End of the trip

I've been dealing with a lot of photo uploading while making these last few entries, and can someone tell me why, first of all, blogger puts them in the entry in the opposite order that I uploaded them, and second, why does it sometimes put extra spaces between the pictures in the entry? So annoying.

Anyway, last part of the trip. First we have me getting sunburned at Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah. This is where we drove to after camping in that really remote area near Lake Powell. I think it only took maybe an hour to get there. We were really close.

There was some pretty strange looking landscape here. The light-colored wavy-looking rock is called slickrock and is made from petrified sand dunes. You can hike all around here, but we were exhausted and chose instead to have lunch, stop at all the viewpoints and then leave.

Below is one of the natural briges in Natural Bridges. :) They are formed when streams cut new paths through the petrified sand dunes.

After we left Natural Bridges, I drove for a while. We saw some signs saying that the road was unpaved, steep and curvy ahead, and wow, was that an understatement. The road became a gravel road that snaked down the side of this huge butte down into a valley. You can see the road way, way down there in the two pictures below and that is the same road we were on, just much farther down.

This was pretty scary for me because I don't like heights and I don't really like driving, but it was perfect for B because he busted out the camera and got to take lots and pictures on our way down. The road was basically deserted, too. I only remember seeing two other vehicles, one ahead of us going down and one coming the opposite direction.

The road led us back to some places we'd gone through earlier in the week, like Mexican Hat, below.

Eventually we were back in Monument Valley and we camped there that night at a nice place called Goulding's. They had everything there. I said to B that it should've been called Goulding's City. In addition to a campground, they had a gas station, a grocery store, several gift shops, a retaurant, a hotel and cabins. We thought about camping there when we originally went to Monument Valley on the first night of our trip, but it was too cold. It was still a little chilly the night we did stay there, but we were comfortable in the tent. It was really, really windy that night, though, but we sat in the tent and played cars and basically relaxed after having dinner in the restaurant there.

The next day we had breakfast at the campground, packed up all our stuff for the last time and headed for home. That was on Friday, Oct. 10th. We had to be home no later than 2:00 p.m. on Saturday the 11th because this was going to be installed:

We actually bought this about a month before it was delivered and installed. We were supposed to go to this hot tub and spa show in Vegas, but we never received the tickets they were supposed to send us, so we went to the Mohave County Fair here in town instead and we bought a hot tub from a place that had a booth set up there.

This is something we'd been talking about since before we moved to AZ and we finally made it happen. It was SO nice to have this after our trip because we were still sore from our hike to Delicate Arch on the first day (or at least I was). We've been using it every day since we got it. We were told that we may be able to get a tax writeoff for it, if I can get a note from my doctor saying that I need it to treat my fibromyalgia. B still needs to ask our accountant about that, though.

We have some blue rope lights that are up on the ceiling above the hot tub that we use when we're out there at night. The hot tub is sitting on our back porch to the left of the sliding door and underneath the kitchen window. The lid is attached and it's really easy to swing it open. I can't say that I've felt any improvement in my fibromyalgia symptoms from using it, but I sure do enjoy it anyway. I'm always cold, but after being in this, I'm warm for a long time.

Trip continued

The first picture is from the evening of Oct. 8, the third night of our trip, and this is where we camped. Our tent was actually over to the right and not visible in this picture and the Colorado River was to the right of that. You can see a vehicle belonging to the people who were camped at the sit next to ours and then way, way down there is the bathroom. The road was very close on the left at the bottom of that slope, but it's hard to see.

The following day we went back to Arches and I wanted to get some photos of the Delicate Arch trail that we'd hiked on Oct. 6. I've outlined the trail in pink and the arrow is pointing to Delicate Arch, which I have a picture of B standing underneath in a previous entry. This was a long, steep hike, but really neat.

I also got a picture of Delicate Arch from another angle at another trailhead. You can see some people hiking up this second trail where the white arrow is pointing and the pink arrow is pointing to people up at the top near Delicate Arch who took the first trail. Delicate Arch is circled. I'd like to try this second trail if we ever go back.

We went to one last place in Arches that day before we left and that was a place called Devil's Garden. Here is B on the trail standing in front of Landscape Arch (I think). We didn't make it all the way to the end because we were pooping out.

Next is another picture of B on the same trail. I think this was on the way back to the car. We tried to come here the day before, but there was no place to park because it was so croweded, but we got there earlier in the day the next day and were able to park there.

We left Arches that afternoon and drove south down to Lake Powell, which is in the picture below. This picture was taken from an overlook looking down onto the "city" of Hite. It's barely a city anymore. Apparently it used to be a mining town, but the mines went out of business and now there are just a few mobile homes there.

Not far from there is where we camped for the night. We ended up wasting a lot of time driving around looking for a camp site because our map said there was camping in the area, but none of the signs around showed where exactly it was. We finally figured it out after looking at a map in Hite and then picked out the spot in the picture below. There was absolutely no one else around here. That's me putting the sleeping bags in the tent and you can see someone built a fire ring with rocks on the left. We bought some firewood before we left the Arches area earlier that day, so we had a nice fire there.

