Category Archives: Travel

Random thoughts, Travel

Washington, DC

I just flew back this morning from a quick weekend trip to visit my friend April in DC. It was a lot of fun, though not the victorious visit we had planned…in light of the recent election, things are not as positive. I am having a hard time—I’d BEEN having a hard time, and the stress of this election was like a giant elephant in the room. I’m genuinely afraid for our country and for our planet. It’s a time to be alive, isn’t it? I keep trying to tell myself that it’ll be okay, that our government has all manner of checks and balances, that people have lived through worse (for sure this is true!).

But! We had a wonderful time, and I’m going to focus on the positive this week (quartet concert, Thanksgiving around the corner, wonderful loving friends and family!) and move forward. I won’t be quiet, I won’t stand down, and I won’t accept hate as okay.

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It was windy by the Washington Monument! Anyway, we walked all over, until I couldn’t walk anymore, we saw a bunch of monuments, the zoo, we hung out and just chatted, we had good food, good beer, and even went to see the National Symphony play at the Kennedy Center.

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We were at the World War II memorial on Veteran’s Day. It was very moving and emotional.

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The Lincoln Memorial.

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Look at that beautiful sky.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. What would he be thinking today? Unlike many on the internet, I’m not going to assume I would know.

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Maybe he’d be thinking about one of his famous quotes though. Or who knows! I do think he’d be out there on the ground though, protesting, marching, bringing people together to fight for what is right.

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Maybe we’ll have winter this year…but at least we finally had a lovely fall. Well, in that the leaves turned.

I’m off to practice. It’s hard, to act like it’s business as usual, but yet, it is. The world is changing around us, and we don’t know what the future will bring, but life goes on.

Hiking, Travel

Owensville wedding

Over the weekend Louie and I went to a friend’s wedding in Owensville, Missouri. Neither of us had ever been to the area before, and though it was only about 1 1/2 hours drive away, we decided to make a weekend of it and stay for two nights.

We drove down Friday early evening and checked into the Owensville Motor Inn. We were both hungry and tired, so I checked Trip Advisor for where to eat…there was a nearby Mexican Restaurant that was the Number 3 recommendation in the area. For reference, Number 1 was the White Mule Winery where the wedding was going to be held, Number 2 was something called a Meat Market that wasn’t open late anyway, and Number 4 was McDonald’s.

Number 2 it was! Though we’d had Taco Thursday the night before after my quartet concert (which was awesome, btw, great crowd, had so much fun playing, I love those women and quartet is the highlight of my week!) it had been at Mission which is a “classier” and more “trendy” Mexican. Dos Primos in Owensville was a little more “traditional”. It didn’t disappoint. We enjoyed some beergaritas, fish tacos, and had a nice relaxing evening.

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(picture from the concert…not sure what I was doing…)

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That’s a beergarita.

Anyway, Saturday morning we got up and hit up the McDonald’s for breakfast and then headed to the Canaan Conservation Area for some light hiking. The weather was beautiful, if not a little warmer than we’d want, and we had a few hours to wander around.

Wander we did indeed, as the map wasn’t as easy to follow as we thought, and after an hour or so we ended up in a completely different place than we thought we were! Luckily we talked to a man in a truck and learned that we were totally wrong. We had time though, so we didn’t beg him for a  ride back to the car, ha! On our hike back through the area we thought we’d already covered but actually hadn’t, we were still lost more than we liked (I decided the map wasn’t very good, refusing to take credit for being THAT terrible at navigation) but we came across two very old cemeteries, which was pretty neat. They were both old German cemeteries and many of the deaths were around 1880. I’d think that would be on the map too, but I guess not. We didn’t dawdle too much since we wanted to make sure to get back to clean up for the wedding! There might have been a point where we weren’t sure if we were completely lost or headed in the right direction, but we eventually found our way and found where we’d left the car!

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It must have been turtle season.

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You can kind of see the cemetery here. I guess there probably used to be churches nearby since each one was labeled with a church name.

