Where Do We Go?

Kathy and I have consumed the last several hours poring through the atlas, travel guides and RV Directories in an attempt to firm up our itinerary. There are so many places we’d like to visit and people we would like to see that this is becoming a complicated exercise and my diminishing intellect is strained to the limit. 

Staring at maps can be a confusing and intimidating endeavor; also, it is difficult to calculate distances and relative travel times. Our major goal is to visit the Grand Canyon and that in itself presents definitive challenges. This is due to the geographical features of the canyon itself. Do we visit the North Rim or the South Rim or do we attempt both? Either dictates a circuitous route if we want to travel farther west to Las Vegas, for instance. Kathy has friends in Las Vegas and I have relatives there. Kathy wants to visit Albuquerque. I have friends in Phoenix. Add all these items to an agenda and the logistics become a little sticky.

At this point we have solidified our next two camping locations – they are in Torrey, UT and then Glendale, UT. These destinations put us in the vicinity to visit all of the Utah national parks on our wish list. Our NP agenda now includes Capital Reef National Park, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Bryce Canyon NP, and Zion NP.  This pretty much settles our next week to ten days. After that we have to decide whether we continue west to Las Vegas and then catch the South Rim on the way back or do we swing east to visit the North Rim and then navigate around the eastern terminus of the canyon to gain access to points west. We’ll work this out over the next week, or so, but this is part of the fun (and dilemma) of free-forming our route as we go. As it is, all of our planning is done short-term in order to avoid becoming slaves to a schedule that would have demands and pressures neither of us want.

The past several days we have been engaged with Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, which you already know if you have viewed my latest photography albums. Much of Sunday was spent driving around Arches and Monday we drove down route 313 through some beautiful countryside to the northern tip of the expansive Canyonlands. There we enjoyed a nice picnic lunch and were awed at the other-worldly landscape. If asked to describe the difference in Arches and Canyonlands I would put it like this; Arches is huge and in your face with its monolithic features while Canyonlands is huge and swallows you up with its deep canyons and expansive vistas. Both are impressive in their own right.

Yesterday, after we returned from CNP I rested a bit and then drove the short distance back to Arches in an attempt to capture some sunset shots. The sunset was not impressive but I was there early enough to scrabble around some of its features that I had previously neglected. As the sun sank lower on the horizon and the shadows lengthened the russet landscape was increasingly flushed with that ochre hue for which this region is noted. I thoroughly enjoyed my outing with my Canon DSLR.

Tonight is our last in Moab and we are scheduled for a combination dinner and boat cruise on the Colorado River. Presently the skies are overcast and it is beginning to sprinkle and it is looking like the weather may spoil our evening. Since dinner is to be served indoors before embarkation we will, at least, get dinner out of the deal. We’ll just have to wait and see.