Moab Easter

Another place we have not been before is Moab.......this place seems to be the ultimate outdoorsman's paradise.  Sunday we were pulling up anchor to head north once again into new territory for us.  I was up early Sunday with the cold temperatures.....got down to 30 Saturday night.....but by the time I had finished the blog for Saturday TLE was up and we were beginning to finish putting things away so we could roll our wheels.

Around 9 am I started the big generator so I could run the block heater for the big Detroit.....it takes about 45 minutes of heating the block before I can start the engine when it has been this cold.  Right on schedule at 9:45 the DD rumbled to life and we were on our way north. 

Our total travel distance was only 68 miles, and we knew we would be descending over that distance a little over 3,000' in elevation, but as with most things in life it was not a straight line down......we would go down, then up, then down then up.  The scenery all along the route north is breath taking as you would expect.

We had avoided getting to Moab earlier than Sunday as all last week there was a large festival in progress with thousands of out of towners clogging up the parks, and downtown area.  Sunday was also Easter Sunday.

Arrived in Moab at Portal RV Resort (located on the north end of town) around 11:30, quickly checked in, got set up in our site (#29) and waited for our friends to arrive.  We didn't know they had arrived the night before and that their sites were right across from us.  They were away from the park on a day trip over to Dead Horse State Park.

I mentioned before that we have hooked up with David and Denise numerous times over the past 5 years, and just love spending time with them.  This time they were traveling with Denise's sister (Patty) and her husband (John) who also have a class B RV.

We drove the VW back into town to pick up some firewood for our anticipated evening fire, an just as we returned we saw our friends backing their spot right across from us.  The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent catching up, drinking a little vino, and eating a wonderful meal that everyone contributed something to.  It also happened to be Denise's birthday so we sang happy birthday to her as we wiled away the evening hours laughing and giggling.

  Our surroundings for the next two days

 David & Denise's Sprinter Class B on left

John and Patty's Dodge Class B on right

One of the things that comes along with living full time on the road is that things break, or wear out from time to time.  On our way north from Blanding we stopped in a Rest Area to go to the bathroom about 17 miles from Moab.  As I usually do I got out my infrared temperature "gun" and checked all the tires.  I discovered, much to my dismay, that the right rear inside tire on the Newell is starting to show cupping marks, and signs of tread separation.  This tire was running over 20 degrees warmer that the other three on the rear of the coach, and that was a sign to me that something is going wrong with that tire.  It is really important to catch these things before they get to the point where the tire explodes and causes damage to the other tire, or to the coach.   These tires are 5.5 years old and have about 40,000 miles on them.....as you can see, the tread is still very deep.  The other three tires appear to be normal at this point, but I will be watching them like a hawk over the next few weeks as we work our way to Lake Tahoe.  As a result I contacted Good Sam's ERS department and made arrangements to have someone from a local tire company come out with a replacement tire Monday morning.

You can see in the picture where I have circled one of the problem areas in the tread....it is hard to see by there are several spots like this.

This is one of those things you just stop and deal with, and that is what we shall do.  I'm always grateful that I find these things before they become a catastrophic failure and result in really big damage and dollar outlays.

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Kool and Kitschy

I started off Saturday watching some English Premier soccer....Cardiff vs. Stoke which ended in a 1-1 tie.....each goal was the result of a penalty kick.  This is one of the things I am loving about retirement......I have time to watch soccer......okay, I "watched" a lot of soccer as a center referee for a few decades, but never really had time to sit down on a Saturday and watch English Premier, or any other professional matches for that matter.  I still miss being out on the pitch on a Saturday morning running with the young bucks, but I also like not having to get up at 5 am in order to be on the pitch for an 8 am match.

Even though it only got down to 43 degrees Friday night it still takes a while for it to warm up at 7,145' elevation, but eventually it did and we decided to drive into Blanding to spend a few hours "junking" and touring a couple of local museums.  There was still a hint of rain here and there, and we didn't want to do anything that might take us more than a 100 feet from shelter.

We found two thrift stores and even though kind of small, they both had quality items in stock.   Ultimately TLE was the only one who came away with anything......a couple more paperbacks.  I'm not sure where she is storing all the books she has bought lately, but there still seems to be room on her side of the bed for a few more books.  Me, I prefer to read books on my Kindle.....it takes up very little space.  There was a great set of Lynx golf clubs which I could have had for the paltry sum of $75 (probably worth close to $400), but I resisted the temptation.....I don't play enough golf to justify a set of clubs......yet.  I used to play golf a lot in my 20's and 30's, but when we got involved in youth soccer there was really no time for golf anymore.  Someday I will get back into it, just not now.

