Arches National park

Tuesday: (04/30) Spinach and ham omelet leftovers with toast for breakfast. We both have gotten a cold so we stopped in and filled up the Jeep gas tank and got some cough drops as well. We drove out to Arches National park. It's only a couple of miles the other side of the river from town. We explored all the viewpoints and Lou and I did a few short level hikes and I did a bunch of other hikes. My last hike in the Devil's Garden Area was intended to be a short little 2 mile hike to a couple of the arches but I continued on making it an 8 or more mile hike to see all of them. Unfortunately, I only took one bottle of water. After coming back on the Primitive Trail I was more worn out than after my Grand Canyon Hike. Must be the cold. Lunch was olive loaf and horseradish cheese sandwiches. Dinner was a chicken pot pie for me and leftover tri-tip and fries with fresh kale for Lou.


Above is the Park Avenue area and on the right Balance Rock.


North and Turret arches in the distance. On the right above is the South Arch through the Turret Arch.


North and South arches on left and the Double Arch on the right.


Pine Tree Arch.


Two photos of the Landscape Arch. One from the usual trail photo opportunity location and one from the rocks above it.

 
The trail out to Landscape arch is a nice wide improved trail. After than the trail on up to Partition, Navajo, and Double O Arches was not improved climbing up ridges.


"Trail" above Landscape Arch.


Partition Arch and Navajo Arch.

 
Double O Arch and Private Arch.

 
A nice group of flowers along the trail and some of the rocks seem from the primitive trail.


The Primitive Trail wasn't too primitive. It was usually well marked with cairns but I did manage to loose the trail a couple of times requiring me to double back.

Kane Creek , Chicken Corner, and Lockhart Basin Roads

Monday: (04/29) Corned beef hash and eggs for breakfast. We got an early start for our drive today. When I got to the road we wanted to explore, I finally remembered we needed to fill the gas tank. Not because we were too low but because I don't like going into the wilderness with less than the fullest gas tank possible. Since we stopped for gas, we also stopped and filled our water bottles at the market nearby. Then, I remembered I forgot my camera/phone so off we went back home to get it. Now 1.5 hours later than our early start time we were off out Kane Creek Road. There are several campgrounds and lots of other campsites along the road. most might be good for future stays. We climbed up Hurrah Pass, the road that was just below our viewpoint at Anticline lookout a few days ago. Frankly, it wasn't as bad driving it as we thought it might be when we were watching the cars slowly travel the road. When we got out near the river we stopped at the Base Camp Lodge. We chatted with the proprietor for a while  then continued on out the Chicken Corner Road. It was a total of 28 miles from Moab out to Chicken Corner. The road just ends on a cliff above the Colorado River. The name of the destination seems to be the short trail along the cliff to the mesa on the otherside. Many people chicken out and don't go around the corner on the narrow trail several hundred feet above the river on the edge of the cliff. We enjoyed out ham and cheese sandwich lunches there. We then returned about seven miles back on Chicken Corner Road to where the Lockhart Basin Road we'd off of it. We attempted to find a road that went anywhere . Three times we crawled over impossible rocky spots and steps, between narrow spots only to end up at the ends of box canyons. Obviously other people get lost too because there were lots of tire tracks going our way. At 3pm we decided to call it quits and return. Actually Lou did. She was getting tired of having the jeep cling to the steep hills and ledges.When we got back to Kane Creek Road we took the primitive extension of that road a couple of miles out to a point we didn't want to continue on. It was a real jeep road and rather fun as well.The we returned to town and stopped at the Moab Brewery for dinner. We both had the BBQ tri-tip dinners. I had one of their brews as well. All very good. We stopped by the market for some bread then returned home. We had tea overlooking the river. then retired for the day. I did some work posting photos. Lou worked puzzles.


The road never looks as bad in pictures as it feels when we negotiate it. I also never seem to stop to take a picture at the really interesting spots in the road.


There are some interesting rocks like the columns on he left. Also some early flowers. Judging by the flower buds, we came out just a few days too early for a real flower show.


The scenery is grand. On the right is the trail at Chicken Corner.


Above left is a picture from the trail back to where the road ended and where  we had lunch. On the right are more of the early flowers.


A couple of the rough spots in the road.


One of the box canyons we ended up at.

Bill Granstaff Canyon Hike

Sunday: (04/28) We bought a big package of sausage the other day and morning warmup time is the best time to cook them. We bake them and just heat the house with the oven rather than the heater to take the morning chill off. Unfortunately it actually wasn't too cold in the morning. Fresh baked sausage with leftover latkas for breakfast.


I then drove about 4.5 miles back toward town to the Bill Granstaff Canyon Trailhead. The hike was about 2.5 miles back to the Morning Glory Arch. Of course there were a few flowers along the trail. The trail winds through the canyon often right against the wall of the canyon.


