Day 1
38° at 7 in Capitol Reef NP
In the Fruita campground at Captiol Reef NP, it got really
cold over night. Greg said it was 38
when he got up at 7, and it was only 43 when I dragged out of bed at 8:30 . We
left the campground at 10:00 heading
East to Arches National
Park
We got to the Arches NP visitor’s center about 2pm . We
ate our lunch in the RV and hooked into the internet from the parking lot. The campground in the park only takes
reservations and it is full. There are
several BLM campgrounds in the area but all are first-come/first-serve. We know there isn’t a chance to get a spot
today at any of those. We checked
several other RV parks in the area but most were full. We found one park 5 miles outside of town
that had an overflow area with no hookups that we could get for 25.00 a
night. We booked it for one night.
After checking out the visitor center and buying a book on
hikes in the park, we drove into Moab
to get some groceries. OMGosh!!!!! It is a tourist town just like Sedona
AZ.
After getting our shopping done, we headed out of town to
Spanish Trails RV park. It’s very nice
park, except for the overflow parking which is in a dirt (red dirt) field. It is located just off the main highway with
lots of traffic. BUT it has a great
laundry and shower facilities and we have cell service and Wi-Fi!!!!! We arrived and checked in at 5:30 .
By 6, I had 2 loads of laundry started and Greg had gone for a run. While the clothes were in the dryer, I took a
wonderful long shower (with hair and shaving included). I had clothes washed and dried and I was
squeaky clean by the time Greg got back from his run.
We micro-waved left-over caribou stir-fry, quinoa, pasta
with caribou pepperoni (all leftovers that we had frozen). It was 8pm
by the time we sat down to eat! It was
so late that I didn’t even get to use the internet or make any phone
calls. I’m hoping we’ll be as lucky in
the next campsite we get.
DAY 2
61° @ 7am
We left the Spanish Trails RV park at 8am (we did find out that there is a classic car show in
town this weekend which is why all the campgrounds are full). We headed back toward Arches park and turned
north along the Colorado River to check out all of the
BLM campgrounds. There are 7 of them
along a stretch of about 8 miles. We
found that 2 of them are only for tent campers and of the 5 remaining we saw
only a couple of sites that showed today was the day they were being vacated. Unfortunately, check out isn’t until noon and we couldn’t see that any of them were
in the process of packing up. If we had
seen people milling about on the outside of the campers we could have asked
them if they were leaving and if we could put our “paid stub” on the site post
to show it was taken, but no-one seemed to be up or at their sites. We did manage to talk to one camper who
recommended another BLM campground West of the Arches on the way to Canyonlands
NP which is relatively close by (20 miles or so). We gave up on the search of Colorado River
BLM campgrounds and drove to the other campground which is about 30 minutes from
the Arches entrance. It is Horsethief
Campground and it is perfect! We found a
great spot (at 10:15 ), somewhat
protected from the wind (it is blowing) and VERY level. There are no hookups and once again, no cell
service or internet. The campground host
saw us and talked with us for a while.
He and his wife lived in Palmer for about 20 years so he was glad to
visit with some Alaskans for a change.
We drove back into Moab
for gas (got a 10 cent discount using our Fred Meyer rewards card!) We drove back into the Arches at noon to look around. There are no significant hikes here; mostly
everything is viewable from the road. We
stopped at almost all of the pullouts and did some short hikes. The scenery is so much like the other parks,
I think I am mostly interested in the arches.
We did hike for 1.5 miles to get to the “Delicate Arch” which is the
most photographed arch in the park. It
was pretty amazing. The hike to get
there was pretty steep, walking on sandstone and along narrow cliffs but once
you get to the arch, you’re breath is taken away. We stayed up by the arch for at least 30
minutes just sitting there looking at it.
