We left Mancos on Thursday and headed to Moab to meet up with a couple of friends from New Castle one last time before we hit the road. The drive from Cortez to Moab was more beautiful than I could have imagined it being. In my mind that part of Colorado has always seemed like it was a desert waste land, but in all actuality it is gorgeous rolling farm country all the way into Monticello UT. I giggle now when I think about how excited I was to be going to Moab, because the weather this time of year is supposed to be fantastic. I got really nervous when we kept driving into this.....
I have never really spent much time in Utah, other than the three or four times that I have been to Lake Powell, and i have to say that I love the landscape here. I can see now, why my buddy Lyndsay loves Utah.. It a geologists dream!! Apparently it is also every other person, and their dog's, dream landscape too! Holy moly are there a lot of people here. We had originally thought, "We'll get there Thursday, there will be plenty of camping spots available." Guess, that is normal thinking for EVERYONE that goes to Moab on the weekends. We wanted to find a cool camping spot and just started randomly pulling onto roads that had the little camping symbol on the signs. The first camp ground that we pulled into was Wind Whistle, about 20 miles south of Moab, and it was a really cool spot. We drove through and saw that there were lots of spaces available. So we decided that we liked it, but with it being so far out of Moab, it would be a really long drive for Ginny when she came Saturday morning, so we would keep it as a back up spot if we couldn't find anything else. In my head I silently started mocking our friend Keith, who told us we would have a hard time finding a spot to camp. First campground we came to was almost completely empty, how hard could it be really. Well...... That theory was shot to shit the minute we started driving back to the highway and saw three other camp trailers pulling in toward Wind Whistle. Then I realized, per usual, he was right. So onward closer to Moab we went. The next campground we tried was Ken's Lake, about 5 miles south of Moab. It was a decent camp ground, but for some reason, as Kyle and I were standing in the last available campsite, we just couldn't shake the bad feeling we had. Back in the truck and onto Moab. I realized that maybe we should just take the advice of our friends who had suggested different campsites. One was Willow Springs, on why 191 North of Moab, or Hittle Bottom, 20 miles north of Moab on 128. Having no idea which one would be better we decided to rochambeau to decide which one to go to. If Kyle won, Hittle Bottom; if I won, Willow Springs. Kyle won. Hittle Bottom here we come, but first must stop for gas and water.
We found a maverick Station on the south end of town that had free potable water so we pulled in. Mind you that Kyle and I are VERY new to this whole camper life thing, and we are usually pretty naive about certain things. Like how important it might be to have a longer water hose when we want to fill up the trailer with water. When we realized that our 10ft hose would not reach the spigot, we decided "ah we'll be fine with out water." (Or i should say Kyle did, i was a little more than bummed about it.) But we filled up our 5 gallon container, and every water bottle we had and called it good. As we were driving through Moab, I couldn't help but thinking that Moab really isn't a place that I would want to visit frequently. There are massive amounts of people here who all seem to have no idea where they are going and were driving me a little bonkers. We finally made it to 128, to head up the river road after only like two near misses from people in front of us just randomly stopping or turning suddenly... Kyle and I had both done a little research on campgrounds in this area, and Goose Island was one that appealed to us. So as we are driving up 128, we see Goose Island Campground on the left, and suddenly we become one of those people in Moab that I was just complaining about. Kyle hit the breaks, and I mean slammed on the breaks to be able to make the left hand turn into the campsite. At this point I can only imagine what our poor dogs are thinking in their crates... Then as soon as we almost make someone rear end us to turn left, Kyle sees the 'CAMPGROUND FULL' sign and almost looses it!! I couldn't help but laugh at his cursing of the bad sign placement, and then trying to figure out how to turn our rig around and get back on the road.. It was really quite comical, but frustrating and had us in a little bit of a panic that we really may not find a campsite....
After taking a second to calm our minds, we got back on 128 and headed back up the highway. After driving for about 15 miles, Kyle asks me "How far is this Hittle Bottom?" 22.5 miles from town... "WHAT!?!?" And there is minimal cell service so I can't even look and see if that is actually correct or not. Come to find out its correct.. We drove 22.5 miles out of town to find this camp ground. We pull in and i can't shake my distaste that I had of the camp ground. Not that it was really that bad, I think that it was just not what I was expecting, or hoping for I guess. We got one of the last two spots in Hittle Bottom, and it was literally about 15 ft away from the busy highway... Not what i think is a good time for being that far out of town. If i wanted to listen to traffic constantly I would have much rather just stayed in town, and at least had water ;) But I still stomped over and paid the fee begrudgingly. We got the trailer unhooked and set up everything at camp and decided to go for a drive because it was too cold sit outside and I wanted to find a cool place to hike the next day. So we started driving south on 128 back toward moab and about a mile down the road, next to the river i see another camp ground, Lower Onion Creek. Curiosity got the best of us and we drove in there only to find that we LOVED this camp ground. It was about a mile off the highway and was really close to the river and the sites were not really close to each other. So we drove around and kept seeing the little 'YELLOW RESERVED" tags, and started to get bummed again. Kyle this time had the BRILLIANT idea of actually checking the tags this time to see what the dates actually were. WOOHOOO there was one that was available because they had just left that day. So we filled out our own yellow tag and reserved the site and headed back to hittlebottom to retrieve the trailer. Me, being the budget minded person I have recently become, decided that it was going to suck to have to pay for two different sites tho. So I decided that I could easily pull my payment envelope out of the fee box at Hittle Bottom. Well I honestly wish you could have seen me, running around like a crazy person trying to find something small enough to fit into the slot... I managed to pull 4 payment envelopes out of the box, none of which were ours. Crap. Well then I had the brilliant idea to just write on the new fee envelope the permit number from the other one and that was how I was going to get out of paying twice.. As we pull back into lower onion creek, I see the guy from the BLM collecting the fees and asked him if it was ok that I had this note in the payment envelope, and he looks at me and says 'Just use the yellow tag from the other place and hang it here, and call it good." Oh, well that was easy, once again I over reacted, weird... I shouldn't knock Hittle Bottom too bad tho, in hind site I see why I have a lot of friends that love it. Its got an awesome boat ramp, and the sites next to the river were pretty cool, we just couldn't get one of those..
