Rocky Mountain High, Colorado

Arches National Park

Arches National Park is one of the most popular in the US, after seeing the queues of cars waiting to enter the park we decided to get there early the following day. In the meantime we would continue the shoe search in Moab, have a dinner out and stay in a camp ground. Moab is tagged as being a cool destination, not bad compared with where we had visited so far, and after shoes were bagged we watched the homecoming parade; well actually the road was blocked so we had no choice.

The Moab campground beside the dusty highway, cost $NZ120 for night and we were shoe-horned in between some big rigs. It looked as if nothing had been spent on improvements in 45 years. The restaurant next door had an unpromising appearance but after we were shown to a table outside on the patio we found the food was excellent, a great choice of craft beer, and one of those bands whose songs all sound the same.

Mesa Arch, Canyonlands

Arches NP, followed by Canyonlands had some impressive arch and canyon formations. The geology is lost on me, but let’s just say ‘erosion’ covers a lot of explanation. We stayed in the area for a couple of nights at a Bureau of Land Management camp (BLM = DoC) set high on a saltbush plateau.

Mesas, table-like hills abound in this area as do buttes that are similar but narrower than mesas.

A Pueblo granary tucked under the rim of a mesa.
Had to climb the mesa to get the shot

A cortado is the US equivalent in this area of a flat white without the latte art. We said goodbye to Moab with a cortado apiece inside us and an ‘O’ ring for the waste pipe that had left a drippy trail behind us. (Just shower water). Colorado, a change from the dry dusty desert, lay ahead as we hit the road east. It is like travelling between different countries, the rockies in Colorado are high altitude with plentiful vegetation.

San Juan Highway

The San Juan Highway is strung out over 200 miles through a series of Wild West towns. Telluride, Ouray, Silverton, Durango. Telluride is a base for wealthy winter holiday-makers with shops to cater appropriately, and on the other end of the scale is Silverton, a former silver mining town which offers endless shops of cheesy tat from the only paved street.  All the broad side streets were dirt roads with ATVs driving through.

The highway between these towns climbs up to over 11,000 ft with autumn colours a riot of burning yellow splashed among the evergreens. The craggy mountains lining the highway glow richly red, tenacious pines cling to their sides.

Ouray, delightful little town

Wild West Silverton

The temperature at these high altitudes is much lower at night, we had been given a new red sleeping bag by a fellow camper, Walmart brand  – but it opens out to makes a cozy, if slippery, extra quilt on the bed. The propane powered fridge does not like the high altitude, especially as the tank is getting low. It keeps trying to light itself making disconcerting clicking noises.

I love the rocky mountain campsites, the downside is fellow campers starting up their generators, and filling our truck with smoke from their traditional campfires.  

Patriotism is alive and growing in the areas we are travelling in. Stars and stripes fly from camper wagons and one neighbour even had a flag on their picnic table.

Patriotic campers

The highlight of this last week was the moose that nonchalantly sauntered through our campsite, past the front of our truck while I was cooking dinner. It was huge with enormous dish shaped antlers. Our Oklahoman neighbours were as excited as us. Elk and deer are commonplace but moose are rarer in this area. There are warnings about bears but luckily none have crossed our path. 

We are off to improve our cultural intelligence, setting off towards National Parks that are dedicated to preserving the archeological heritage of the Pueblo people.

Yoo-tah, Utah - the desert lands

Twenty years have passed since we last visited Las Vegas, I must have changed and certainly aged as the glitz and glam had faded for me. After a fruitless shopping journey to outfit our feet we had some shut eye in a hotel bereft of my most important need - something to make a cuppa with. I had the teabags and even some sachets of a dreadful product called “creamer”, but no cuppa for Jane and no energy to traipse miles through the hotel to find one. 

I did however gamble my allowance of $US1 on a slot machine, pocketed $US16 and walked. Stuart lost his dollar, so $14.00 up.

  

Our helpful uber-lady dropped me off at Walmart while Stuart did the business with the RV rental company. I had hardly started to wade through a difficult grocery shop, discarding products that looked unsuitable for

normal consumption, when himself appeared at my side. Stuart was given his own list of goods to procure and set off with his own trolley.

The gaudy beast was waiting outside in the heat and glare. Cruise America had us given a labrador puppy to mind. Gaudy on the outside and grimly brown on the inside. A very serviceable colour is brown and the manufacturers had no intention of updating their design  over the past decades. It also has only 2 windows which together with the wilful brown curtains that refuse to remain open makes the interior  gloomy. It is built with no thought for weight-saving, in fact the mattress can barely be lifted. Never mind, they said “just shove a v8, 7 litre engine under the bonnet and that should move the beast along". Ten miles to the gallon if the going is good.

Hoodoos at Bryce Canyon NP

The trip to our pre booked camp in Zion National Park went very smoothly, so smoothly that I was able to unpack clothes and organise the groceries while Stuart drove. We arrived in the dark and I checked in with the kamp kommandant the next morning, phew - I only wanted to show her my reservation. She wasn’t having a bar of me, loudly telling her husband to ignore me as I was ‘just a walk up’. I had to persist before I was given an official tag for our site.

Zion has a wonderful shuttle service which eliminates private vehicles from the park, we joined more people than we would have liked  on a non too peaceful riverside walk. Still the grandeur can’t be denied.

We bought an annual pass for the National Parks and were disappointed at either being too early or too late to present our credentials at the entrance booths of the string of parks we visited.

The tunnel that exits Zion towards Bryce National Park is too narrow for RVs so we had to buy a permit for the rangers to close one lane so we could drive down the middle. As it turned out, it seemed as if they permanently operate a one way system. 

  

Bryce Canyon has rows of brick red hoodoos that glow with a light of their own. They form amphitheatres and the area was described by Ebenezer Bryce as “a helluva place to loose a cow”. You can walk the rim trail looking down on the hoodoos or descend into the canyon for a close-up view. 

More hoodoos

But yet more NPs were on the list.

We scored the nearly impossible goal of getting a camp site in Capitol Reef NP at Fruita, a former Mormon settlement. The camp was surrounded by orchards, and apples and pears were ripe for picking. A family of mule deer with their over-size ears grazed, their teeth aren’t designed for apples and I hoped they wouldn’t choke as they rolled the apples on their  tongues.

Mormon barn at Fruita, Capitol Reef NP

Mule deer in orchard

Stu picking apples

We both had persistent colds so decided to have some rest in a couple of state parks, with gentle hikes thrown in for good measure. Coral Sands State park is a magnet for ATV fans, and like the RVs that towed them, they were big – bigger than my car anyhow. 

The park has very fine coral pink sand that forms dunes and beautiful desert flowering plants were in bloom. The camp host, with his ATVs, full set of BBQs, huge RV, stars and

stripes flag etc on display showed us a nice canyon for walking in.

 

Kodachrome State park

Kodachrome State park, wish I could forget that Paul Simon song, was stunning with 5 star bathrooms. There was one anatomically accurate natural rock formation that had campers pointing and shaking their heads, but the park is aptly named with red and white rock, blue sky and yellow flowers. My favourite so far.

We are still in Utah but not done yet with deserts and rocks, we are travelling  on the lightly trafficked roads,wishing NZ roads could receive the same quality and quantity of road  surface. Blue skies, yellow roadside flowers and red rocky hills. Adios for now.

Indian Paintbrush plant