Then we got McDonald’s again..(snack and coffee, which this time was pretty terrible) and cleaned up, then wedding time. The friends getting married were some people I’d only met once who Louie used to work with. They are really nice people though, and we were thrilled for them!

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Not the best picture, but you get the idea of the reception area. I didn’t take too many pictures, but it was fun. The ceremony was outside and the weather was still quite nice. The cocktail hour and dinner were right nearby and there was plenty of local wine (people knock Missouri wines but I enjoy the Norton varietal) and various (less local) beers. They also had a bowl of buckeyes…(peanut butter with chocolate)

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And popcorn, and then dinner was beef, chicken, broccoli, green beans, potatoes, salad, and rolls. I had some meat since it was a special occasion (I have weird rules in my head about these things, don’t ask me to explain). The beef was good, I don’t care if I ever eat chicken again in my life! Dessert was of course cake, and then there was dancing.

(Am I really that much taller than everybody else? Were those women super short? These are important questions.)

I was exhausted by the end, and then unfortunately I had to get up early-ish the next morning to drive home and then play two Winter Opera rehearsals…so I didn’t make it a late night. But it was a nice weekend away!

Even though we were gone only about 40 hours it was good to have a change of scenery. I do love traveling and get antsy when things get too routine and close to home. Luckily the next few months have lots of opportunities for adventure…I suppose that’s why I enjoy and thrive on the freelance life while others want a more regular career. I like the diversity and while I love planning and organization, I love the opportunity for change and not knowing what is going to happen next. Of course, I also over plan and then get stressed when things don’t go according to plan, or more precisely, I sometimes stop myself BEFORE I plan too much, trying to be more spontaneous, and then often regret not planning as much as I should have. Basically I want really organized adventure where I’m completely on schedule. Smile

Road Trip 2016

Entering the Fiery Furnace

You probably thought I’d forgotten about my trip (or hoped, just kidding, or why would you be reading at all?) but the truth is that work is CRAZY right now—scheduling, meeting new students, practicing, rehearsing, running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I’m on day 14 of over 40 straight days of work, and at least today ended up just being two students…and of course the inevitable practicing, which never stops, but is especially important right now.

So, where were we?

Previous posts:

And so it begins…to Aspen

Bear Necessities

Leaving Aspen…Good Riddance

Moving Along

No Such Thing as a Dead Horse

Feeling at home in Arches National Park

We left off in Arches National Park on the morning of Friday, August 5. Whoa, that’s a long time ago! But, this was the morning we had tickets for the Fiery Furnace Tour. The Fiery Furnace is an area of the park that you are only allowed in by permit, either on a ranger-led tour, or on your own. We didn’t want to get lost so we opted for the ranger-guided tour. It cost $16 each and like everything in the National Parks, had to be reserved in advance. They warn you that the hike is strenuous and challenging, with small spaces and drop offs, so I was both overconfident and a bit nervous.

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The tour was great. The guide was really knowledgeable and interesting, and he led us for several hours, with a good balance between hiking and learning about the geology, biology, and ecology of the area. Zoology also, perhaps?

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The day had started overcast and cool, but by the time the tour was done (and I totally recommend it, by the way) it was hot! The Fiery Furnace area was pretty shaded actually, since the formations are so close together, but we finished the hike around noon and it was definitely hot.

We headed back to the Devil’s Garden campground to find our new spot. As amazing as site 18 had been, our new site, site 3 was less good. It was fine, in that it was still in a gorgeous location, and it was near the bathrooms, but it looked like we were in half of a pull through RV driveway and there wasn’t anywhere great to the put the tent. There were also loads of ants everywhere! We moved the picnic table and had lunch, and plotted out a place for the tent, but it was really hot and we decided just to set it up later.

