Booked in with MOAB Adventures today and we enjoyed a very
lovely, peaceful and scenic few hours on the Colorado River. Steve was disappointed because it was pretty
tame, only three actual rapids on this section of the river, all Class 1-2, but
a nice take anyways.
Checked out the Moab Brewery later, a really cool place,
excellent craft beer and they also distill their own vodka. Food is good as well, and Steve finally met
his match with the hottest chicken wings he had ever sampled. We bought a
6-pack to take home, then back to the campground to hide out from the sun.
It should be noted that Moab has no art galleries, gift shops or museums in the immediate area, or none that we could find, so if that is your thing and you are not an adventurous outdoor type, you may be dissatisfied with a visit.
The next day we decided to check
out another national park – this time Arches National Park, just a short drive
outside of Moab.
Our RV snaked up the entrance road
and waited patiently to get into the park at 11 am in the morning. In line for the entry gate, you can see
entsy, weensy cars crisscrossing the walls of the cliffs ahead of you as you
approach this dramatic entrance to Arches National Park.
Arches National Park, Moab, Utah
This is a very beautiful park with
lots of pull-outs for viewing the sights. We hiked the .8 mile “easy” hike to
Landscape Arch, but never got to the end of it (that we know of) because we
left without water, or a hat for Steve.
Next time, we learned to be prepared for even so-called easy hikes,
especially in the desert.
And talk about not being prepared,
we nearly ran out of gas during this trip to Arches, so we coasted as much of
the descent as we could and eventually made it to a gas station in Moab, five
miles from the park’s exit.
Our day ended well though, once we
found Rick’s Glass, not far from our campground and the friendly, professional
owner quickly repaired the small ding in our windshield, before it became a big
problem.
We found three days to be plenty
in Moab and we are glad to be hitting the road again tomorrow!
After a good night’s sleep and breakfast at Ruby’s we fueled up, washed our windows and headed out toward Moab. We drive on Scenic Byway 12 – an “All American Highway” – the highest designation of US scenic byway system and soon enter The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
We traveled past many small towns where most families are
alfalfa farmers or ranchers. It was interesting to me that the growing season
is only 120 days, just three months long!
All of a sudden, we dropped into incredible switchback turns
over high white cliffs. The landscape shifted from red to white in a second as
we took a turn in the road. Drive some more, and now it’s red again as we fly
through Capitol Reef National Park.
Sheer red cliffs and azure blue skies!
Who knew? An unexpected treat on
the road! Now, finally left on Route 24
and we are traversing flat, wide open expanses of nothingness. Utah goes on forever!
Capitol Reef National Park, Double Rock Arch Formation. Photo by Ray Bilcliff of Pexels
Finally, we are crossing over the Colorado River and
literally flying (80 MPH is the speed limit) toward Moab. It’s warm and dry and
amazingly beautiful!
We are booked at the ACT Campground and Environmental
Learning Center, a green powered sustainable campground in Moab. Moab is
surrounded by the La Sal Mountains, and we travel through a long busy retail
area that is chock full of outfitters.
Here you’ll find someone to take you kayaking, hiking, white-water
rafting, climbing, mountain biking, hang-gliding, scenic helicopter tours and
lots more. The entire town caters to the
adventure seekers among us with retail shops for their gear and lots of
restaurants to feed the hungry after a day’s adventuring. Moab also has lots of
chain motels with busy pools, designed to cool you off after time in the desert
sun.
Our campground is geared to the environmentalist, so there is no pool. There are yurts, and lots of tents and a smallish section for RV’s. It featured a communal indoor kitchen and an outdoor kitchen.
The big disappointment is the lack of a pool, but they advertise the “Ol’ Swimming Hole” a short distance away. It’s a Bureau of Land Management property, and sounded great, an earth friendly way to cool off in the hot desert sun and would make up for the lack of a pool. What a bust! We gave it a try but RV’s cannot make it down the road to access this swimming hole, there wasn’t even a place to park an RV and hike in. No points for “truth in advertising” for this RV Park.
Started our day as we headed out to Bryce by stopping at the River Rock Roasting Company in La Verkin, Utah for coffee, smoothies, and quiche, everything was so good! It’s a cool place with big outdoor deck overlooking an awesome view of the Virgin River.
Heading out to Bryce Canyon we climbed to 8,000 to 9,000 feet. This will be the highest elevation on our trip to date. Steep 8% grade descents and sharp curves opened up to expansive vistas with more trees and more alpine-like landscapes. I was inspired during this drive to come up with as many adjectives as I could to describe the beauty of the country we are traveling across. Here are just a few to illuminate the majesty of America (see how I snuck a couple in right there): exquisite, dazzling and transcendent!
A little warning to anyone planning to stay in or near Bryce
– there are several lodges with similar sounding names, including one that is
located in the National Park. After realizing that our reservations were not in
the aforementioned lodge (our only planned hotel stay during our six-week trip)
we settled in at Ruby’s RV Park in their overflow lot. Ruby’s seems to own
Bryce Canyon City with a hotel, RV park, several restaurants, and multiple
outfitting businesses i.e. horseback riding and kayaking.
The next morning, by 8:30 am we were saddled up for a three-hour horseback ride through the Red Canyon in the Dixie National Forest. Our personable and knowledgeable guide and well-trained horses made this a delightful, but cold ride. I wore my winter gloves, and wool headband with a fleece jacket and snow was intermittently spitting during the ride. Our small group consisted of me and Steve and five visiting Germans.
After warming up and grabbing a quick lunch we took the 18-mile scenic drive through Bryce Canyon National Park. We drove to the end and then re-traced our drive, stopping at multiple overlooks to enjoy the views and take photos.
Steve napped after the drive, while I took a walk and visited Ruby’s General Store, which is huge, includes a large grocery section and serves every need that a visitor could have. There is also an adjacent Native American Art Gallery with a large selection of quality (although pricey) native art.
As mentioned before, Ruby’s has the entire town wrapped up with the hotel – a Best Western – with a rustic lodge-like lobby and an expensive, but very efficient restaurant designed to handle crowds of visitors. This is a manufactured town which serves as the gateway to Bryce Canyon, and offers lots of amenities but is not a charming as Springdale (Zion National Park) and Estes Park (Rocky Mountain National Park) which we were to visit later in the trip.
This is a very popular and busy park and I can see why. Because of its small size and popularity, access to this national park is limited and is through the town of Springdale Utah, a really lovely town that has sprung up as the gateway to Zion. It is chock full of hotels, restaurants and art galleries and provides a convenient launching spot for trip to Zion.
We parked the RV is a convenient parking lot and took the
free shuttle from Springdale to the entrance of Zion, then waited in a long
line to board the Zion shuttle. There was also a long wait just to get to the
Visitor Information Desk, so my suggestion is to make sure you get all of your
information on-line before you arrive.
Early Mormon pioneers named the area “Zion”, from the Biblical Hebrew word meaning refuge or sanctuary. We quickly saw the significance of the name when applied to this beautiful national park!
Zion is gorgeous with steep red cliffs and trails, and lush,
green valleys with hanging gardens. We hiked the Kayeta Trail to the lower
Emerald Pools. Beautiful, refreshing and
wet after the hot, dusty trails!
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