From there we headed for a couple of local museums, but on our way stopped off to browse through the local TruValue Hardware store......I love local hardware stores.....they even had free popcorn that we munched on as we walked around the store.

Next up was the Edge of Cedars State Park which features an ancient example of Puebloan life back around 1,000 AD.  It is actually a very cool museum.  I had no idea how advanced the pueblo culture was in this "four corners" area.  Some of the settlements actually had improved roads connecting them.  This is actually a very cool museum, and I would highly recommend it as a stop if you are in the area.

They have re-constructed a 1,000 year old Kiva that you can climb down a ladder and experience a little of what it might have been like to live in those times......they were apparently a short of stature people.

The admission price for the museum and grounds if $5 per adult.....a fair price for what they had to offer.  We actually spent quite a bit of time in the museum part of the park.

Next up was the Dinosaur Museum, which did have some interesting fossils, but seemed to be devoted more to the movie industry's depiction of dinosaurs.  However, the admission price was only $2.50 for seniors, so we took a flyer and went in.....they had a few cool dinosaur skeletons, and some petrified tree trunks, but beyond that it was just a little too"kitschy" for me.

By the time we finished it was closing in on 12:30 and we were both getting hungry.  TLE found a cool little hamburger place with good reviews called Patio Drive In.  They earn a 4 star rating from Yelp on 10 reviews, 4 stars from Urban Spoon on 23 reviews, and 4.5 stars from Trip Advisor on 16 reviews.  That seems about right to us.....the hamburgers were delicious.

They have outdoor dining, but it was 

toooo cold to sit outside this day

We sat right back there in the corner

We got back home around 1:30 and settled in for the afternoon to read.  I, of course, took a nap, but made significant progress on the book I am reading......before I knew it was 4:30, and the day was ebbing quickly.  I needed to straighten up the trailer for re-insertion of the VW on Sunday morning and decided to do it while it was still kind of "warm".

Around 7 I snapped this great picture of the sun setting and a little rain falling in the distance.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Fifth Saturday

You have to take a day off once in a while, even if you are on a perpetual site seeing tour.  We have to remind ourselves on occasion that we are not on vacation......just living on the road.  We sometimes feel like kids in a candy store, especially when we find ourselves in an area like southeast Utah.  So, as you can probably guess by now we took a vacation from our "vacation" on this 5th Saturday.  

Taking a day off means different things for TLE and I.....for TLE it means mostly ready a good book, or two.  For me it means doing something with my hands.  This Friday, for me, it meant cleaning the exterior of all our windows in the coach....there are 11 windows in our coach counting the two piece windshield, which I count as two.  We knew rain was coming in later in that evening, but I would rather have my windows get wet when they are clean, otherwise the dirt and dust that is on them streaks and then makes them look even worse.

While I was at it I wiped down the VW which was quite dusty from our 10 mile dirt road drive out to Muley Point on Thursday.  Once again my theory is the same for our car.....would rather it rain on a clean car, than on a dirty car....water is easy to wipe off, muddy dirt is quite another thing.

Once those housekeeping chores were done I got my mountain bike ready to ride.....right were you turn into our campground the paved road ends, but continues on as a dirt road.  I've wanted to explore that road ever since we got here.  Our elevation here in Devil's Canyon campground is around 7,145' according to my Garmin Edge bike computer.  I rode uphill for  a little over 2.5 miles before stopping to turn around.  I had gained almost 500' elevation in that distance.  The dirt road has a lot of sandy spots over that 2.5 mile stretch which made it quite a work out for me, especially at over 7,600'.  The downhill back to camp was my reward....I think I topped 25 mph at one point.

Our altimeter reads a tad higher than 7,145', but it's close

We both spent the rest of the afternoon reading.....for me there were a couple of interspersed naps.  Around 5 TLE served me some pollo asada street tacos, which made me weak in the knees as they always do.  Around 7 we started a fire in the portable fireplace and watched a somewhat cloudy sunset, and the approach of the storm front we were expecting.  It's funny, sometimes we will sit by the fire chatting like a couple of magpies, and other times like last night we will just sit quietly enjoying each others presence making occasional comments, but pretty much just being quiet.  

Around 9 we turned on the TV to watch "Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares", and were in bed by 11 pm awaiting the arrival of the forecast rain.  Around 1:30 am I woke up to hear that lovely rain on the aluminum roof that I love so much.....we have not had rain for a long, long time.