It was time for more hiking. We wanted to see parts of the park we hadn’t gotten to the day before so we headed for the Windows area. There are several arches there with a short trail around them. We were drinking a lot of water, and the parking lot was super crowded. People really like posing under the arches, but they don’t really like following what the park called “primitive trails” so we took that one back. It wasn’t in any way difficult, but it wasn’t paved and you had to watch for cairns, and it was nice to avoid people, as usual Winking smile

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Next we decided we should hike to Delicate Arch. This was a more strenuous hike, but we thought we had enough energy. It was really hot, over 90 I think, but we loaded up our packs with water and hid the trail. This trail was pretty crazy. There was a part where we just hiked basically straight up a huge slickrock.

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It wasn’t too steep, but was a bit overwhelming looking too far in the distance, up or down, so I just tried to focus on my steps. It was difficult in the sun, and steep enough that it was exhausting. We had a few places with shade where we stopped to rest but mostly kept going. The end had a little bit with a drop off but I hugged the wall and we made it to the top. The arch was pretty impressive.

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Though we were larger than it.

Side note: not everybody who takes your picture is a great photographer. Sometimes the selfie stick is best…this might have been one of those times, because, we were not in fact larger than the arch.

Anyway, the arch WAS still a little ways away, but I’d had enough hiking across slickrock and I felt I’d accomplished my goal. Louie went over to get a better look and I hydrated. I was pretty convinced he was going to fall off (my constant fear)but after a little while he made it back. The hike back down was far easier.

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If you look closely you can see Louie in this picture.

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And this one.

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Hiking back down the slick rock.

Anyway, after that hike we were totally beat and headed back to the campground to relax and have dinner.

We initially set up our tent up here:

We set it up, made dinner and were starting to enjoy the campfire and relax when the winds started to pick up…and practically blew the tent away. We had staked it the best we could but it was a bit rocky and it just wasn’t enough. Luckily we were there to catch the tent and we moved the whole thing down the hill a bit and set it up in the driveway (you learn WHY the previous night’s campers did things a certain after the fact) and even tethered it to the picnic table, just in case…and then the storms came and we eventually just went to bed on the early side, hoping to not wash away in a flash flood.

The next day we woke up and again, packed up. We went to hike the Devil’s Garden trail, at least part of it. I didn’t want to spend too much time since we had to drive a couple of hours still and do some errands in Moab before we left, so we saw a few arches and some deer, IMG_5825

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This was called Landscape Arch. One thing to know is that the arches are constantly changing, and do fall sometimes, and this particular one had had a huge chunk fall off in 1991—you used to be able to hike underneath it but the park service decided that was too dangerous. Our guide the day before warned us, before you rest somewhere, look up and make sure it seems like nothing is going to fall on you!

After that hike, we hit up the town of Moab again, got groceries (weren’t sure if the next place would have a nice grocery store) and an early lunch at a place called the Love Muffin Café.

Next stop: Capitol Reef National Park

Nights Camping: 8

Miles Hiked (estimate): 47

Camping, Hiking, Road Trip 2016

Feeling at home in Arches National Park

1 Comment

Next up: Arches National Park!

Previous posts:

And so it begins…to Aspen

Bear Necessities

Leaving Aspen…Good Riddance

Moving Along

No Such Thing as a Dead Horse

Day 9 of our trip, according to the itinerary. We finished up looking at Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse State Park and hit the road back towards Moab. It’s about 30 minutes to Moab, which is right near Arches National Park. We decided to make a quick coffee/gelato stop in Moab first before heading back into the wilderness. We also wanted to check email and things like that. In this day and age, it’s hard to go 3 weeks without responding to people, so at least every couple of days we needed to check in! And honestly, after a few straight days of only talking to each other, it’s nice to look at other stuff Smile We had an “incident” later where we’d asked a restaurant if they had wi-fi and the woman said, somewhat self-righteously, “no, we don’t, you’ll just have to talk to each other.” Haha, right? Except get over yourself, we’d been doing nothing but talking to each other for 3 days, and you work in a deserted tourist area where maybe people need to check in for work or just to let their friends and family know they are still alive. But I digress.

