Slept in on Saturday, then enjoyed a nice breakfast before sitting down to put together our video footage from the previous day.  Should be uploading that vid soon!

Headed over to arches national park after lunch.  Hiked up to see Delicate Arch which was an amazing sight!

Balanced Rock

Cindy impressed the crowd with her own backwards arch

Afterwards we drove back to the campsite and setup our bikes for a ride to downtown Moab. 

Colorado River pedestrian bridge

Sunset view from a hilltop restaurant

Cindy's feet have swelled immensely

Riding back just before dark

Smores!

Headed to Colorado in the morning..

Rough night of sleep for me, due to a constant flow of folks trying to find space to camp for the night.  Got a few hours of good sleep before the sunrise.

Around 8 I drove down to another campsite to check for any available spots which would be closer to town and our activities the next couple days.  We got lucky and a couple were open.  Filled out the ticket and reserved our spot.  Went back to the trailer to share the good news.  We packed up and moved to the new spot around 10am, actually finding a better spot with more shade, so we transferred our ticket.  Just in time too, with 3 more RVs pulling thru the area right after us.

First activity for the day was a short but active hike to see a couple arches.

Next up was an off road drive up the canyon rim to island in the sky, which is a part of Canyonlands NP.  Did a short hike to a lookout in the park before Cindy drove back down on a different off road path.

Next activity was a UTV tour (ultra terrain vehicle).  Spent about 2 hours cruising around on the slickrock area just east of Moab.  Quite an impressive machine that can take a beating and climb an impressive angle.  Cloudy skies put a damper on the sunset, but our video footage of riding should look good!

Dinosaur tracks

Discovered that Cindy is an awesome off-road driver!

Finished the day off at the Moab Diner for green chili and a salad.

Enjoyed a nice day exploring a bit of the area.  After getting settled at the campsite, we headed into town to restock on cash, fuel, propane and groceries.  Knocked out the fuel and propane refills before stopping at the info center downtown to get some maps on off-roading, hiking and biking.  Signed up for an off road buggy tour at sunset on Friday, sounds exciting!

Decided to check out a nearby hike/bike trail for a couple hours, since the farmers market wasn’t starting until 5pm.  Tried a difficult single track mountain biking trail, but we didn’t get too far before turning back.  Don’t have the proper bikes for most of the trails here.  Plan B was an ascending ride up the gravel road.  Quite a workout, but saw some cool scenery.

Cindy making her way back on the trail with her insufficient huffy bike

Jeep tour taking on some serious offroad trails

A nice rest stop on our bike ride

Worked up quite an appetite before heading to the farmers market.  It was a nice market and picked up some cheese spread, feta cheese, salad mix and ground lamb.  Think we like cheese??

Great food at a farmers market food truck serving quesadillas

Hit the grocery store afterwards to finish our list, before driving back to the trailer.  Jalapeno was napping as usual, but happy to see us for dinner time.  We sat down with a drink for sunset before making a delicious dinner of pasta, shrimp and veggies in a red sauce.

Arrived around 1pm into Moab.  Started driving up route 128 to find a BLM campsite.  All the campsites were full already, but luckily found an overflow lot at big bend campground.  The free camping is highly regulated here, due to all the tourist traffic, so even the BLM sites cost 10-15 bux a night. 

Colorado river view from the campground

After another attempt at fishing this morning, we packed up and made our way to Capitol Reef National Park.  Discovered a strenuous yet fun trail to hike called Cassidy’s Arch, named after Butch Cassidy, for legend has it he used to hide out around those parts.  Great 3.5 mile round trip hike, climbing 1000 ft in elevation.  Afterwards, we enjoyed a cold Utah beer while we mapped out our next destination.  After several plan changes, we decided to stop for the night at Green River campground where we can charge up, refill our water supply, shower, and use the dump station before heading to Moab and Arches National Park!

Water slide, wheeeee!

Tweaking Fern's nipple

On top of Cassidy's Arch

Tried fishing again this afternoon at pine lake with better success!

Found a great place to free camp off of the dirt road along Navajo Lake in the Dixie National Forest, not too far from Bryce Canyon. We had stopped at a Wal-Mart along the way to pick up some fresh water fishing supplies. Turned out to be a great camping location up in the mountains with a beautiful view of the lake. Chris tried some fishing last night and this morning, had a couple of hits and one on for about 30 seconds but it came off. Around noon, we headed into Bryce Canyon for some hiking. Stopped in the visitor center for maps and hiking recommendations. The place was jammed and the only maps they had left were in Italian! Took one anyway and found a good trail for about a 2 hour hike this afternoon. Beautiful scenery of the hoodoos, which is what Bryce Canyon is known for. Amazing how different each of these canyons are! Off to find another campsite near Pine Lake for more fishing!

Unusually light winds today in hurricane, utah

Lovely Monday playing golf in the warm sun of Hurricane, Utah. Joined up with another twosome, Craig and Pam, who ended up being a great couple to play with. They were also kind enough to take photos of us a few times. Maybe meet up with them again for another round if we pass thru salt lake city.

18th hole view, shot a 45 on the back 9

On a side note, its been interesting meeting folks on this road trip. They are usually 20-30 years older than us, but I find that age really has nothing to do with determining people’s desire for adventure and fun. It’s enjoyable to chat and hang out with folks the same age, 30 years older, or anything in between, it doesn’t seem to matter. Meeting other people that have similar interests has been great regardless of age.

Getting away from the TV, radio, newspapers and such that feed on turmoil, drama, etc has been eye opening. This country has so many amazing sights and good, hard working, fun loving people, but that didn’t seem to come across in the normal daily grind of a job/career where most of your info about the country comes from biased sources such as TV

Next stop will be somewhere up towards the Bryce Canyon area, so goodbye to warm weather..

Woke up early to pack up the trailer and head down into the main canyon to see a couple sights. Parked the truck and trailer in Springdale and took the free shuttle to the park entrance. Next we jumped on a park shuttle to ride to the farthest stop, which is a 1 mile trail before entering the famous Narrows area. U need a dry suit to hike that one, since you ar basically walking in the river the entire way. We stayed dry and saw just the start of it.

Jumped back on the shuttle to try a 3 mile trail up to the emerald pools. Nice hike with some elevation climb and comfy spot to relax at the top. Back on the shuttle to the park entrance where we decided to walk to a nearby eatery for lunch. It was great food and cold Utah beer.

Finally some warm weather too, so we got to wear our shorts for the first time since Texas!

Gotta love boondocking in BLM lands with a view of Zion..