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A bridge too far?

Thursday morning it was sooooo cold!  I got up around 6 am to turn on all three gas heaters, and then quickly jumped back into bed.  How cold was it?  It was so cold I thought my feet were going to stick to the floor kind of cold.  It was don't put anything metallic near your lips or it might stick to them kind of cold.  The inside temperature was 46 degrees.....about the coldest we have ever experienced inside without heaters on.  Normally we are able to maintain a 20 degree differential between outside temps and inside temps without using our heaters, so that would mean it must have gotten colder than the forecast 30 degrees.

We had it in our minds to drive over to Natural Bridges National Park which was about 45 miles from our camp, but we were not budging an inch until it warmed up to at least 40!  Around 10 am it reached 40 degrees.....I guess that is one of the hazards of camping over 7,000' so early in the season.  At any rate we were on our way to see what we could see Thursday a little after 10 am.

One side trip almost everyone we met had almost insisted we take was SR 261 down to Muley Point Overlook.  Two days before we had been at the base of this overlook when we drove into Valley of the Gods, but didn't want to drive the 5 mile switchback dirt road to the top, and then another 5 mile dirt road to the overlook.  By coming down to Muley Point from the north on 261 we drove a little further, but it was all pavement until the beginning of the dirt road out to Muley Point, but was worth it.  The views were gigantic, and long.

Standing on the edge of Muley Point Overlook

 What we saw.....

I'm amazed TLE got this close to get this 

picture....it is a long ways down!

Surprisingly, for such a heavily used dirt road, the road out to Muley Point Overlook was in good condition, and we averaged about 26 mph.....there were only a couple of mildly rough sections.  The other surprising thing was we were actually getting a cell signal out here in the middle of no where.  As I pulled my phone out of my pocket to take some pictures I noticed I had an e-mail from very good friends David and Denise.  We first met David and Denise at our Austin, TX Newell mini rally back in April of 2009, and had an immediate connection.  We have since met up with them in Creede, CO (2009), Santa Fe, NM (2010), Denver, CO (2012), and Spearfish, SD (2013).  The e-mail said they would be in Moab, UT Sunday and Monday and would we be able to hook up with them?  That's exactly where we plan to be Sunday and Monday!  As if things couldn't get any better!  I replied that we would meet them in Moab Sunday afternoon!  Miss Serendipity I'm beginning to think you like us more than a little.....

From Muley Point we next headed back to SR 95 and up to Natural Bridges.  I knew just from the name of the park that there must be more than one "natural bridge", but I had no idea there were actually 3, and that you could hike to the base of each of them if you chose to do so.  The actual distance for each of the three hikes is not great, but the elevation loss and gain is significant.....at least for the two of us.   Total elevation loss and gain for all three hikes was about 700' for each trail.

Once again our Golden Age pass paid dividends once again granting us free admission to the park.  Once you leave the visitor's center you turn on to a one way 9 mile paved road that takes you to each of the vista points, and trailheads for each natural bridge.    

The first natural bridge you come to is "Sipapu", which means "place of emergence" in the Hopi language.  Just past that vista point is a picnic area.....by this time it was after 12 pm and we were both getting hungry.  We stopped there and ate our lunch before continuing on to the Sipapu trailhead.

Then it was time to start hiking.  The round trip distance for the trail down to Sipapu was about 1.2 miles.  There were numerous stairways they had built, along with handrails here and there, plus three ladders you had to negotiate to get to the bottom.  

 2nd of 3 ladders

1st ladder

Almost to the bottom

It took us a little over an hour to do this first hike, and it was strenuous, but it was nothing compared to the hike down to Kachina natural bridge....the next one up....this hike was 1.4 miles round trip.  There was only one short ladder, but there were hundreds of sandstone steps with a lot of hair pin turns that kind of leave you hanging out in space, or so it seemed......a lot of high consequence places......if you fall the consequences are deadly.

Kachina natural bridge

The final bridge, Owachomo (rock mound in Hopi) for me anyway, was the most spectacular of the three....the round trip hike was only .4 miles, but after the prior two hikes out the canyon our tanks were on empty as we climbed back up for the third time.  Nevertheless, we loved this bridge the most.