We finished up our gelato at a delightful shop that DID have wi-fi and then drove up to Arches. We needed to stop by the visitor’s center to pick up tickets for a ranger led tour we were doing the following day, and whoa, the center was packed! It was a definite change from Canyonlands and Colorado National Monument. We knew Arches was more popular (I guess the beauty is more obvious and you can see more within 10 feet of your car?) but it was still a bit of culture shock.

We had a reservation at Devil’s Garden campground, which was at the very back of the park, about a 20 mile drive, so our plan was to slowly head there while stopping and seeing what interested us. We had the whole day in the park the following day so we knew we’d get to do most of things we wanted.

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Since blogging about this trip has, more than ever, become entirely ridiculous and overwhelming YET I know that I will want this all down in writing to look back at in the future…I’m going to do a lot of photo sharing!

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Many of the rock formations are named. This was called the Three Gossips.

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We took a short walk to get closer to Balanced Rock. The mountains in the background are spectacular. Another thing that really struck us both was how different Arches looked than Canyonlands and Dead Horse even though they are relatively close to each other. What a crazy planet we live on!

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The advent of digital cameras makes this sort of ridiculousness easier. Louie, holding up Balanced Rock.IMG_5739

Seriously, what is this madness??

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Various arches. After checking into the campground we set up the tent and then went on a hike that left from the end of the campground. Oh, we’d hoped to buy firewood to have a fire since we hadn’t been able to for a few days, but they were out! The camp hosts were really great though and told us we could stop by their site and have a few pieces, so we did that. We also found out the campground had had lots of flash flooding the night before, just like at Dead Horse and we were warned to be aware of where we set up our tent. Apparently this was “monsoon season” and flash floods were somewhat common, though the night before had been much more than usual, and some campsites were washed away. We made sure to stake our tent carefully.

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Every arch had a name, but I am bad with names. I think this was Broken Arch though. We also might have seen Tapestry Arch. The hike was a little hard to figure out at first, because it was lots of cairn following, but we managed! We almost got lost at more than one point, but did I mention that it was a lovely cool day in the desert so we probably wouldn’t have died. Just kidding, we only weren’t sure which turn to take and were never too far off from being correct.IMG_5756

This is the view of our campground. Devil’s Garden Campground is one of the most beautiful National Park Campgrounds that I’ve ever seen. Our site (Site 018) was gorgeous too, even though we had trouble finding a flat spot to set up the tent.

Anyway, we finished the hike and then went to relax at our campsite and make dinner.

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We had a lovely fire and relaxed. At one point a small fox (we found out it was a kit fox) came through our campsite, just like one had at Dead Horse! This time we were sort of ready, and Louie took a short video. It was dark though, and you can’t see much. We made a lot of jokes about how the fox didn’t say anything.

We decided to try to wake up to watch the sunrise. We had an amazing view from the tent, and figured this was the time!

Even though I hadn’t slept great because the tent was more slanted than we’d realized and I kept sliding off the pad (oops) I was happy to be awake to get this picture! We also saw several deer who walked non-chalantly through the campsite. It was a beautiful site, but unfortunately we had to move to a different one for the next night (same campground) so after watching the sunrise and breakfast, it was time to pack up. As usual…

Next up: Fiery Furnace, Delicate Arch and more storms!

Nights camping: 7

Miles hiked (estimate): 37

Road Trip 2016

No Such Thing as a Dead Horse

 

Or is it, the only good horse is a dead horse? I get all those sayings mixed up.

And so it begins…to Aspen

Bear Necessities

Leaving Aspen…Good Riddance

Moving Along

(Previous blog posts about my August 2016 road trip)

Louie and I headed to Moab next. We had three nights booked in the area, unfortunately all at different campsites. The first night was at Dead Horse State Park. (I’d wanted 3 nights at the Devil’s Garden Campground in Arches National Park, but I booked too late. I got two nights there but different campsites…)

We drove via 70 west and then route 128, per a wonderful ranger’s recommendation. Google tells you to take a slightly different route, but we were told this was the scenic route, and that was true! It was a gorgeous drive with lots of stopping for pictures.

