July 18, 2020 Moab, UT (Day 2)

Boy, it was good to sleep in today! We opened the front windshield shade to see bright blue, cloudless sky. The temp was 77 at 8:00, but started to rise quickly. We decided to take a ride into town and check it out. We were here a few years ago, but I’m sure things have changed since then. We will be celebrating our 38th wedding anniversary on Friday, so we also wanted to scout out a good place to have a celebratory dinner. Bob put on the appropriate shirt and we left to go into town around 11:00.

It looked eerily quiet in town with not much traffic or people walking on the streets. There did seem to be a lot of business with people renting Jeeps, OHV’s, and taking Jeep tours. We drove all the way to the other side of town to check out the campground we had stayed in when we were here before.

They had made some renovations and additions to the place, like adding some teepees and permanent travel trailers to rent. The campground was not full which seemed strange for this time of year. We don’t know when “high season” is here in Moab, so maybe it’s not summertime when it’s 100 degrees. We checked out another campground that we had originally reserved for our visit here and were glad we changed our minds and ended up where we are. Our current campground is shady, quiet, and the sites are very private. The scenery on our drive to the south side of town was beautiful with the red rock bluffs and buttes all around.

We drove back into town and parked the Jeep to walk around. We started on the shady side of the street first.

We made a few t-shirt purchases and I bought a Christmas ornament to add to my collection. I think it was an appropriate choice.

Whenever it got too hot, we’d duck into a store to cool off and look around. We checked out the restaurants in town to see if we could find one we liked for our dinner on Friday. We stopped in at Zax to have a beer and a snack around 12:30. (That might be our choice for dinner on Friday.)

While we were sitting outside eating our wings, we kept seeing everyone going down the street next to us and so we wondered what was down there, Bob checked his Google Maps and saw that it was a road that followed Kane Creek Canyon. We thought we’d check it out. It was a beautiful road that followed the Colorado River though the Kane Creek Canyon.

The Colorado River was moving very slowly so that we could see the reflections in the water.

We drove deeper and deeper in the canyon. There were some unusual rock formations on the cliffs along the river.

We came upon this adobe brick house built right into the rocks. It had some very beautiful designs build into the rocks.

It looked like there were some old mines in the rocks that were either closed up and blocked off, or open and someone was living in it. We eventually came to the Kane Creek OHV Trailhead.. There were a few trailers parked there, but we didn’t see any OHV’s.

There was a map there that showed all the trails that you could take starting from this location.

Along the river were a few campgrounds. One had some campers in it. The other two were closed. The campground was placed right along the river.

We only went as far as the OHV Trailhead and then turned around. From there, the road climbed up along the cliff and we weren’t prepared to go on. We were glad that we had decided to explore this road. It was so scenic and we were unaware that it was even there.

We went back to the campground to spend some time with Auggie. Along the driveway of our campsite, there are some yellow rose bushes. They are in full bloom now and very fragrant. I cut a few to bring them into the bus and their fragrance now fills the bus!

Around 3:30, we went down to the pool for a swim. By now the temp was 100 degrees, but the pool water was perfect. Bob sat in the shade doing some reading while I cooled off in the pool.

We went back to the bus to hang out until dinner. Bob has been researching a good 4WD trail that we can take tomorrow. He bought a book called Moab, UT Backroads and 4-Wheel Drive Trails that was recommended to us while we were in Montrose, CO. It’s a great book that gives a detailed description of trails on 3 levels-Easy, Moderate, and Difficult. We will definitely start with an easy trail! We took our walk after dinner around 8:00. It was still 98 degrees at that time. I look forward to the beautiful sunsets every night.