Day 43

Day 43: 6/29/15 (Canyonlands)

 104 miles

Last night was probably our worst night yet – so so so hot.  It was much cooler the last times we ended up sleeping in the car.  Though, rest stops turn out to be not such a bad place to people watch.  Several cars stopped by as we fell in and out of our sleep.  Once we were woken up by a couple  arguing followed by the girl storming off into the dark and the guy driving off.  Five minutes later it seemed like he came back and the argued some more and must have made up because we fell back to sleep.  What seemed like hours later, a group of people pulled in and we were woken by a guy yelling at how big the spiders were – about as much  information you need to not get out of the car until morning.  At around 6:30 we figured we had slept as much as we could and we hit the road headed to Canyonlands.

About 10 miles from the entrance to the park we saw a sign that said “No Food, No Water, No Services beyond this point” – welcome to the desert.  We stopped at the visitor’s center but it wasn't open yet.  We pressed on to the campground, another 12 miles into the park.  We figured despite the sign there must still be water at the campground, we were wrong.  The good news was that we got a campsite no problem, the bad news was that the only available water was a spigot back at the visitor center, oh yeah and no flushing toilets for over 20 miles and definitely no showers - good thing we decided to shower at Bryce.  With all the annoying bugs, we almost left because of how miserable we expected the day to be, but we committed to camp the one night we planned to stay.

We hopped in the car and started to site see.  Close to our camp was one of the major attractions of the park, the mesa arch.  The view was one of the best in the park, especially since it's framed by the arch.  It was a bit scary though because we thought you'd be able to walk under the arch, but there was actually just a huge drop off at the end of the walkway.  Next we hiked up the whale rock (a huge rock the size of  whale) and drove to a few canyon overlooks.  We tried hiding in the shade as much as we could so we could actually enjoy the views.  If you could find shade in the desert it ended up being not that bad.

We were both exhausted from the long day in Bryce and Capitol Reef so we went back to camp for lunch and hung out for a few hours since we had a nice wooden pavilion that provided some shade – the only thing that made this campsite worth it.  With a little pasta in our bellies and cold bandanas around our necks we laid around on our picnic table just wasting time waiting for it to cool down.  We read some books about our future travels to figure out what we want to do once we were east of the Mississippi again.

Not wanting to miss out on the rest of the park, we headed out later in the day hoping for cooler weather and checked out the rest of the overlooks.  We made sure to stop at the visitors center to fill up every empty bottle and jug with water.  For dinner we made some quinoa and ate some of the apricots we had picked the day before.  It was too early for bed so we hung out in the tent playing a few games of cribbage.  We would have sat outside, but the bugs were deadly and Jillian couldn't take it anymore!  Finally, the sun went down and we headed to bed.  We were planning to wake up early to try and reach Arches National Park before all the first-come first-served campsites were gone.

Fact:

Campgrounds in the desert don’t have water – MAKES NO SENSE!

Lesson:

Make sure the bag of jerky is full sealed before putting in the cooler with melting ice, otherwise you’ll end up with unappetizing waterlogged jerky

Eat Well; Travel Often

Rico & Jillian