Right off the bat, the difference between Utah and Wyoming seemed to be that while there were no restaurants/services for miles in Utah, there were lots of other cars. Maybe because in Utah we were actually within 1-2 hours of various national parks, but Wyoming just seemed so much more desolate once you got off any interstate, except right near the Tetons and Yellowstone. But I digress.

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Our road traveled alongside the Colorado River. The theme of this part of the trip was definitely, stuff the Colorado River has helped make.

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We watched scenes like this for an hour. More, really, when you consider that for the next 7-10 days we’d be in this sort of country.

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Louie has tons of pictures of me on his camera, but he’s not as prompt at uploading them to his computer as I am. Therefore, in approximately a year you can see them!

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We decided to eat lunch in Moab, since we hadn’t been in a town for some time. Well at least since the day before…in any case, what I was really craving was fresh vegetables, so we found a place called Peace Tree Juice Café and I got a tuna wrap with lots of lettuce and cucumbers, and then we split a delicious espresso milkshake. It was HOT in Moab, and eating ice cream or gelato became a daily habit…Louie realized after a few days that eating ice cream was making him have a mid-afternoon crash, but I still maintain it was worth it.

We got some supplies in town and then headed to Dead Horse State Park. Moab is a town of about 8000 located near Arches National Park. Dead Horse and Canyonlands National Park (Islands in the Sky District) are about 30 minutes away and receive way less visitors. We set up our tent at the park in a lovely site (KA03) with a gorgeous view—the picnic table had a cover as well and some cabinets to store things in—not bearproof, but critter proof.

This sign was in the bathroom (single stall with lights and fans and they flushed!) We’d already had a raven or magpie eat part of a sandwich so we knew.

Then we headed to Canyonlands, which took 10-15 minutes tops. We’d hoped to do a hike but the sky looked really ominous, like it was going to storm. We could see that it was storming in the distance, and I for some reason started getting really concerned about flash floods. Really it all boils down to the bear. Once something like that happens, you start worrying about all the other things that you wouldn’t normally worry about!

We drove around and did some short hikes though. Canyonlands is quite desolate, but amazing and beautiful.

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There are a lot of roads that you can take if you have the proper vehicle-high clearance, 4wd-and a permit. The area was used by gas and oil companies for some time before it because a national park, and the roads are from that time. I guess the park service decided to let people use them because some parts of the park are impossible to get to otherwise, unless you want to hike for days and days. The park is divided into several districts, and only two are accessible by regular car: this one called Islands in the Sky and another we didn’t make it to which was about 2-3 hours away called the Needles District. Next time we’ll try to get there as we hear the hiking is phenomenal, but Islands in the Sky was pretty fantastic. IMG_5577IMG_5578IMG_5585

You can definitely see the rain!

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This looked even crazier in person—all those canyons. And it looks small here, but of course it’s really massive.

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Mesa Arch

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We just kept taking pictures! It was gorgeous with the clouds, the rain, and the beginning of sunset. And was gorgeous without those things too.

We walked partway to Grand Upheaval Dome, hiked around Mesa Arch, and took lots of pictures. It was raining lightly off and on and there was lightning and thunder in the distance, but it didn’t seem to do much while we were there. Finally we headed back to camp to make dinner.

When we returned to camp we realized there had been flooding. Luckily our tent was fine, but some water had gotten in the edges and we had a bit of dampness. I realized a huge river of water had washed through the side of our campsite and I just started freaking out that we needed to pack up and move…I pictured us getting washed away over the edge of the canyons during the night and I was just really terrified. Louie went to try to find a camp host to talk to to see if the flooding was normal or very unusual or what we should do but there wasn’t anybody working at the campsite, which worried me more. Finally he helped me to calm down and we decided to stay (because other options weren’t great and we were set up already and the tent hadn’t washed away yet and obviously there had been quite a storm). We made dinner (Indian food and rice from Trader Joe’s) and went to bed. It did storm over night and I was scared at first but was also exhausted so I fell asleep easily enough.