Owachomo natural bridge 

Still smiling before we start our hike out

The hike back to the top from Owachomo was a grind and seemed much longer that the advertised .2 miles.  "What a day!" we both repeated over and over again as we drove the almost 50 miles home.  In all we covered over 150 miles, but it was well worth it.  We are so grateful for our little VW Bug that gets such great mileage, and drives so well!

We arrived back home totally spent energy wise.....the first thing we did was change clothes, grab a couple of cold ones and enjoy the view....a great way to wind down after such an amazing day.

Thanks for stopping by!

"The Devil you say!"

Only 11 days as of Wednesday morning until we will need to be in Sioux Falls, SD, so we've only got 3, or 4 more days here in southeast Utah's Canyonlands before we need to be motivating onward.   We set a high bar for ourselves this day and moved north 31 miles......we don't sound very motivated do we........of course I know you want to hear the rest of the story, so here goes.

With such a short distance to travel we saw no need to blast out of Bluff at the crack of dawn so we lazed around until about 10 am, then walked over to "Comb Ridge Coffee" for coffee and breakfast.  On the way we passed by a couple of old trucks.

 I really like old trucks....the stories these trucks could tell!

Yelp gives Comb Ridge Coffee 4.5 stars on 20 reviews and we would have to agree......they hand pour hot water through the freshly ground coffee beans into your pre-heated cup, and it is a large cup.  They use all fresh ingredients in their food preparation.....I had the "Boat Launcher" which consisted of two pieces of home made multi grain bread, scrambled eggs, ham and potatoes.  What a pleasant surprise!

 After that gastronomical interlude we strolled back to our coach, put the car in the trailer and thus began our "long" drive north through Blanding up to Devil's Canyon Campground, which happens to be a US Forest campground, which means we only pay one half of the daily $10 fee.  The campground is located at just over 7,200' elevation......close to 3,000' higher than Bluff.  Along with that 3,000' increase in elevation comes much cooler temperatures.

US 191 north of Bluff is in excellent condition and is, as I like to say, "as smooth as a baby's butt"......just after you leave Bluff the road begins to climb quickly, and within a few minutes you are up on top of those bluffs I took pictures of yesterday.

As we cruised through Blanding we saw a couple of RV parks that were quite attractive, but resisted the urge to camp in town, and continued on the extra 8 miles to our destination, and are we ever glad we did.  We left the high desert behind in Blanding and continued our elevation gain topping out in an actual forest just as we turned into the campground.  This is a popular campground, and just re-opened for the summer season a week ago.  The view back toward Blanding is long and beautiful.  We were able to snag a nice pull through spot (#2) that fit our 62' perfectly.....it was just 11:30 am, but we decided to take a day off from site seeing and just take at easy.......

Hmmmmm, that didn't last long......we have pretty decent Verizon service here, and 3 bars of 3G, but for some reason my phone kept dropping an important call I was trying to make, so we decided to drive back into Blanding so I could take care of business.  Once our business was completed, we decided to drive back north past Devil's Canyon Campground to the next town, Monticello, just to check it out.....it was only another 10 miles.  Both Blanding and Monticello are nice towns, but not the charm of Bluff.

By the time we got home it was closing in on 3:30, but now that we are in a state that observes "Daylight Savings Time" the sun goes down later.  We spent the rest of the afternoon reading, and listening to an XM radio station called "Classic Vinyl" (channel 26), which I am coming to like a lot.

Around a quarter to 6 I got our BBQ out, and got it warming up so I could grill a couple of filets, plus some pollo asada we had bought a few days ago at the Safeway.  The pollo asada is for street tacos Thursday, but the steaks were for Wednesday night.  TLE prepared a nice salad, grilled onions and mushrooms for the sides......we chased this great meal with a bottle of Pinot Noir.

But wait, there's more......I also got out the portable fireplace for a fire later that evening so we could watch the sun set, and what a lovely fire it was.....there was some Scotch consumed, and a couple of cigars.

Around a quarter to 9 we headed inside to watch TV for a couple of hours, and then hit the hay about 11.....the overnight temperatures got down to 30 degrees, so there were a couple extra blankets on the bed.  When I got up at 6 am this morning to turn the heaters on it was 46 degrees inside the coach........

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Miss Serendipity called my "Bluff"

Our Jello plans for Tuesday were to drive on up to Blanding, UT, park the coach and do some more site seeing, however, Miss Serendipity had a lot to say about that.....but yet again I get ahead of myself.

