Friday, May 16, 2014
We were up about an hour later today. We still weren’t first
to breakfast. I had a waffle again with a banana this time and Clay had Raisin
Bran and a bagel again with half my banana. I got a bagel and 2 tubes of cream
cheese to go. I put the bagel in the car and the cream cheeses in the
collapsible cooler I had brought and put ice from the bucket in Ziploc bags. We
were happy to have it later in a long day. We drove from Denver to Moab, Utah
today. We made lots of stops and saw lots of spectacular scenery. I only saw
one animal, a fox running just along the tree line on a mountain side, he was
too fast and far away to photograph, though. We did not have any trouble and
did not find any snow on the road. It was about 40F when we left Denver and
about 88F when we got to Arches National Park. We are both wishing we had
brought more than one pair of shorts with a week here in Southern Utah!
Hopefully some of this heat will follow us up to Yellowstone for the end of the
month. (Follow-up: while Clay did wear his shorts, I wound up never wearing
mine and it was fine for both of us.)
I only really have one thing to say about today and that is
SPECTACULAR. I’ll let the photos speak for me, because I know I can’t do
justice to the Rockies or the high desert on the other side of them.
We made stops. In Colorado in Georgetown at the Visitor’s Center because the freeway sign said there was a Big Horn Sheep viewing or else a Mountain Goat viewing from there. They had scopes set up outside and we looked and then we looked with our binoculars. But nothing. I will just go ahead and spoil it and tell you that we never saw either animal during this entire trip! We stopped again in Colorado in
Parachute for the cool Rest Area with solar flowers. We also got Clay an ice
cream cone there. For lunch, we just split the bagel with cream cheese in the
car.
We were on I-70 from Denver to Exit 214 in Utah. There we
started our scenic tour across Southern Utah. First up was the ghost town of
Cisco, then down Utah Route 128 to Moab and up 191 to Arches National Park. Right after we entered 128 we passed through a huge colony of prairie dogs. By the time I figured out what they were, all photo opportunities had sadly passed.
We had all
afternoon in Arches and we got to see most everything we wanted to see. We
drove all the paved roads and took 4 hikes. We hiked to Balanced Rock, Double
Arch, Delicate Arch Viewpoint and Sand Dune Arch. Arches National Park has the
world’s greatest concentration of natural stone arches and it was mindboggling.
It may be my favorite. It was crowded but there was plenty of parking and
pullouts and the information they handed out at the entrance was easy to use
and complete. Clay really liked it and the area as well and now wanted to visit Canyonlands National Park, but sadly even skipping his planned stop at Pikes Peak there was just no time.
Please see the next post for photos in Arches National Park! Just photos! There are just too many photos for one post. Warning and apology that all the embedded photos had to be removed at the end of 2018 because Flickr is deleting the majority of the hosted photos I had stored there!
We had dinner tonight in Moab at Buck’s Grill House. It was
quite good. Clay had the double pork chop and I had Bajio. Bajio was described
on the menu as pan seared crepe stuffed with slow cooked beef in adobo sauce,
with goat cheese, served with pinto beans and rice verde. Clay had some kind of
red ale that he liked and I had a Moab winery Gewürztraminer that was ok but
Clay did not like at all. We each ordered dessert and neither of us cared for
them much. I suspect we were just too tired. Clay had ice cream and I had a
chocolate torte. I actually thought they were pretty good together, but I was
just too tired and full to eat much more.