Last is another picture of this camping area that I think B took the next morning. You can see Lake Powell way down there and you can see how absolutely desolate this area was. We slept better there than we had the night before, where the road was right next to us.

More next time!

More from the trip

So stupid blogger uploaded these pictures in the opposite order than what I intended, so I'll have to explain them backwards. Anyway, this first picture is from the third evening of our trip after we spent the night in the nice hotel and had done some more hiking in Arches. This is B standing on the road up to Fisher Towers, the big rock things in the background. There's a little camping area up there, but we camped at another spot right next to the Colorado River.

The next picture is from a short hike earlier that day to some arch I can't remember the name of. Landscape Arch? I don't know. Anyway, that's me. The weather was a little cool, but it was warm in the sun.

Next is me again on another hike into . . . I don't remember the name of this either. It was very shady back here and the temperature dropped like crazy in the shade.

Next is a picture of B and I during our first hike of that day at . . . I don't remember the name of this arch, either.

And last is me at the head of the trail that lead up to that last arch I can't remember the name of.

We took three hikes that day, I think, and then we camped at our neat little spot next to the Colorado River that night. We had to pay $8 to camp there and we had to put the cash in a little envelope and put that in a box near the bathroom (outhouse). There were 6 or 7 places to camp in that little area and I think they were all taken by dusk. We took a spot all the way on the end where we hoped no one would bother us and would be the quietest, but we were right next to the road and the traffic kept us from really sleeping well. But we did have fun having our dinner there and we also had a nice fire later on. Someone had left several bundles of firewood there, so we used it and stayed nice and warm until it was time for bed.

More in the next entry.

Way overdue

I've been a terrible blogger for the past few weeks (months?) and have not been writing anything in my own blog or reading any other blogs. I don't know what happened. I do know that B and I spend a lot less recreational time on our computers since we've moved. I guess it's because our computers are in separate rooms now. We used to spend time "together" on our individual computers in the same room, but now our together time is spent outside or watching TV.

Anyway, lots has happened since I last wrote, as you might imagine. I'll start with recent things and work backward as best I can. I'll have to make a second entry with more pictures because this one already has a lot. First is a picture of a lizard hanging on the wall outside from a few months ago. This was maybe 6-7 inches long and is one of the biggest we've seen. They like to hang around the front porch and sun themselves and do this funny bobbing-up-and-down dance, though we haven't seen them around much in the past few weeks.

You may remember that I had some back pain after our last camping trip, when I slept on an air mattress, so B and I set up the tent inside the house so I could do a test run with a foam mattress B had from his rolfing days. After setting it up, both cats got inside to have a look around. Here's Spice making herself comfortable.

The foam mattress worked out just fine for me, so we did do some camping on our trip to Arches National Park Oct. 5 through Oct. 10. On our way there, we went through Monument Valley. Here's a picture of our approach from the south.

This is how it looked when we actually got there.

It was a little windy there that day, as it was when we came back through on our way home.


We stayed in the Monument Valley area on Sunday night, Oct. 5, and it was pretty cold there that night, so we decided to stay in a hotel rather than camp. There was a place there called the Weatherill Inn where B had stayed years ago, so that's where we stayed. They had a gift shop there where B had seen a pen knife that he'd always regretted not getting, so of course we went to the gift shop to see if they still had it or something like it. They didn't have the exact one, but they had lots of nice looking pen knives, among other things, but B still didn't get one because he felt they were too expensive (and I agreed). He did get a very nice mug and T-shirt and I got a few things for myself.

This next picture is on our way to Arches and approaching the La Sal Mountains, which are very close to the Utah/Colorado border and are visible from Arches. This picture doesn't really do them justice because they were huge and pretty spectacular looking.

This next picture is driving into Arches National Park. You may notice that we're on the wrong side of the road. That's because they had just put down a layer of oil or tar or something on the other side and we were being led up this steep cliff into the park by a park vehicle. We initially had to wait about 10 minutes to go in because they were leading people down the one open lane from the other direction first.

That was on Monday, Oct. 6 that we arrived in Arches around lunch time. B found a nice spot near Balanced Rock where we set up our gas stove and made lunch. This picture is driving further into the park.

After lunch, we decided to hike up to Delicate Arch, below. This was a butt-kicking hike. I was somewhat prepared for this, having been doing squatts and lunges at home for weeks beforehand, but what was really sore afterwards were my shins. Here is B standing under Delicate Arch. You can see the La Sal Mountains in the background on the left.

You probably can't see just how steep this was from the picture, but that's me going back down, and that's where my shins got so sore. You can see the road we took to get there snaking downhill in the background and other people doing the hike on the right.

That night we decided we weren't quite ready to rough it yet, so we stayed in a hotel again. In fact, we were already so tired and sore from hiking to Delicate Arch, we decided to get a really nice room with a jacuzzi tub and we both soaked in the tub for a while that night, which I think probably helped a lot with our soreness the next day (though I was sore to varrying degress the rest of the week anyhow).

That's it for now, but I'll write again about the rest of the trip and include more pictures.