The temps got down to the mid 20's Monday night, but with 30 amps we stayed pleasantly cozy in our coach.  I was up around 7 am and trying to write my blog with very thin broadband.......there was a lot of "weeping and gnashing of teeth", but by 9 am the deed was done and we were unplugging and heading out for Blanding.  As we rolled up US 163 we were captivated by the giant views, but there was no place on this narrow highway to pull over in our behemoth to take pictures.  About 8 miles before Bluff, UT we hit a 10% downhill grade which took our breath away, and then just as quickly we were chugging back up a 10% grade in 2nd gear at about 21 mph. By the time we rolled into Bluff we were thinking we had to drive the VW back to take pictures after we got parked in Blanding, but then out of the corner of my eye I spied a funky little RV park called Cottonwood RV Park and decided on the spot we had driven the Newell as far as she was going to go this day.....a whopping 19 miles.

We pulled in, but no one was in the office so we followed the instructions on the sign and picked a spot, parked, hooked up and then headed out in the VW for a day that will go down in our memories as one of the most amazing days of serendipity we have ever experienced.  We started back tracking along US 163 thinking we would just find a place to stop along the highway back towards Mexican Hat, take a few pix and head back to Bluff, but one thing led to another and before we knew it we had driven almost 6 miles on a dirt road to the Valley of the Gods and were just blown away by the scenery. 

A closer view of Jack Rabbit Rock

Jack Rabbitt Rock in the back ground

Then as we were heading back to to US 163 we saw a sign for  Goosenecks State Park......to think we almost passed this turn by.  It was only 4 miles to the park so we both almost simultaneously said "why not!".  Here is what we found.....

Edwin and Lydia in their 2004 Newell....

and their amazing view below 

Literally Edwin and Lydia's view out their driver's side windows

You can camp here on this BLM land for 14 days at no charge over looking the San Juan River as it winds back and forth through this labyrinth of canyons!  I still can't believe we almost bypassed this amazing place.  We had taken dozens of pictures and were walking back to our car when I suggested we walk out to the area where we saw several BIG rigs parked along the canyon wall just to check it out for future reference......as we walked along I began to focus on one coach in particular, and then suddenly realized it was a Newell!  Well, we had to walk over and meet these smart people.  They are Edwin and Lydia from Holland.  The spend 3 months at a time in this country touring in their Newell.  Every three months they fly back to Holland for 3 months, and then back to the USA for 3 more months, and so it goes.  

We spent almost an hour talking with them, and now even as I write I cannot believe we almost missed an opportunity to meet two such interesting people......if we had not made that right turn we would have been the poorer for it.  After an hour we knew we had to get going and let our hosts get back to enjoying their view, so we exchanged contact information with them and headed back to Bluff just amazed at how this day had turned out..... and to think it wasn't over by a long shot!

Just before we arrived back in Bluff we saw a sign for "Sand Island", on the right again, so we hung a right hand turn to see what Miss Serendipity had in store for us......well we found out this is another National Forest campground where we could dry camp for $5 per night with our Golden Age pass.  In addition, there are very old petroglyphs  on the sandstone walls along the San Juan River.

From there is was just a mile or so into Bluff.....when we had arrived earlier that morning we had not really driven through town as Cottonwood RV Park is on the western edge of the town, so we took this time to drive to the eastern edge......along the way we saw a coffee shop that we thought we would return to in a few minutes, but that plan was short lived.  After fueling up the VW one more time (still getting 30 mph!) we continued on to the east side of town and found this funky cafe called Twin Rocks Cafe.....how it got its name becomes immediately apparent......I'd hate to be in the restaurant when those twin rocks decide to fall.

We weren't sure we were going to eat there until we saw on their menu they served Wasatch Polygamy Porter, one of our favorites!  Well, that sealed the deal and we grabbed an outdoor table and put in our order.  We sat there just looking at each other and shaking our heads.  We started out the day with a very vague plan.......the best kind on a day such as this turned out.....and were just blown away.

Along with our Porters we ordered two appetizers.....some jalapeno poppers and Navajo Cheese Crisp (Navajo fry bread) and they were delicious!  Yelp gives this establishment 3.5 stars, but we would give them 4.5 in a hearbeat.  Great service, great food, and the best brews!

Those rocks hang right over the cafe!

We arrived home about 5 pm with smiles of self satisfaction that you couldn't have slapped off our faces if you tried.  As the sun was setting I captured the two following pictures.....one from inside the coach and one from outside of the same view....this is what we have to put up with!

It was a grand day and we are profusely grateful to Miss Serendipity for giving us a wink and a nod Tuesday!

Thanks for stopping by!