There were tons of people there also so lots of other stuff to watch
also. There is a 7+ mile hike that
starts at a trailhead at the end of the park road which we will try to do
tomorrow. We ran out of time today. We did hike a short way back to another arch
(Sand Dune Arch) thru really thick sand and some slot canyons. Once back to the arch it was so funny to see
kids playing in the sand like a giant sandbox while parents sat relaxing (like
at the beach?). I guess the kids
deserved it after being shuffled around all day looking at rocks!
We got back to our campsite at 7:05 . Greg grilled tilapia and I sautéed Sante Fe
veggies and broccoli slaw, left-over Spanish rice, and baked beans. The campground is a great place for sunsets
and it looked like tonight was going to be a beauty. We watched from the RV for a while then
walked outside to get a better view. It
didn’t get as colorful as we had expected but it was still beautiful to
watch.
The temps today were in the 80’s with some wind. Predictions for tomorrow are lots of winds
and thunderstorms.
DAY 3
Howling winds from about 2:30
this morning kept me awake most of the night.
Greg said he only woke up for a short while at 3:30 . We got up
to dark clouds and blowing winds. We are
staying put for a while to see what the weather does.
It started POURING rain about 9:00
and didn’t let up until after noon . Greg read and I have been typing word
documents of the blog entries so I only have to wait until I get internet so I
can copy and paste my journals. We did
have a break in the rain about 12:30
but it started again at 1:30 . It was relentless all day. Greg found a leak in the RV so that kept him
busy tying to find where it was coming from then how to get it to stop. I transferred some pictures to the laptop and
read some of my old (already read) magazines.
It rained ALL day. It was
amazing. There was some thunder about 5
but we couldn’t really see any lightning.
We waited for the rain to ease off before we started the grill to cook
K-bobs. About 2 minutes from when they
were to be taken off the grill, the heavens unleashed more rain. Greg had to stand in the pouring rain to
finish up the grill (about 6:30 ). About 7:30
the leak hadn’t stop so Greg decided to put blocks under one set of tires to
raise that side of the RV up so the rain would run down the edge of the RV not
right into the RV. When we opened the
privacy screen on the front windshields….there was SLEET on the windows! By 7:30
it was 40 degrees. The high today was only 48. We are so lucky to be in the RV and not a
tent! Dinner tonight was caribou steak
K-Bobs (marinated 24 hrs in wine, soy sauce, black pepper), sweet potatoes
(nuked), spinach salad with green onions, cucumbers, grape tomatoes. The K-bobs had poblano peppers and red onions
on them. It was terrific! I know that I will sleep really well tonight
especially if it continues to rain (I love the sound of rain on the fiberglass
roof).
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| Grillin' in the rain |
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| Charred but still delicious! |
DAY 4
34 @ 7:15 am
We woke up to bright, blue skies, with a little breeze and
still cold. It looks like a much better
day than yesterday. By 9:15 we headed back to Arches
National Park Visitors
Center Canyonland
National Park Island
of the Sky so we will check that area out tomorrow and Tuesday.
We arrived at Devil’s Garden trailhead at 10:10 and started our hike at 10:30 . It was an
easy trail for the first .5 miles, then we got into some inclines. At about 1 mile, around Landscape Arch, the
trail started going up sandstone rocks.
There was actually no trail just pulling yourself up rocks then walking
on their slopes. We had to do this
several times through out the hike. It
was tough going for me! The arches we
got to see along this “trail” were:
Tunnel Arch, Pinetree Arch, Landscape Arch (the longest arch in the
world at 306 feet long), Partition Arch, Navajo Arch, Black Arch, Double O
Arch, and Private Arch. It was
incredible to see so many arches within 3 miles of a trail. We hiked to the end of the trail to see a
monolith (single tall spire, not an arch) called “Dark Angel”. I believe in the end we hiked more than 7.3
miles. We got back to the RV at the
trailhead at 2:45 . It was 4+ hours with lots of stopping and
taking pictures and even stopping for a short lunch break. The weather was windy all day and cool. I kept my bike jackey on until about 2; Greg
wore his polar fleece top all day. After
the hike, we drove about 30 minutes down to the visitor’s center. We can get internet and cell service in the
parking lot so we spent about 2-1/2 hours getting emails checked and phone
calls made. We got back to the
campground at 6:30 . Still windy tonight with temps predicted to
be in the 30’s. We didn’t eat supper
until about 8. We had grilled pork chops
with Cajun seasonings, brown rice, stir fry veggies, & spinach salad. The sun was setting at 8:20 and the way the clouds had formed we knew we were
in for a gorgeous sun set. It was not…..
