Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Moab

We headed out to Moab last Saturday. It's a six hour drive from home putting it at our outer limits for a day. By late Saturday, our choice of BLM campsites along CR 128 was limited. We looked at Dewey Bridge but it wasn't much.  Continued to Hittle Bottom and found one empty site. Camped next to us were two families with seven children and one pregnant wife between them. Carol thinks there must have been sets of twins because the oldest of the kids was probably six, or so. Very well behaved. This is Mormon country where larger families are quite common.
In the morning we continued on 128 hoping to get a site at Goose Island. Got the last empty site. Street side and not river side but that works for a day. Goose Island is very popular because it's the closest BLM campground to Moab. The BLM campsites along the Colorado River are $15/night and half of that with our Geezer Card.
In the morning, Monday, we decided to head to Arches NP in hopes of getting a campsite. These sites are typically reserved months in advance. The Campground Full sign was up at the Visitor Center and again at the campground. I inquired with the resident host and there were actually two sites opened for two nights!! One next to the dumpster and the handicap site.  Carols handicap placard got us a really nice site.


I went hiking to two of the different arches. 


A happy camper

After our stay at the Devils Garden campground in Arches we went into Moab for the first time. We stopped at the very nice Visitor Center and used their free wi-fi to upload all our pictures to the cloud.
We used Yelp! to direct us to the Quesadilla Mobilla food truck where we had an amazing lunch of burritos. Then the business of grocery shopping, tank dumping, and such.

Quesadilla Mobilla

We spent the night in the Sand Flats Recreation Area. It's a county administered BLM recreation area. Mostly ATV's and mountain bikers, but convenient to town. $15/night. There are some 120 sites and most were taken.

In the morning, we stopped by the Red Rock Bakery and Net Cafe. Great cinnamon buns and coffee. Then we headed to Goose Island again to try our luck. Site 17, a direct riverfront site, was available. We'll use this as our base for the rest of our stay in the area. We have reservations at the Dead Horse Point SP for the 24th and 25th.
Our Goose Island site.
Mostly it's me hiking by myself these days. Gopher is 12 and no longer has an interest in walking very far.  At home, three years ago, she and I would typically walk from two to four miles a day. Anymore a slow walk around the block and she then points me towards home. Overall, her  recent vet checkup went well. The vet said that older dogs, like older people, frequently get arthritis but there  is no test and the dogs can't say.  She recommended glucosamine.  I started her on that in February. No visible progress, but perhaps she feels a little better.


A few more pictures.
The LaSal mountains


Fisher Towers in front of LaSal mountains.



Our campsite at Devils Garden