I forgot some important details from the first leg:

Somewhere between Russell and Denver, in that long, long stretch through Kansas (which I must say gets a bad rap as far as I’m concerned) we were lost in the book and cruising along without paying any attention to the gas gauge. When we finally saw the warning light, which could have been on for 20 feet or 20 miles, we started searching for a gas station. The odds are that it just lit up and we had another 30 miles or so left in the tank, but when you’re in the middle of a log and unfamiliar drive, it is easy to jump to the worst case scenario. Gas stations always seem hardest to find when you need them the most, and this proved true yet again this time. We exited at a ramp that said there was gas, and then there was no help about which way to go, and no gas station in sight. We wandered around Grainfield, and finally asked for help finding it and made it there just in time. Well, it felt like it anyway.

Another thing Trinity and I had a friendly disagreement about was whether or not we could use the wood from the park for fire. I had just spent the last week reading about National Parks, in which you most certainly cannot use wood from the park, but she said we could at the Colorado park. Well, it turns out she was right, but how much free, dry wood do you really think there is laying around next to the frequently used and recently rained on campsites? Exactly, none. We had brought some lump charcoal with us, so we had that for cooking if needed, but it is certainly not enough for a people warming fire. Luckily, a neighbor felt pity on us and sold us a bundle of firewood, which I doled out conservatively so we would have enough to warm up again in the morning.

Wednesday we woke up and warmed up over (a lot of) bacon, toast and more Time Traveler’s Wife. We had a whole package of bacon, and not much ice left, so we just ate a huge, high protein breakfast. After all, we were planning to do a lot of hiking right?! We headed back down the mountain in a different direction than we came in last night, to see it from a different view, passing through the casino towns of Black Hawk and Central City. I think this area might be right behind Las Vegas and Atlantic City for number of casinos (totally ruining the beautiful landscape of the mountains if I do say so myself). The rest of the ride was quite beautiful though.

Then, back to the interstate for more reading and driving. Somewhere about this time we reached territory that Trinity had never been to, and I had only been through once many years ago on a great trip with Grandma & Grandpa Honse (Justin & I took a different route West).

After a while we needed to stretch our legs and found a cool looking mountain town to stop in, so we parked for lunch in Eagle, Colorado. We had a nice light lunch at Red Canyon Café in Eagle with lots of organic goods and fair trade coffees – our kind of place. As we walked back through town to the car, I could tell from a few blocks away that something didn’t look right. Sure enough, we had a flat tire, and of course we didn’t know this until after we had already spent an hour wandering around and eating lunch. Another opportunity to take a deep breath and be cool. We unloaded the camping gear on top of the spare, changed the tire, which I have mastered in recent months by the way, got directions to a too busy tire shop, and finally headed 10 miles down the road to Gypsum’s tire shop where hopefully the wait would be less than a couple of hours! Success! The wonderful guys at Carquest in Gypsum dropped what they were doing and had the hole patched in 20 minutes flat. Muchas Gracias Amigos!

A couple more hours and it was time to stop at the Utah sign for a picture in Granny & Grandpa Taff style. You can definitely see the landscape changing from mountain to desert around the Utah/Colorado line on I-70. A bit more, and we were turning off the interstate towards Moab, Utah and Arches National Park.


We knew we needed to restock groceries and ice, but more important was figuring out our camping arrangement, so we headed straight for the Park. I don’t remember what time we got there, but the campground in the Park was full. We didn’t plan our trip early enough to make reservations, not to mention the fact that we left a day early, and the first-come sites were quite taken by later afternoon. The Park Ranger told us you have to get there around 7:30am, when they open for the day, to get one of the no reservation sites. So, an important lesson for our National Park tour file: make reservations for the campgrounds, unless you are going to drive through the night and arrive at opening time!

So, into Moab for the night. There are plenty of commercial campgrounds there, so we picked the closest one to the park so we could try to get there early and grab an Arches campsite for the next two nights. It was a nice night, but a little close to the road for my camping taste. It was getting late by this point, so we decided on an easy night of dinner in Moab, and grocery shopping. We headed to the Moab Brewery for some local stout over dinner, and then next door to the less chain looking grocery store in town. Moab is a pretty cool, local feeling place overall. Tourist oriented, but in a very authentic way. There were a few of the big boy restaurants, but it was clear that the local places ruled the scene.

I’ll conclude this installment with a fun shot of Utah’s own Polygamy Porter taken at the grocery store. Check out the tag lines for a laugh!