Now that the debacle of trying to find a camp site was over, Kyle and I were able to set up camp, and site down and enjoy watching the other poor travelers on their struggle to find a spot, while we are some dinner..
Friday morning, Kyle had decided that he really just wanted to hang out at camp and just chill for the day. We knew that Ginny and Jonathan would be there saturday morning and we would be running from that point on.. So we did just chill, we read books, I cleaned out the camper. We went for a stroll around the campground and just checked things out. It was a pretty fun day, and we all seemed very relaxed.
Then I got a little bit antsy.. The sun was shining, finally, and I just didn't want to be stuck at camp anymore.. So we decided to drive across the road to the Fisher Towers trail head. We checked out the map, and decided our path and set out for a hike with the pups. Have I mentioned that I love the landscape here? This hike way so pretty. So many different rock structures and canyons and such.. I was so big that looking at it really throws off your depth perception. We hiked around these different canyons, and up and down. Stopping pretty much every 10 feet to take a picture, it was just so cool. We had been hiking for about an hour when we reach a fairly large crevice that we had, what looked to be like a two foot wide path, to walk on to get around the canyon below. I stopped and I said to Kyle that I had no desire to take the dogs on that. He looked closer at it and says to me "well I don't think they will die if they fall, I think its bigger than it looks." So we went, only to find at the end of the 60 yards trek was about a 9 ft ladder that the dogs couldn't go on anyway. We turned around and started back to the truck at that point.. There were several trail crews that we had passed on the way up, and on the way back down one said to us "let me guess, made it to the ladder?" Yep.. Well come to find out there is a way around the ladder, it was just hard to see to the untrained eye, but we decided the puppies were tired enough and we headed back to camp.. Still so grateful that we decided to get out and go for a hike, even if we couldn't go all the way to the end, it was still a beautiful hike.
Saturday morning our good friend Ginny and her son Jonathan got here about 9:30ish.. We decided to head into Moab because we had heard there was a car show in town and all thought that would be a pretty fun thing to go see. It was a cool show, I had decided to take the dogs on leash with us, but they weren't allowed to go into the park so we really only got to walk around the perimeter of the park and look at the cars that were parked along the street, but it was still entertaining. After lunch we went for another hike up Onion Creek. We picked this location because Kyle and I had read something about some really cool slot canyons to explore up there. The website said to drive three miles up the narrows to the trail head, so we kept driving up the narrows, but apparently we are pretty bad at researching where we were supposed to go because we never found a trail head. So we just parked and started walking because the road was getting a little hairy for comfort. We had hiked about 1.5 miles in when we decided to turn around and just go back to the truck because we felt like we weren't getting anywhere. After we got back to the truck we decided to find our sense of adventure and continue driving up the road since we realized on our "hike" that the road wasn't bad at all. We drove for another 11 miles, and ended up in these beautiful high mountain ranch lands that just stretched on for miles. It was gorgeous.
When we got back to camp, Kyle and Jonathan took a little adventure with the dogs down to the river and Ginny and I just sat and enjoyed the warmth of the sunshine. Then the boys worked on a word search before we went in and taught Ginny and Jonathan how to play cribbage, while enjoying a s'more.
This morning we decided to go back to the Fisher tower trail, and see if we could get to the end before Ginny and the small human had to take off to head back home. Needless to say we did, and I will let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
While my initial impression of Moab wasn't a good one, i have to admit that it has grown on me a little and I know that we literally only have begun to scratch the surface of the grandeur of this place. We will hopefully be back again soon to check it all out. I am really grateful that Ms Ginny and Mr Jonathan got to come visit us. It was fun to see a familiar face and just spend quality time with those we love. Our next adventure will take us to the Grand Canyon and we will head out tomorrow to make the 5 1/2 hour drive. Until Next time!
Know your limits and push past them...... Keep Pounding!!!
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