Sunday we got up and had breakfast which was some brownies we had gotten the night before at the deli up on the corner. We got the rig ready to travel, pulled in the slides and disconnected utilities. Then it was off to Mass at St. Henry’s…after that we came back to the park, loaded up and were on our way. The first couple of hours on the road were pretty uneventful; we got through Salt Lake City and Provo without really hitting any traffic and stopped at a Flying J one exit before we were getting off the freeway for fuel and lunch. We then hit the road again and headed on UT-6 and UT-119 down towards Moab. This was mostly a 2 lane road with a third lane for trucks on the uphills…but it was a bit curvy and had plenty of places with drop-offs into canyons or riverbeds and very few guard rails. To top that off…it started raining so that visibility was crap and traction and braking ability were reduced. So…we just slowed down and let the cars pile up behind us; they had chances to pass every 10 miles or so where there was a passing lane. That didn’t stop at least a couple dozen lunatics from passing us with double yellow lines, on blind curves and uphills, and with no visibility to tell if anybody was coming in the other lane. They wanted to speed and so they did. 

After an hour or so of lousy weather we conveniently ran out of the rainstorm about the same time we got off of the curvy mountain road and back onto the plains…Neil wished it had rained on the plains instead of in the mountains but nobody asked him.

Neil grabbed a few shots of the views and mountains at a couple places we stopped along the way.

We thought we were going to run into another serious rain storm…but luckily UT-119 curved to the south around a couple of mesas and then back to the east so we missed the downpour. Shortly after that we joined up with I-70 for about 20 miles then headed south on 119 again…by this time the weather had almost completely cleared up. Temperatures during the day fluctuated quite dramatically…it got down to 49 degrees in one of the rain storms in the mountains and was up to 75 a half hour later down on the plains in the sunshine. Sheesh.

We pulled into Moab about 1600 and found our way to our destination Moab Valley RV Park about 2 miles south of the entrance to Arches National Park. We got all settled into site 68.

This shot was taken the next morning (today) as it was threatening to rain again while we were parking so all Neil setup yesterday was utilities. This morning he got out and held colors, put the sigh, and got the awning out and comfy chairs ready to go. He’s kinda proud of the great view we got…he looked at all the sites available when he made the reservation and specifically picked site 68 since it had the best view of the nearby ridge. There’s another one about the same distance away but behind where he took this shot from.

After that we headed downtown to the Moab Brewery for dinner…we were going to have some stuffed pasta from the freezer but we were so tired we ended up going out instead. After a quick beer and dinner we came back home and were asleep in the recliners by 2030…Neil woke us up about 2230 and dragged us off to bed. He did get a nice shot of this rainbow that was visible when we came out of dinner…it had rained while we were inside. This was a full arch rainbow and he took a picture of the other half as well…but it had light poles and parking lot in it so I didn’t bother posting it. Not bad for a shot with his iPhone though…but he’s looking forward to getting a new iPhone 5s once we get down to Fort Myers since it as a significantly improved camera.

Connie worked most of the day today while Neil vacuumed the house, set up outside, updated some software on our computers, and generally puttered around with things in the IT department. Dinner tonight was some nice tomato sauce with garlic, shallots, red wine, and green chili peppers…served over linguini with a couple of Italian sausages so we would have some protein.

Tomorrow we’re off to Arches National Park then Wednesday and Thursday we’ll do the southern and northern portions of Canyonlands National Park…there are two separate entrances and visitor centers and it’s not possible to get to both in one day. Friday we’re going to drive down to Monument Valley, then do the rest of Arches on Saturday. Sunday we’ll rest up from our week of fun and figure out exactly how we’re going when we leave here.

Cyas.