Day 34 blahblahblah
Oh my and what a day and night it was!! We did not have cell service from about 10am on.
(These is being posted on day 37 because we have only had spots of data for minutes at a time since day 34)
It felt like a different planet. We drove south out of Moab to Monument Valley. It is still puzzling how one minute there are huge mountains that are some shade of red and the next thing you know there are huge canyons that are more of a brown. Sometimes the road goes right through the middle of hills and canyons. Now there are other colors involved, green, white, grays and black, but we are talking dirt and rock colors. If there is vegetation it resembles sagebrush or juniper with a few cactus. There may be something once in awhile that has a tiny bloom but you would have to be walking to see it. At the bottom of the canyons there is something that involves water, a dry river bed, mud, standing water, or occasionally some amount of moving water. This means at the bottom there are things that resemble green living plants, even some trees. This was our journey all day.
As you near Monument Valley you start seeing spirals of rock sticking up in the distance
and then the whole landscape unfolds.
Once again pictures don't begin to show the beauty. The valley is on the Navajo Reservation. There are roadside photo opts that have a few crudely made vendor jewelry stands. At no time is anything mistaken for shade... there is none and the temperature is around 100 degrees. Without a doubt the side of these mountains had the most fascinating rock formations we have seen.
It is fitting they are located on the Navajo land with the intricate design, but we know who really designed it.
Once we drove through the valley (and got our pictures) we turned around to head back to Natural Bridges National Monument. We were going to take a shorter route using highway 261 which has a pass in it called "Moki Dugway".
Moki is marked on the map in red.
Yeah, when Wilbur saw it was uphill instead of downhill the decision was made to take the long way, a bit of backtracking (in green) and then the cutoff (in yellow).
On to Natural Bridges.
We had hoped to spend the night and bike ride in the morning, but the temperature was 105 and you could not ride off the roads sooo we drove the loop, took pictures and saw the car that was in front of Wilbur before "he" turned around on Moki Dugway. I might go back just to drive that pass 🤔.
Back on the road, north, to discover a place to spend the night. The road follows MORE red cliffs just like the Columbia river gorge. Well, you could see the road MILES ahead
And the river was a "bit" smaller and muddier
After driving and driving and driving, about 50-60 miles, we came to the very beginning of Lake Powell that happen to have a "campground", dry camping on a bed of rock with not a tree (shade) in sight and to boot, was filled with cyclist, are you kidding me!, nope, "Biking the US for MS". Not a problem. We just pulled Wilbur out into the sand where it was level and close to the water and stopped.
You would think that would be the end to a day of travel but noooo why stop there. We took our chairs down and sat in the lake.
It was way to hot and as I committed earlier, there was NO shade so I laid in the water, missing my grandkids once again. Bob was concerned I didn't put my swimsuit on, hahahaha. We made drinks and salads and sat in the water eating while watching the blue herons nesting on the rock face across the lake from us.
Ordinarily Herons do not nest in cliffs so these herons are being studied. As we sat we noticed little tiny fish (1/2 inch) nibbling on our feet. I'm sure Madelyn would tell me this is a new kind of pedicre, we're going with that. The sun went behind a cloud and then the cliff and nothing cooled down.
It was very pretty, relaxing and quiet so we didn't want to run the generator to run to AC to cool Wilbur so we came up with plan B, after the sun went down. (I know this is getting long so you can quit here and it could be the end of the day but you would also miss the humor to follow...)
Plan B: It was dark and you couldn't see the bugs so I got out the pop up bug tent to sit in. Because it was already dark and I couldn't see the ground and bushes and prickly sticker weed thingies I put it on a big mostly flat rock. I'm sure our children will enjoy this, if they have read this far. We decided to sleep there because there might be more air circulation then in the RV. So as quietly as possible, beings there are other campers and everything echoes, I went into the RV found rugs, blankets and pillows to lay on the floor of the bug screen (that was on the rock) to sleep on. It was beautiful!!! We watched the stars come out to the sound of crickets while we prayed for a breeze. Didn't have to wait too long before enough of a breeze came up that it took the pop up and blew it over on top of us. Didn't know they could do that! Of course it didn't much matter because it just got the solid top out of the way so we could see the entire sky and we watched shooting stars.. Couldn't have planned that better!
We finally did fall asleep and woke up to light in the eastern sky. We decided to move inside thinking it was almost morning and we were stiff from lying on the rock. Realizing it was the moon and not the sun we grabbed everything, took it in, folded the pop up flat, laid rocks/chairs on it and got settled inside Wilbur. The outside temperature was still 82 degrees at 2am! It took no time at all to get back to sleep on the sofa with a bit of a breeze blowing through the RV. 😴
It was a good day and night!!!
