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!