Moab, Briefly

We blitzed through Moab which is the hub of several well known and beautiful national parks. A dog in a national park is a pain, 102 degrees is a pain and a wide longing to revisit southwest Colorado makes it pretty much impossible not to step on the gas. But I did get a burger.

It was so squishy I had to use cutlery and Layne expressed a desire to humiliate me do she took the picture. Utah has moved smoothly into the 21st century and allows the sale of alcohol with food, even a symbolic snack but the best news for me is that draft beer has to be no more than 5% alcohol by volume. 

What this meant for me is that I could order an English amber ale that didn’t blow my nostrils off with bitter hoppy nastiness. I quite like Utah it turns out. Check out this very sensible sign on a highway with an 80 mph speed limit: 

In other words sensible passing is encouraged on these wide open roads. They have full passing lanes too for the less able, but capable drivers barely have to notice the 65 mph heffalump chugging along on the right. Where there is a dashed line you can have at it. A few educated souls did. 

We left our free campground south of Scipio earlier than usual in an effort to finally make some miles. We were a bit anxious about the next stage of our journey as we would be hitting proper desert and high temperatures and we were wondering where we might fiend the night. There was even the possibility we might have to pay to sleep. Horrors!  

It’s a fact well known to van dwellers that altitude decreases ambient temperatures and the trick to being a successful summer nomad is to pursue the cool air found up mountains. 4,000 feet around here is way too low on a hundred degree day. We prefer 6,000 minimum and 7,000 is comfortable sleeping altitude. 8,000 feet above sea level is bliss. 

Meanwhile we had low altitude, five thousand foot valleys to deal with. Salina (“Sal-eye-na”) Utah: 

Layne hit bakery with her usual restraint while the two little piggies went for a walk. I could see myself staggering out of Mom’s with my arms laden with pies and pastries; the trouble was so could Layne. 

Rusty took off running with me in hot pursuit. He was ready to stretch his legs and he cared not one jot about my camera. 

Utah reeks of prosperity. I don’t know what’s really going on but these little towns are filled with pretty little homes, tidy yards and give off a fog of sober industry. Perhaps I’m just over thinking it but Latter Day Saints seem like they’re on to something, too bad I’m an iconoclast and not a joiner. 

I thought the Temples were closed to outsiders and the big kahuna in Salt Lake City was the last time I was there but here they were inviting visitors. Okay then. 

I grew rather fond of the Mormons when they spoke up about immigrants citing their own difficult migrant history. They seemed wedded to their history and decency in a way that has become quite rare. 

I would have volunteered for a haircut at a barber with a sense of humor had they only been open. 

Layne was slightly grumpy when we got back and I was presented with the oddest scones she had purchased. “This is fry bread” she said indignantly. And it was and it had a strawberry sauce and boy, was it delicious. I’d have bought two for me which is why I walked Rusty and didn’t go breakfast shopping. Definitely not a scone! 

I remember I-70 through Colorado from years ago weaving through canyons of red rock and the Utah portion did a fair job of imitating that. It was a gorgeous drive. 

Serious stuff ahead whenever they drop the speed limit from 80. 

And then south half an hour from the freeway to Moab, land of the RVs and off roaders and sportspeople. 

With 5,000 year round residents Moab is a small village and doesn’t really have the pretensions to wealth that we found in Sedona. However, like Sedona there is no there there. It’s a long main drag with Razr rentals and bike shops and tour guides and outfitters all ready to raft you and national park you and rock hop you. 

The land equivalent of 21st century jet skis. We’re used to seeing them on weekends in Mexico where the wealthy run down the poor. 

I’m glad we drove through and checked it out. We really need to come back, perhaps with Gary from Tennessee who enticed us with a river walk/raft trip that got Layne doing some research. There are national parks to visit. 

This was our choice for lunch, kokopelli notwithstanding! 

Our plan was to press on south towards the sight we came to see known as Muley Point. To get there we wanted to spend the night above eight thousand feet. 

An hour’s drive south of Moab. 

Tina place called Monticello oddly enough and not in Virginia. 

Turn right until you hit 8,000 feet above sea level and the temperature drops from 102 degrees to 86. 

While it is convenient for a night it’s not my favorite thing to be in an organized campground even a simple national forest site. Layne was tired and as it was only ten bucks for seniors we were settled quickly and she instantly took a nap. 

And no I had never previously heard of Mant-La Sal National Forest. So much stuff to discover, so I had a quick hunt around the web.  The Manti Forest Reserve was founded in 1903 consisting of half a million acres. They added La Sal in 1949 and renamed the whole 1.2 million acre mess in 1950. It boggles my mind to think this vast area of Utah and Colorado has been enjoyed since before I was born and it has never entered my consciousness! I have a lot more driving to do. 

There are several organized campgrounds with very nice sites but we are doing one night then we are off for some more wild camping. 

Great Basin National Park

Never heard of it, I shall throw up my hands in self defense and admit this is a national park that had never crossed my consciousness. Unlike you, I have now been there and I liked it. 

We drove the scenic road for 15 minutes to to 10,000 feet, turned around and came back down. We had met three young men from New Jersey on vacation in a rental car and they said the hiking was splendid but at these altitudes I get a headache and walking a parking lot is strenuous so we limited ourselves to enjoying the peaks from aboard GANNET2. 

I don’t think the photos do justice to this place but it is quite spectacular, and you’ll have to take that on trust.  

