Today was a travel day of 171 miles. We left at 9:15 and will miss this beautiful area of the state. We took Highway 50 north to Grand Junction. It was another bright, sunny morning with very few clouds in the sky. We traveled back the way we had come a week ago and it was still dry and mostly barren in the high country desert.
We passed through Grand Junction and traffic was light getting onto I-70. I-70 paralleled the beautiful bluffs of Colorado National Monument.
As we neared the Utah border, we started to see more green.
We crossed the border into Utah around 11:00.
The Roan Plateau paralleled us to the north.
A UPS triple trailer truck passed us on the highway. We haven’t seen one of those in a long time.
The road went on forever and ever.
There were long strings of trains sitting idle on the tracks at the base of the hills.
We made a quick fuel stop just before our exit onto Highway 191 and ate our lunch on the road. We exited onto Highway 191 going south towards Moab. At the exit, there was this unusual gas station/convenience store/cafe. It was called the Twilight Zone and looked very interesting!
Traveling south to Moab, the terrain changed dramatically. Now we were seeing red rock bluffs on both sides and canyons.
Off in the distance, the higher elevations in the mountains were seeing some rain.
Traffic coming north out of Moab was heavy with RV’s. It was checkout time in the campgrounds, I guess. There were sections of rocks that looked green. I had to look it up to see what it was. They call it “crusty soil” made up of cyanobacteria, green algae, fungi, lichens, and mosses. They create a matted crust on the sand. I will have to get a closer look at it when I get a chance. It was actually very pretty against the red rocks.
The road took us through the canyon and the red rocks were very striking.
Highway 191 took us right past Arches National Park. It was busy at the Visitor Center, but there were no lines waiting to get into the park. We did see lots of cars on the bluff roads in the park from the highway. Look closely and you can see the cars on the road.
The entrance sign to Moab welcomed us.
We crossed the Colorado River into town.
There was some road construction on the north side of town. It was hard to tell where the road to the campground was.
We pulled in and approached the office at 1:00 for check-in.
From the bus, I could see the tenting area of the campground. It looked really nice. We’ll have to take a walk in there and check it out closer.
We disconnected the Jeep there in the entrance. I went to the office to pick up our paperwork which was hanging on the bulletin board outside the door. There were a lot of people yet to check in. I looked for our reservation and found two reservations for SHAW. I looked at the info inside and determined which one was ours by the departure date–July 25. We found out that the other SHAW was also from Florida–Ft. Myers. What a coincidence! We drove to our site #M31.
We have a deluxe site which is very nice. The site faced the red rock bluffs.
Each area is nicely landscaped at the back of the site and there is a stone pathway that weaves its way through the campsites. There are benches placed along the way.
There is a man-made pond nearby and a creek that runs behind the campsites.
We got hooked up quickly in the heat. The temp was now a toasty 99 degrees. It was nice to have some “down time” today to get caught up on some things. I did some laundry in the bus and tidied up a bit staying cool in the AC. Even Auggie didn’t want to spend much time outside in the heat of the afternoon. We will plan our activities here to get started early in the morning in order to avoid the heat as much as we can. The skies clouded over around dinner time and it even looked like it might rain. We ate dinner and took our evening walk to check out the campground once it got a little cooler. We discovered the pool and dog park. Auggie liked all the smells there.
We face the west so we are able to view the sunset from the front window. When the sun sets here, it lights up the red rock cliffs all around us.
Bob hung out his hummingbird feeder on the tree near our window. Now we’ll wait for the birds to arrive.
We are looking forward to spending a week here and doing some sightseeing at a leisurely pace. Life is good! (Note: Thanks to everyone for reading our blog and sharing your comments with us. It’s good to know someone’s out there.)
Hope leisurely pace means do nothing one day.😎