(These is being posted on day 37 because we have only had spots of data for minutes at a time since day 34)
It felt like a different planet. We drove south out of Moab to Monument Valley. It is still puzzling how one minute there are huge mountains that are some shade of red and the next thing you know there are huge canyons that are more of a brown. Sometimes the road goes right through the middle of hills and canyons. Now there are other colors involved, green, white, grays and black, but we are talking dirt and rock colors. If there is vegetation it resembles sagebrush or juniper with a few cactus. There may be something once in awhile that has a tiny bloom but you would have to be walking to see it. At the bottom of the canyons there is something that involves water, a dry river bed, mud, standing water, or occasionally some amount of moving water. This means at the bottom there are things that resemble green living plants, even some trees. This was our journey all day.
As you near Monument Valley you start seeing spirals of rock sticking up in the distance
and then the whole landscape unfolds.
Once again pictures don't begin to show the beauty. The valley is on the Navajo Reservation. There are roadside photo opts that have a few crudely made vendor jewelry stands. At no time is anything mistaken for shade... there is none and the temperature is around 100 degrees. Without a doubt the side of these mountains had the most fascinating rock formations we have seen.
It is fitting they are located on the Navajo land with the intricate design, but we know who really designed it.
Once we drove through the valley (and got our pictures) we turned around to head back to Natural Bridges National Monument. We were going to take a shorter route using highway 261 which has a pass in it called "Moki Dugway".
Moki is marked on the map in red.
Yeah, when Wilbur saw it was uphill instead of downhill the decision was made to take the long way, a bit of backtracking (in green) and then the cutoff (in yellow).
On to Natural Bridges.
We had hoped to spend the night and bike ride in the morning, but the temperature was 105 and you could not ride off the roads sooo we drove the loop, took pictures and saw the car that was in front of Wilbur before "he" turned around on Moki Dugway. I might go back just to drive that pass 🤔.
Back on the road, north, to discover a place to spend the night. The road follows MORE red cliffs just like the Columbia river gorge. Well, you could see the road MILES ahead
And the river was a "bit" smaller and muddier
After driving and driving and driving, about 50-60 miles, we came to the very beginning of Lake Powell that happen to have a "campground", dry camping on a bed of rock with not a tree (shade) in sight and to boot, was filled with cyclist, are you kidding me!, nope, "Biking the US for MS". Not a problem. We just pulled Wilbur out into the sand where it was level and close to the water and stopped.
You would think that would be the end to a day of travel but noooo why stop there. We took our chairs down and sat in the lake.
It was way to hot and as I committed earlier, there was NO shade so I laid in the water, missing my grandkids once again. Bob was concerned I didn't put my swimsuit on, hahahaha. We made drinks and salads and sat in the water eating while watching the blue herons nesting on the rock face across the lake from us.
Ordinarily Herons do not nest in cliffs so these herons are being studied. As we sat we noticed little tiny fish (1/2 inch) nibbling on our feet. I'm sure Madelyn would tell me this is a new kind of pedicre, we're going with that. The sun went behind a cloud and then the cliff and nothing cooled down.
It was very pretty, relaxing and quiet so we didn't want to run the generator to run to AC to cool Wilbur so we came up with plan B, after the sun went down. (I know this is getting long so you can quit here and it could be the end of the day but you would also miss the humor to follow...)
Plan B: It was dark and you couldn't see the bugs so I got out the pop up bug tent to sit in. Because it was already dark and I couldn't see the ground and bushes and prickly sticker weed thingies I put it on a big mostly flat rock. I'm sure our children will enjoy this, if they have read this far. We decided to sleep there because there might be more air circulation then in the RV. So as quietly as possible, beings there are other campers and everything echoes, I went into the RV found rugs, blankets and pillows to lay on the floor of the bug screen (that was on the rock) to sleep on. It was beautiful!!! We watched the stars come out to the sound of crickets while we prayed for a breeze. Didn't have to wait too long before enough of a breeze came up that it took the pop up and blew it over on top of us. Didn't know they could do that! Of course it didn't much matter because it just got the solid top out of the way so we could see the entire sky and we watched shooting stars.. Couldn't have planned that better!
We finally did fall asleep and woke up to light in the eastern sky. We decided to move inside thinking it was almost morning and we were stiff from lying on the rock. Realizing it was the moon and not the sun we grabbed everything, took it in, folded the pop up flat, laid rocks/chairs on it and got settled inside Wilbur. The outside temperature was still 82 degrees at 2am! It took no time at all to get back to sleep on the sofa with a bit of a breeze blowing through the RV. 😴
It was a good day and night!!!
Garra Rufa fish have been long used as a form of pedicure in the middle east and Asian countries... doesn't make it any less gross! they'll eat your foot off!!!!
ReplyDeleteTMI Mads!!!
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