We woke up pretty early and packed up the tent. While packing up a small fox walked RIGHT through our campsite. Neither of us had a camera on us and by the time Louie got back from getting one the fox was gone. I vowed to always keep my phone in my pocket from that point on…

We’d picked out a hike to do in Canyonlands called the Neck Springs Loops that was about 5 miles long. We parked at the trailhead around 8 am and were the only people there. What was really cool was that it seemed we were the first people to hike on the trail that morning. The other great thing was that all the rain had brought cooler temperatures!

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Parts of the trail had definitely seen heavy rain overnight, but we’d chosen a trail that didn’t have a whole bunch of slickrock, according to the description.

I love getting off the beaten path at National Parks and taking hikes, the longer the better as you typically see less people. In this case, we ended up not seeing another person on the whole trail—we did hear people at one point who were likely a mile or more behind us, and we saw LOTS of evidence of various animals, definitely bighorn sheep hoofprints, and some small pawprints of various sizes.

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The views continued to be fantastic. It felt like you could see forever.

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There was a point towards the end that involved a frightening amount of slickrock. We realized we had to basically climb upward, and I had a little trouble…I was struggling to bring my leg up and the thought that pushed me through was “do you walk to backtrack over 4 miles?” I am so glad we did the hike though, because later many of the things we did in Arches were easier in comparison! We had a little trouble at one point following the cairns—we lost them!-but we got back on track. (Cairns are little stacks of rocks to show you which way to go.)

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The end of the trail followed along the road to get back to the parking lot, which wasn’t quite as fun, but the views continued to be amazing.

In any case, like everywhere we’d been (with the possible exception of Aspen) we would have liked to stay longer at Canyonlands, but we needed to move on. We decided to stop at Dead Horse State Park one more time to check out Dead Horse Point.

We were blown away by the views! It was just on the other side of Canyonlands National Park and was amazing in its own way. (We also had a lovely picnic on our way to the point—hummus and pita chips and apples. Vegetarian’s delight!)

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There were several miles of hiking trails around but we had to get to Arches! That’s where I’ll leave you for today…part way through a very wonderful day of gorgeous scenery and excellent hiking.

Nights camping: 6

Miles hiked (estimate): 34

Road Trip 2016

Moving Along

Let’s continue along the road.

(Previous blog posts)

And so it begins…to Aspen

Bear Necessities

Leaving Aspen…Good Riddance

Camping can be a lot of work. It’s all the little things that start to add up. Sure, putting up the tent isn’t really hard, nor is taking it down, but it’s just harder than say, not doing that. Then you add in all the bedding set up, especially the therma-rest mattresses, and making dinner, setting up camp chairs, and then doing all this out of a Corolla where one of the doors is basically taped shut…it can be a pain. Once you are sitting around by a crackling fire, enjoying the outdoors, drinking a delicious Colorado craft beer…it’s definitely worth it. Or when you are sitting there and a small fox walks through your camp…worth it. But other times, gosh, it seems like a lot of work, and for what?

My last post reminded me of all my doubts and uncertainty during that segment of our trip. But anyway, lest you think I am ungrateful, I am not. I am fully grateful for being able to take 3 weeks off with Louie and travel! Sure it’d probably be nicer to be staying in hotels mostly, but since that’s just not in the budget, camping it is. And some of these campgrounds are better than being indoors anyway! (You need to realize, if you are reading this and saying, how can they afford to travel, that gas is really inexpensive now, camping is $18-30 a night, food costs the same as not traveling since we mostly cook, and our National Parks pass is still good from last year when we bought it for $80. So each day of the trip is costing $50-70 for the two of us, as a rough estimate.)

