One Wild Night

Day 18 – Moab, UT

I hadn’t planned on using a Bon Jovi song as a itle for this (or any other, for that matter) blog post.  I had planned on using a Jason Aldean song title: Dirt Road Anthem.  Originally, this whole post was going to be about our travels today.  The roads we took.  How it’s about the journey, not the destination.  Then it became very much about the destination and things got crazy.  But we’ll save that for the end.

The day started out great.  We woke up, still smelling like campfire, but well rested.  It was a beautiful, sunny day and the Rockies looked amazing.  We grabbed a bite to eat on the way out of Estes Park and we were on our way. 

The route from Estes Park to Moab, Utah first went southward along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountain foothills.  We caught I-70 outside of Denver and then headed west into the mountains.  We climbed up through the mountains, passing places like Vail and Breckenridge.  It was a beautiful ride.  We started coming down from the mountains and just before Georgetown, we met up with the Colorado River.  While not as big as it gets down by the Grand Canyon, it was still much bigger than the nascent stream we saw it as a couple days earlier in Rocky Mountain National Park.  We followed the path of the river all the way until Grand Junction, Colorado, although we would meet up with it again in Moab.  As we followed it, we could see how it had impacted the land as we drove through the gorgeous scenery in places like Glenwood Canyon.

As we left the river and its canyons, the terrain became more arid – we were clearly entering the desert.  The terrain was sparse and barren, slightly undulating, with magnificent rock formations on all sides.  It quickly reminded me how much I love the desert.  We left I-70 at an exit that was only marked by Joe’s Café and Gas and headed south towards Moab.  As we got closer, the rock formations moved in closer to the road and became even more spectacular.  I had a hard time resisting a quick stop at Arches as we passed it before heading to our campground.

The view coming into Moab.

We entered into Moab and I knew immediately I would like it.  It reminded me of Jackson Hole, but more rugged.  Instead of “Buy Prada,” the vibe was more “Hug a Tree” and “Eat Fish Tacos”.  A very cool place that we are looking forward to exploring (Amy already has all of the ice cream shops mapped out).  We followed the Aussie Lady as she took us through the downtown, then a neighborhood, then past a junkyard, and then finally to our campsite.  It was a bit out there.

We checked with Ken, the owner operator, and he was great.  Very nice, gave us suggestions on restaurants, and then gave us the tip of the day: take route 128 until you hit mile marker 26, stop, get out of your car, turn around.  We filed that away in our “if we have time” file.  We made our way past some dilapidated mobile homes and a half empty RV lot to find the tent section of the campground.  To our surprise, we found we were the only campers there.  Interesting.

The site was unique in that the fire pit, picnic table and parking spot were up on the main level with the mobile homes and RV’s, but the spot for our tent was a few feet down an embankment on a flat spot next to a creek.  It was a beautiful site with nice shade and views of the mountains.  We got everything all set up before quick doing a few loads of laundry.

We finished everything we had to do and still had plenty of time.  We weren’t hungry, so we decided to not go back to our campsite to cook dinner.  Instead we decided we would take a quick run through Arches and then head out to mile marker 26 of route 128.

Arches was incredible.  We’re going back tomorrow, so I won’t say much about it now.  Instead, just take a look at the pictures:

Balancing Rock

Delicate Arch (far left)

Tower of Babel, The Courthouse, The Organ, and The Three Gossips

After we finished our rushed tour of Arches, we still had some daylight so we took Ken’s advice and headed out on route 128.  It turns out we could have taken this road from I-70 into Moab.  While slightly longer, the scenery was even more amazing than what we saw coming in.  The road follows the Colorado River as it makes its way towards Moab, and the scenery is beyond words.  We got to mile marker 26, stopped, got out, and turned around and it was incredible.  The vista included the Colorado River, The Fisher Towers, Castle Valley, and the La Sal Mountains stacked one behind the other.  I won’t say any more since words won’t do justice.  Here are the pictures:

The Colorado River, its canyon with the Fisher Towers, Castle Valley, and the La Sal Mountains

The Fisher Towers at sunset.

Up until then, we were good.  We headed back into Moab and stopped to quickly fill up on gas and ice before heading back to our campsite.  We pulled into our site and we were still the only ones there and I started to get a weird vibe.  But before I could do anything about it, I accidentally dumped out our whole cooler on the ground.  It is incredibly hot here, so a night without ice would mean all of our food would go bad.  So after washing everything off, we headed out for more ice.

We returned to camp and started to get ready for the night.  I was feeling very uneasy about us being the only campers there, with a tent down by a creek out of sight from everyone else.  We decided Amy would go shower while I took the bikes off the car.  When she was done, she would wait in the car for me while I showered before heading down by the tent together.  As I was taking care of the bikes, I got myself more and more worked up about the situation until I eventually reached the decision that I did not feel comfortable staying there.

I went and got Amy from the bathrooms and told her how I was feeling.  While she was not as uneasy as I was, she also had a bad vibe about the place and was very uncomfortable with how the women’s bathroom/shower area was full of windows, while the guy’s was not.  We decided we would get a hotel for the night and find a new campground for tomorrow.  It was too late and dark to tear down our whole tent, so we just grabbed everything out of it and decided we would come back tomorrow to get the tent.  As we were down there, we heard noises from down the creek.  They were not animal noises (bottles, muffled talking), and since we were the only campers, that freaked us out a little, but made us feel better about our decision.  Then, as we were pulling out, we almost had a Rottweiler that was wandering down the road unleashed and unattended.

So now we are in a Best Western with reservations at a KOA for the next three nights.  For a day that was supposed to be a nothing day, what an adventure.  Tomorrow, lots of hiking at Arches and a new campsite.  Fingers crossed.