the clouds somehow dissipated and the sun just set without throwing off much of
a glow. Oh well…. Maybe tomorrow.
DAY 5
34 @ 8, breezy
I slept really well in my long underwear, thermal top, and
fleece hat. It is another pretty day but
the dang wind is STILL blowing. We drove
up the road to Canyonlands National
Park 12:15 .
It was a very short hike (1/2 mile?) to the arch and WOW was it
spectacular with the backdrop of the canyon behind it. The arch framed the vistas beautifully. It was much prettier than any of the arches
we saw in Arches National
Park
At 1:15 , we
parked the RV at the trailhead for Alcove Springs. We ate lunch then walked up the road a few
hundred feet to an unmarked trail. This
one was “False Kiva” and you have to specifically ask a Ranger about it. It is “word of mouth” only because they don’t
want lots of tourist trampling thru the ruins yet. We found out about it on one of our hikes in
Capitol Reef. Someone heard we were
going to Arches then possibly Canyonlands and told us we had to ask about the
false kiva. We did and got directions
from the Ranger. We were told it was
about a 3 mile round trip hike. It
started out on a dirt trail then soon turned into walking on sandstone rock,
then climbing down sandstone, then climbing up and over sandstone. We were scrambling over rocks to find this
Kiva. We thought we were at the end of
the trail under an overhang that could have been an ancient cliff dwelling but
it didn’t have any of the characteristics that the Ranger told us to look for. Greg left me there and went on a recon
mission to see if he could find another trail or maybe even THE kiva. He came back after about 30 minutes and said
we were almost to it. He had spotted it
with binoculars while he was scouting the area below him. We had to really do more rock scrambling to
get up to the Kiva. It was not anything
that was impressive although the views were tremendous and the hike to it was
incredible so it was well worth the trip.
It took us from 1:50 to 4:10 to make the trip.
After the False Kiva hike (rock climb) we drove to Upheaval
Dome overlook. This was a really short
hike up sandstone to an overlook onto a huge crater. Geologist are unsure as to it’s origin but it
is incredible to see. Unfortunately it
was sooooo windy that we didn’t stick around long once at the top. We were back at the RV by 4:45 .
On our way out of the park, we stopped at Green River
Overlook. This part of the Park (the Island
of the Sky) is a huge plateau sitting between the Colorado
and Green Rivers Green River flows. It was very cool to see way down below to the
river and where it winds it’s way through the canyon. It meets up with the Colorado
river not too far from this location.
The scenery for this whole section of the park is so much
like the Grand Canyon .
It is breath-taking to see the expanse of the canyon valleys below the
rim.
We left the park around 5:15
and drove a short distance to a parking space along the road. We could get internet here so we did some
checking for places to go next and where to stay. The weather is not looking good for elsewhere
in the park and even further to the NE.
We decided to spend the night tomorrow in Moab
at an RV park with power and where we can dump our tanks and get fresh
water. On Wednesday, we’ll start our
drive to Salt Lake City . We had to drive 14 more miles to get cell
service so we could make some phone calls so by the time we made it back to
camp it was 7:30 . We did quick hamburgers on the grill and
heated up left over baked sweet potato for dinner. Another cold night ahead of us and we’re
hoping the winds will die down.
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| view of Park Avenue at Arches |
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| arches and caves at Arches |
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| Landscape Arch the longest arch in the world |
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| Delicate Arch, the most photographed arch in the US |
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