to get keys to the apartment we were renting for our time in the city, and then drove to the Kokopelli Inn-Tower Lodgings to check it out and drop off our car before getting something to eat. However, when we arrived, we found that the air conditioner was not working. We called the office and they sent someone over, who fiddled with the thermostat and then called the the HVAC company. We left them to it as we headed to dinner.

We decided to go to Moab Brewery to get some root beer, but Shannon underestimated the distance that the brewery was from the apartment, so we walked for what felt like 15 miles (it was really less than a mile, but we were so hungry by that point, that we were ready to gnaw our arms off to tide us over while we walked). We finally arrived, and the food was good, the root beer was so-so, and Shannon bought an awesome pint glass.

We walked back to the apartment and called to check on the air conditioner, which was still not fixed. They had an emergency call in to the HVAC company, but it would still be a while, so we headed out in our car to explore a little bit along the Colorado River.

We drove down Rte. 129 (Potash Rd.) until the pavement ended at the titular potash factory, and then we turned around and headed back. The road followed the river on one side, with big cliffs on the other that rock climbers were scaling as we went by, even though the sun was setting. There were lots of bats flitting everywhere, and Jughandle Arch sticking out of the side of the cliff.

We tried to see petroglyphs that were supposed to be on one of the walls, but it was too dark by that point, so we saved that for another day. On the way back into town, we stopped at the Rock Shop. We stayed over an hour and spent way too much money on rocks, but we had a lot of fun.

From there, we returned to the apartment and found the air conditioner was working again. Yay! We ate a snack and then took it easy the rest of the night.