May 16, 2013 - Dinosaur NM to Moab

May 16 7:24 Woke up sometime while it was still dark, batteries dead, sleep apnea machine not working. This was our 1st night of dry camping. Any idea how to turn off the sleep number bed? We both got us at 6:30. Could not make coffee, did have enough juice to have water for teeth brushing, that was about it. Got the bed made, litter box cleaned, floor swept and then at 7:15 decided to go ahead and get on the road. Could not bring in slides until we started the rig or make Mike’s coffee. Haha, got propane, I can make hot chocolate. We...

May 15, 2013 - travel day

Our first view of the Rockies came about 9 a.m. today. Lots of farmland through this stretch of Colorado. Today was a travel day to get us closer to Arches National Park. We stopped for lunch in Glenwood Spring and, lucky us, Wednesday is free pie day! So after a good half sandwich and salad for me and a half sandwich and good soup for Ev we ordered pie. Ev opted for the tin roof sundae pie and I tried the strawberry rhubarb. Soup and salad were wonderful, pies just so-so! Neither of us finished so you can imagine how they tasted. You know...

May 7, 2013 - Canyonlands National Park: Island in the Sky

We’re staying at an RV Park that Fodor’s claims is “shady” and “quaint.” Most of the trees are newly planted, so it’s indeed shady if you are three feet tall. But maybe quaint, in its own way. There’s an old church building on the grounds. The site was used for some of the filming of the 1996 remake of the movie “Riders of the Purple Sage”. Note the picturesque background. Good place to film a western! Today we explored the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands National Park. Unlike the Needles section that we visited earlier, this...

May 6, 2013 - Arches N.P., Day 2

Yesterday we saw the first “half” of Arches…that is, about halfway out to the end of the road. So today is “Arches, Part 2”. Our first stop was at Sand Dune Arch. This we had to see …an arch made out of a sand dune? We followed the trail through some giant Entrada Sandstone fins and there it was…and nice arch over a sand dune. One thing we had started to notice was that many of the fins remind one of an elephant. There is a place we visited yesterday near Double Arch that is named “Parade of Elephants” but really a lot of the fins look...

May 5, 2013 - At Arches National Park

We packed up and left our campsite outside of Monticello and drove to Moab, Utah, which is near the entrance to both Arches National Park and the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park. We were able to leave the trailer at the RV park and start our tour of Arches this morning. Jonathan is feeling much better today. Unlike Canyonlands, Moab and Arches NP are bustling with activity. We arrived right on the tail end of some ATV/four wheel drive rally, and RVs towing ATVs and Jeeps were leaving the area in droves. But other...

May 3, 2013 - Colorado River Canyon

Today we drove about 30 miles east on highway 128 along the Colorado River. There are several primitive BLM campsites along the river that were fully occupied by tent campers as well as RV dry campers. They use these campsites as base camp for rock climbing, bicycling and hiking. We turned south off highway 128 and drove two miles along a curves, narrow paved road toward Castle Valley. We expected to see a small town with the obligatory general store/gas station, firehouse etc. We were surprised to find a large green valley with thousands...

May 1, 2013 - Moab - How much can you jam into one day?

I got up and worked 5 hours early and then at 11am we moved the coach from a dry camping overflow site into a full hookup site and at Noon We were at the Visitor's centr at Arches National Park. We drove the 19-20 miles of roads and saw all the sites. We hiked about 2.5 miles to see two arches not visible form the road. These were Delicate Arch which is the one on the Utah license plates and Landscape Arch which is the longest at about 300 feet. The hikes were well worth it. At about 5pm we started up the road across the river form the...

Apr 30, 2013 - Canyonlands

We spent 3 six hour days in Canyonlands. Once again I must say that pictures from a novice photographer cannot do justice to the beauty that surrounds you. Canyonlands is comprised of four area, Island in the sky, The Maze, The Needles and The Rivers, which are the Colorado and the Green Rivers. The pictures here are taken in and around the Island in the Sky, the Maze and the Green River running thru their canyons. The Needles area was 65 miles south of us and did not have as many accessible view points so we decided not to drive there. I'm...

Apr 30, 2013 - Moab, Utah - What a beautiful place.

We drove about 180 miles today and got into Moab, UT about 4pm. We got set up and had the car gassed up and were out exploring bu 5:15pm with suggestions from Denny Cool on where to go. We went up on the rim and visited the State park and saw Dead Horse Point. Then we came down a 4 wheelin road called Gemini Bridges that took us down from the rim on a trail that was easy but still fun. We got out just before dark. The picture I post is of us stopped a few miles before we got to Moab.

Apr 28, 2013 - Petroglyths

We have discovered that Utah's National Parks have many petroglyphs inside them. They were embedded into the rocks thousands of years ago by the Ute Indians. Being inside the National Parks protects them for future generations to study and enjoy. However, the petroglyphs in Sego Canyon are on public lands and some of them have been defaced. Canyonlands was established as a National Park in 1964 by Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall. The park comprises 334,000 acres, divided into four sections, Island in the Sky, The Maze, The Needles,...

Apr 27, 2013 - Arches National Park

I started this entry a few days ago, but poor Internet svc made uploading the photos impossible. By the time you read this we will have spent four 6 hour days in Arches. I took so many pics that I filled 3 GB of memory card. Everywhere you look there is a photo-op. I cannot find words to describe how beautiful the National Parks of Utah are. The picture of the Landscape Arch is particularly special as it may not last too many more years. I hiked 3.4 miles found trip for the picture at about 6000 ft elevation. Of note about Landscape is...

Apr 27, 2013 - Visiting Moab

Hiking. Biking. B.A.S.E Jumping. Mountain Biking. Kayaking. Off-road driving. Tandem Parachuting. Arches National Park. These are just some of the adventures Moab, Utah has to offer and people flock to this small city in Utah to experience them. We’ve been here before and we opted for a mild adventure of hiking. (No tandem parachuting for us.) We visited nearby Arches National Park. The drive on the park road was as stunning as the first time we saw it. We went on a hike to a sandstone arch named Double-O in a section called Devils Garden....