We headed for Torrey, Utah, early on Monday morning. It was going to be only a 100-mile trip so we took our sweet time. We went through some more beautiful Utah countryside, and ended up at Torrey (population: 180) just after noon. We are staying at the Thousand Lakes RV Park.
It’s very nice. (It has a terrific gift shop, so Becky is ecstatic.)
Torrey is the gateway to Capitol Reef National Park, We’ve been here only once before---in 2002, before we became road warriors. We made a quick visit to Capitol Reef Monday afternoon,
as a prelude to really touring the park on Tuesday. We arranged with the RV park to rent a Jeep Liberty on Tuesday so we could take the dirt-road tour of the park.
We loaded up (with Ramsey along) at 9:00 Tuesday morning and headed for the park. Capitol Reef is a magnificent smorgasbord of geological sights. The sedimentary mountains have grown and risen and fallen and folded and eroded over millions of years, and are just fascinating to tour. The tour covered 136 miles.
We got back to the RV park after 4:00PM. (It would have been a little earlier but I had to wash the Jeep before turning it in.) Later, I was able to squeeze in at the next-door barber for a much-needed haircut. We had already planned to have dinner at the Café Diablo, a local restaurant known nationally for its creative menu and delicious food.
We had eaten there when we were here in 2002. We were only the second party there when we arrived, but the place filled up in a hurry. We split a beef tenderloin dinner, a calamari salad, and a cheesecake dessert. Very yummy.
Wednesday morning we headed for nearby Loa to wash our truck and do some grocery shopping---and pick up two movies from the Red Box there.
We watched The Iron Lady and The Descendants Wednesday afternoon. (It was raining, so there was nothing else to do. It was really clever of me to wash the truck this morning.) Both films were well-done, but I liked The Descendants more. It was very complicated, with a plot full of surprises, but riveting. The Iron Lady was a bit disappointing to me because they portrayed Margaret Thatcher as a little wacko even while she was serving as Prime Minister, and they spent too much time showing how addled she is now. (Her present condition is irrelevant to what should be her legacy.) In any event, Meryl Streep definitely deserved her Oscar.
Thursday morning we woke up to a temperature of 34 degrees and a dusting of snow. No problem. We took off early for Moab, a 170-mile trip through more of the beautiful Utah countryside. We arrived before noon at the Canyonlands Campground RV Park right in the middle of town.
We stayed here ten years ago. It‘s a very nice place. I was able to get the truck lubed and its oil changed, and our propane replenished before the end of the day. We also went shopping for food. (It’s nice to be in a town with an array of stores.) We bought mussels for dinner. Yum.
On Friday afternoon, we drove to Red Cliffs Lodge. It's about 20 miles outside of Moab. Red Cliffs Lodge is in a beautiful canyon, along the Colorado River.
It's also home to the Castle Creek Winery.
It was one of the first wineries in the state of Utah. When we worked at Zion Lodge, Castle Creek was added to the dining room's wine list.
Moab (population: about 5,500) is the gateway to both Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, so we will get a twofer for Becky's National Park Passport. We headed for Canyonlands Saturday morning.
It was cold and overcast. Canyonlands is a strange park. You have to drive far into the park to see anything. We went no further than the Visitor Center (a 130-mile roundtrip at that) because it was 12 miles more to get to anything worth seeing. And from pictures we have seen at the Visitor Center and elsewhere, what's in the park is pretty much what you can see outside the park on the BLM land that surrounds the whole area.
And because of the weather, the flat light would not give us a very good look at the colors in the formations. (One more thought that we processed: When we visited the area ten years ago we were advised not to bother with Canyonlands because, we were told, it was pretty much just more of what we would otherwise see in the area.)
Saturday afternoon, we watched War Horse, another Red Box movie. It was a bit disappointing, except for the scenes involving the horse. They were pretty spectacular.
On Sunday, after we had pancakes across the street at the Pancake Haus,
we headed for Arches.
The weather was cold but clear and the scenery was terrific.
There are more than 2,500 arches in the park
(thus, the name) and they are surrounded by fabulous sandstone formations. (The park's signature arch---Delicate Arch---appears on Utah license plates.)
We agreed that Arches is well worth visiting.
The rest of Sunday was just relaxing (and walking Ramsey, of course, and getting ready to leave.
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