Layne was not entirely enamored of the drive up the perfectly smooth scenic road as it was a tad bit too scenic on the drop off side. I tried to stick to the middle of the road but even though this was Friday there was some traffic.

Great Basin was established in 1986 and includes the 13,000 foot Wheeler’s Peak and the South Snake Mountains. There are also bristlecone pines growing here, some of the oldest living things which though revered for their age are not the most majestic tree you will see. I guess we’d all be a bit gnarly if we were thousands of years old. 

Apparently the Great Basin refers to the area of land between the Sierra Nevada and Wasatch Mountain ranges.

The park snipped off 77,000 of those acres which is how it got it’s name. It’s basically a huge pimple in a vast sweep of loneliness as Highway 50 runs close by, and as we are now sick of hearing, that is…The Loneliest Road in America!

I had been thinking, for no special reason about Senator Harry Reid, the Mormon from Nevada, one of those old school compromising negotiating getting things done politicians I feel we could use more of in these civil war times. And he it was that got the park created. Of course he was! 

And on the subject of old fashioned there wasn’t any toll booth at the entrance, just a welcoming sign and an open road. So much for our Senior Pass getting us free access. Free access for all lowers the tone I think. 

Anyway I’ve seen Great Basin, at least a snippet of it and you haven’t. Later on I confess we passed several much better know parks and skipped them entirely. I think Moab will need a return visit one fine day. Anyway back to Baker Nevada, one of those places that Hollywood made famous as places of few people and all of them of ill repute. Baker was indeed not much but what there is proves to be quite pleasant. Baker as seen on the descent from the park: 

According to the guys from New Jersey the superintendent of the park is retiring and has come to love this place so much he and his wife are staying and very glad we are too even though we never met them. I know hot showers you take for granted in suburbia but for us finding this on the road is always a pleasure. 

Unlimited hot showers with lots of room to stretch out and all for two bucks on the honor system. 

I love how these people appeal to our better natures! Being the rule follower I stressed out about leaving it as I found it. They have a washer/dryer too but we had no change and postponed that chore. 

I am usually banned from shopping as Layne finds my liberal nature annoying in the food aisles, complaining it’s like shopping with a six year old and she’s always putting stuff back. And yes, I’d have got four strawberry/rhubarb muffins not two, had I been shopping, as they were delicious. At least even with Mrs Grouch-Potato we did at least get a whole one each. 

I did my job and walked Rusty. He liked Baker and we patrolled several blocks of dusty back streets. The heart of the Baker Empire. You really want to stop off here even if you don’t care for the unknown park. 

Be Nice. The honor system rules. 

Rusty sniffed and I did my usual: 

The school: 

We had to keep going as Layne for some unaccountable reason wanted to make tracks. I had sunk back into the GANNET2 slow motion torpor of travel, ready for no reason to cease forward motion. There was a rather lovely shady campground in Baker not too very far from the excellent wine selection in the general store…but we had Utah in our sights: 

Then we saw a big pink Casino sign plumb in the middle of nowhere. There was a gas station and diner and some rooms detached from a motel lobby. In a flash the casino passed by, then the Utah State Line Sign then the motel rooms safely on the non libertine side of the parking lot. “Next Services 88 Miles” and they were not kidding, not a little bit. 

Highway 50 to Delta, Utah (Mountain Time Zone) was the emptiest, loneliest stretch of roadway since we got on the Lonely Road at Carson City. 

I found a water faucet in Delta City park and after some Laurel and Hardy hijinks with a not-quite-long-enough hose I had GANNET2 facing the right way and just close enough to load ten gallons. Rusty watched with interest. 

We droned on through countryside properly farmed by farmers living in clean near tidy well appointed homes. Utah is well groomed and the road signs are crystal clear.  The place was growing on me. 

Farming not desert. 

Blink your eyes and you will drive through Scipio (“Sip-eee-oh”) Utah population 290.  It was founded in 1859 with a fort as you might expect in those wild frontier days. It was named Round Valley but a young Mormon lawyer and newspaper editor named Scipio Africanus Kenner helped locals get title to the land to create a Mormon city in the valley. 

Lest there be any doubt Kenner was white (less than 2 percent of Utah is black as early Mormons didn’t want blacks in their church) but Kenner’s bizarre first names were in honor of a Roman general (!) Scipio Africanus conqueror of Africa so called, after he thrashed Hannibal’s brother and later Hannibal himself in 202 BC. I guess Kenner’s parents were just another set of doting weirdos naming their children in weirdly inappropriate ways. Anyway I missed Scipio entirely until Layne pointed out we passed through it, hence no pictures of nothing very much. 

Our stop for the night was an iOverlander free wild camp on the road to a forest service campground at Maple Grove a few miles south of Scipio. 

Not bad thought I and Layne seconded it however Rusty got freaked out by the presence of cows in the distance and their turds close up. He stalked around sniffing the cow pats she staring suspiciously into the bushes before retreating to his bed to give his heart time to calm down.

We arrived around six in the evening but it didn’t get dark till nine so layne and I had time to enjoy the extraordinary surroundings. 

The water was freezing, not refreshing and after a minute I was out with numb feet. Rusty never went close even after he started exploring a bit. 

Impossible burgers and so to bed only after a flock of wild geese freaked Rusty out one last time while roosting in the trees. A dog’s life indeed.