I like reflective pools. The contrast of the bare rocks against the green of the canyon is interesting


Morning Glory Bridge. The arch isn't easily viable since it parallels the cliff behind it. An interesting feature is that there is a crack in the rock under the arch where a spring flows feeding the creek .


A lot of big rocks around here.


The hike is easy with only a little over 300 feet elevation gain through the canyon. While the grade of the trail is very easy, there are nine stream crossings along the trail . Most are like the one above left on rocky stones. The trail starts out on the slick rocks on a ledge above the creek, above right.

Here is a link to the GPS track for the hike.

I was back home before 1030. We relaxed at home the rest of the day. Lunch was snacks. We had an early dinner of steamed fish, steamed carrots, and  rice. In the afternoon I got distracted and worked on updating the satellite dish firmware. In the evening we tried a new tactic. We didn't like the no-see-um bug visit last night so tonight, before dark and before the end of generator time, we closed up the house and ran the generator to cool off the house. then remained closed all night. No bugs!

Big Bend CG, Moab Utah

Saturday: (04/27) Lou made latkas topped with yogurt and apple sauce accompanied by sausage for breakfast. Then she was off to the campground adjacent to ours to claim our new campsite. I stayed home and washed the windshield and de-bugged the front of the RV. She returned and We moved over to the new sot at Big Bend CG. Less than a tenth of a mile away down river. We got all setup and enjoyed some tea by the river, which we can see in this campsite. Our campsite mates set up their four tents. There are a half  dozen of them and two nice dogs. Actually, nice folks.

We drove in to town to the Moab April Action Auto Show. There are possibly 300 cars at the show in the city park.


The pictures above shoe an atypical RV. It's a 1929 Case tractor pulling three trailers. The from cabin is the living quarters. The second trailer is the bathroom and laundry room. The third trailer hauls other stuff. We didn't see this rig before but we have seen the driver down in Bisbee several years ago. He is the man that has the dog, cat, and mouse that ride each other. That is, the mouse is on the cat which is on the dog.


The car on the lefts is actually a Geo tracker made to look something like a model A? The truck on the right is special because of the name.It's called the "Wood Rat"

 
Above left is a car with an extra engine. It's a 16 cylinder engine now. On the right is a 1951 Plymouth Suburban station wagon. My first car looked like it. It was a 1952 model. Of course the one above differs a little from mine because it has been chopped and it has paint on it.

 
Above are a couple of ideas for improving our jeep to tackle some of these roads. We need to either raise it like the one on the left or replace it with a real crawler like the one on the right.

It's a rather warm, possibly hot day. Our camp is rather hot until a little after 5pm when the sun goes behind the mountain across the river. Lunch was at Wendy's restaurant. Lou had some coupons so I had a spicy chicken sandwich and Lou had a chicken salad. For dinner Lou made ham, rice, corn on the cob with coleslaw. We enjoyed listening to the KALW On-Air Folk Festival via the streaming feed from the radio station in San Francisco. Two of the groups on the show were artists we've seen at the Redwood Bluegrass Associates shows in Los Altos before. Kathy Kallick, Annie Stanninec and Sharon Gilchrist. A nice show.

(GPS: 38.6481, -109.4792)

Upper Big Bend CG, Moab, Ut

Friday: (04/26) My birthday came around again today. Some things are unavoidable. We had leftover bean soup for breakfast. Even though today is Friday, one of the worst times to change campsites, we planned to move today if we found a spot in Moab. We took the Jeep up and looked at several campgrounds all full until we found one space, not the best, but big enough for us to fit in. We threw some chairs out and paid for the spot. Then we looked around town. We stopped at the Wake And Bake Cafe for lunch. I had a buckwheat red pepper, mushroom, cheese, and egg crepe with red pepper tapenade. Lou had a cobb salad. Everything was excellent. After a visit to a couple of thrift stores we returned to Windwhistle CG. We had paid for another day this morning in case we didn't return in time. We didn't. So today is a full price camping day, not half price with Gezzer pass if you pay twice. We buttoned up for travel and headed back to Moab. After a stop at the market we settled in to our new campsite about 5:30. Lou made my favorite meal, Corned beef hash and eggs. Normally it's made with an onion, a green pepper and a red pepper. We didn't have a green pepper but did have an Anaheim chili pepper. That gave it a little extra zing. Dinner was followed by apple pie and ice cream, a couple of my other favorites. It was really hot today. I assume it's region wide and not just here in Moab. Until the sun went behind the cliffs in the valley it was HOT. After that it was perfect again. After dinner, Lou went off to pester campers that may be leaving tomorrow that are in the sites we're interested in. Many of the sites we spotted this morning at 9am were already spoken for when we asked today.
(GPS: 38.64958, -109.487)