Day 22 & 23 (4/22 & 23)
Moab and Price
Maureen had suggested a route to Moab that is the shorter and more scenic than the other. Both require a couple of hours on I-70 West, but when we turned off, I began to wonder about the one we had chosen. It was paved and wide enough for two-way traffic, but there were no shoulders and no painted line. However, it was less than twenty miles before we turned onto a better road and then the show began. For the next hour we were treated to the handiwork of the Colorado River –we were deep and then deeper in to a carved, red-rock canyon winding our way along with the river through some spectacular natural art. And then, suddenly, we are at a tee in the road where that canyon meets another, wider one and Moab was just up the road to the left.
If you want to go camping, canoeing, fishing, hang gliding, hiking, kayaking, mountain bike riding, off-road driving, partying, rafting, ride a gondola to the top of the canyon, road bike riding, skiing or snowshoeing (in season), touring or zip-lining, Moab is your place. The number and variety of dune buggy like vehicles was staggering. And, at least in this part of Utah, they are street legal. And, we got the feeling that, local or visitor, everyone was happy about being there to do whatever activity mentioned above they had come to do.
We had dinner at a pretty nice brewpub where I learned that beer served from a tap could only be 3.2% alcohol, whereas if you buy it in a can, it can be higher. I prefer draft beer so I ordered their IPA. Just like every other 3.2 I’d tried in Utah, it was the definition of blah. So, gritting my teeth, I ordered a BEER OUT OF A CAN (gross), figuring that, combined, the alcohol was about the average of normal beer. The BOOAC was actually pretty good.
Going to Moab was not our plan. From the beginning we had planed to go straight north from Grand Junction to Jackson, Wyo., Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. In doing so, we would be retracing part of our path from 1985, but we’d be doing it without our kids. However, as with most of our trip, the weather played its part. We faced nothing but rain and snow to the north and we worked long and hard to come up with an itinerary that would allow us a way to skirt all the late spring storms that were passing through the northwest. Since, other than the interstates, there are only 6 roads in Utah, our only possible destination was Boise, Id. But it was not that easy.
Tired after all that cogitating over when and where and how much it would rain, and how long it would take to get there and by what road and what time the Warriors were playing and would there be free internet to post to the blog and follow the Giants, we went to bed.
Navigator and meteorologist extraordinaire Connie Rice had determined that we could get as far as Price, Utah before we would confront the storm. Since that was not much more than two hours up the road, we had no reason to leave Moab early in the morning. We took the opportunity to ride our bikes. Starting 8 or 9 miles up the canyon we had driven down, there is a bike path that accompanies the road along the river. We drove to the tee intersection, parked at the park there and, instead of heading up the river like we had considered doing, went down a bike path on the other leg of the tee toward Arches National Park.
The first thing we noticed was that the wind in our face was so strong that, if the downhill were slight, we’d have to pedal in order to keep going. Good for the return trip, we thought. Although it paralleled the highway, the path was nice and before long we made it to the park. We went to the visitors and bought a patch for Connie’s collection, but the road beyond there was dauntingly uphill for what seemed like forever, so we headed back. And, for most of the ride the wind was at our back.
Back in town, we stopped at Safeway to get a couple of rolls and some coffee from Starbucks and sat in our van eating a leisurely lunch of leftover sausage soup we heated up in the microwave and the rolls. Finally, we headed down the road toward Boise, or as far as I thought we might be able to get.
The wind we had dealt with in the canyon – and had been dealing with off and on for the last few days – became pretty fierce as the land flattened out a bit. Our van is pretty tall and at one point we were blown by a gust over to the shoulder. Fortunately it didn’t take long to get to Price and, disappointing to my hopes of going further and validating Connie’s weather report, it was raining hard just beyond the town.
Price is a pretty small town. Though our motel looked as though it had been built in the 50s, we could tell immediately that it would not be a reprise of the hovel in Springdale. A woman about our age quietly checked us in to the room we had parked in front of and we were pleased to see that it was nice and clean and comfortable. When we went into the office later to ask about where we should go to eat, the woman reappeared, though she was 25 years younger. They were obviously mother and daughter. I don’t know if there were other family members running the place. She told us about the local brewpub up the road. It was small, quiet and homey and full of locals. A nice change from the kinds of places we had been eating in.