Okay, all that being said. Not sad, as I originally wrote. We woke up and packed up the tent, the bedding, all of that, and got on our way. We drove through Estes Park on the way out of Rocky Mountain National Park and took a quick walk around the lake there. We took the Peak to Peak highway through Nederland as we had done the previous year though this time we continued through Black Hawk and Central City. It was a gorgeous drive! Then we headed west on I-70.

We ate a late lunch in Frisco at a mexican restaurant. I wanted to visit Breckenridge where I’d spent a few summers (at a music festival) but I didn’t want to just pop in for an hour, so we skipped it. I will return. Frisco is nice in its own way, and we had a decent meal. Then we picked up some beer for later at a liquor store. In Colorado you can’t buy regular percent beer at the grocery store, you have to go to a liquor store for that. Looking back, we should have stocked up more but we didn’t realize that all the beer in Utah was going to be watered down. Religious freedom!

The drive across Colorado is a beautiful one. After we passed Glenwood Canyon we were on a new part of the road for us. I’d found a few mentions of Colorado National Monument in my research and decided we should pop through. I made a reservation at Saddlehorn Campground(site 36). We got to the Monument around 5 pm, and started on the east/Grand Junction side (you can enter through Grand Junction or Fruita). The Rim Rock drive goes all the way through the monument and the campground is at the west side.

Right off the bat we took a short hike called the Devil’s Kitchen. The weather looked potentially raining for a bit but it passed. We LOVED the monument right away because it was deserted and so different than anything we had seen!

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After the short hike (1.5 miles round trip) we continued along the Rim Rock Drive. This was a windy road at the top of the canyons, and I was a little terrified at times. We did lots of stopping and looking and taking pictures, and it was great. I think we’d finally left our bad moods behind (well, briefly at least) and were just enjoying being tourists.

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It was about 20 miles along the windy road to get to the campground and we kept stopping. The sun was setting and it was simply beautiful!

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As amazing as the sunset was (pictures naturally don’t do it justice) we wanted to get to the campground before dark, and we just managed it. Our campsite was beautiful and we realized we could set up our tent quite a way from the road and enjoy the solitude and night views! The campground is high up and overlooks the town of fruita and the monument. It was absolutely gorgeous and probably my favorite of all our campgrounds…at least one of them.

And we were delighted that we didn’t need to worry about bears! There were no bear boxes, no signs about bears, and the trash cans weren’t bear proof! We always keep a clean camp, but a bear proof camp is much more challenging.

The next morning we didn’t have too much time, but decided to do a short hike before seeking a shower and heading to Moab, Utah. We ended up at the visitor’s center just as a ranger led hike was getting started so we tagged along.  It was really informative: we learned about the geology of the area and the stratigraphy—it seemed overwhelming at the time, but I’m so glad we went on the walk as the next two weeks were spent learning about similar things and the original ranger talk really helped us understand! Basically all the formations were created by land being pushed up and then eroding away over time.

I did have a little fall towards the end of the hike, after Louie and I had left and were heading back. Luckily it wasn’t near the edge and I only cut the palm of my hand a little bit and skinned my knee.

We found showers at a nearby RV park for $7 each (pricey, but we hadn’t showered since Aspen) and washed up—it felt fantastic! And then we headed to Moab, Utah, for our next stop. The ranger at CNM had recommended a particular scenic route so we headed that way.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ve got a bunch of things to do today but I wanted to write something! I keep feeling like I don’t sound like I enjoyed my trip…I did. I also am grateful for all we got to see and do! It wasn’t a relaxing vacation though, I keep saying that, but I keep thinking about it. I am tired, I’m back to work and I’m tired, and I’m not really sure what that means.

More soon!

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(We want to return to Colorado National Monument and do more hiking! And stay another night at Saddlehorn: it was breathtaking, and we’d love to do more. The bathrooms were very nice and clean, the campground was quiet. We had trouble finding the trash cans but otherwise it was great. Oh, and the rangers were really helpful and friendly, the best we met on the trip.)

Nights camping: 5

Hiking miles (best estimate): 26