Moab

Moab is a neat little town - gateway to two National Parks (Arches and Canyonlands) and a State Park (Deadhorse Point), and lots of open BLM and Forest lands to explore. With the La Sal Mountains to the southeast, rising in green and snowy contrast to the red rock cliffs around the town, and the Colorado River and Kane Creek running around the outskirts with their corridors of Cottonwoods and Willows, it has enough contrast of warm and cool, wet and dry to make it interesting. It's a major recreation town - of course mountain biking is big, Jeepin' (as they say) is very big, rafting, jet boat tours, canoeing and kayaking on the River are all very big in summer, rock climbing, hiking, backpacking, and of course camping. And "canyoneering" in narrow slot canyons (like the guy that had to cut off his own arm to escape). And photography and general sight-seeing, too. It's a regular recreational Mecca! And the town is nice, too - we found a couple of great restaurants - Miguel's Baja Grill was incredible, and we also loved the Moab Diner.

We stayed in an RV Park that was a bit off the highway with a view of the "portal" where the Colorado River goes through the cliffs, hence the name, Portal RV Park. I saw a beaver out in back of the park, where they have ponds and irrigation ditches! Of course, I didn't have my camera, but it just sat there and munched on bark while I watched and listened! We liked Moab. But back to the reason we left Capitol Reef early to come here...

The hospital in Moab is very small, but quite nice. There was a sign outside the Emergency Room entrance that said "Harley Parking Only, all others will be crushed" but a BMW bike was parked there - obviously some staff having some fun with each other. There was no real wait, and the doctor that examined Devin was wearing jeans and hiking boots under his scrub top. They started Devin on a cocktail of two different antibiotics for a shotgun approach, and when the results of the culture came back in two days, we would see which (if any) of them was working on the infection.

After waiting at the hospital that morning, I had a horrible Jones for a breakfast burrito, and we went out on a "quest for fire" (or at least a fiery hot sauce - ha). We found it at the Moab Diner, which advertises "the Best Green Chile in Utah" and it seemd to be pretty true. I got two to go and we went home and enjoyed the spoils of our hunt.Then we settled into RV park life and watched Cable TV, enjoyed the comforts of Air Conditioning ("No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air" - Jason Lee, as the Demon Azrael in Dogma), and the convenience of take-out food in a small city.

I now know how to do everything from driving the RV to dumping the tanks to changing fuses - I already knew how to hook up the Jeep for towing as that is mainly "my" job, but Devin has been our driver and our sanitation maintenance man, as well as main repairman/electrician so far. Another thing I've been learning is cooking - watch for a separate blog post on cooking and recipes that I worked on during this time.

Fortunately, both new antibiotics worked great and Devin was much improved in a couple of days. Hooray for modern medicine!

Kane Creek
When Devin first started feeling up to getting out and around, we drove out Kane Creek Road and toward Hoorah Pass and Chicken Corners, but I was actually not feeling all that great and all the bumping was making it worse, so we turned around after a while, but it was beautiful and there were lots of interesting formations, and wide vistas. It was stormy that day, and when we were driving out, the Colorado River had big waves and whitecaps, going UPriver! Rain was blowing sideways! We drove right through it, enjoying the excitement.

Earlier, some big winds that came through the RV Park ripped three different people's awnings right off their RVs! Ours was out, too, and I got out there and took it down very quickly, but I was afraid we would lose ours, too. In fact, the wind was blowing so hard at first, I couldn't hold the door, so I waited a few seconds before going out. Then I actually crouched inside, waiting for the tornado to take us to Oz... but it died down almost as quickly as it came. In the 95 degree heat here, those winds sure felt great, though!

It calmed down a bit on our way back, and we explored a side trail and found a really cool yellow beetle - I've never seen anything like it, so I took pictures. It made a nice contrast against the red sand.