Day 8: Travel to Moab

On the 8th day, we travel from Cedar City, UT to Moab, Utah. Where Cedar City has a more utilitarian feel like most cities that get a small amount of revenue from tourism, Moab is a different animal altogether. In fact, it seems to be a refuge for hippies from the 60's and 70's. It's unique and worth visiting again.

I don't think I've seen a larger very fit aging population of folks. It has a collection of typical 'active' tourist shops for hiking and biking and climbing, but also un-typical collection of new-age shops stocked with crystals, health food stores, eclectic restaurants and I'm sure there's a head shop around here someplace :-). It's seems very inviting. However, I'm getting ahead of myself. We're not there yet!

Heading north out of Cedar City, Utah on US Route 15 we see the obligatory desert-like terrain, although nothing to compare to the Navajo reservation and Kaibab National Park area north-east of the Grand Canyon. Now however, we also see mountains with snow for the first time. I had Kelley take this picture because of their name -- the Wah Wah Mountains. Hey, I can't make this stuff up.

Now, on the way, we also picked up a couple of new mysteries. For example, why has the state symbol for their highways become these? These have gotta be beehives, right? As George Carlin might say, "It's a mystery".

And while we're on the subject of roads, the second mystery. These guys have got to come up with a better naming system -- I swear this is the 6th 'Ranch Exit' we've passed in this area. on the other hand, it could be one mighty big ranch. We passed the first one about 10 miles south of Cedar City, and this is someplace about 1 hour north of there (about 70 miles). Hate the mend the fences on that ranch!

We headed east on US Route 70.

In a little town called Salina, UT, we hit a Mom-and-Pop, well only Mom, cafe called 'Mom's Cafe'. It really is a small-town cafe, but I can heartily recommend it. It had the best French Dip I've ever had, and the 'house salad' was excellent with fresh peas and little pretzels and ... ok, you get the picture. It was good stuff, so sue me :-) It's even appeared in National Geographic.

After this, the ground started rising, and we ran into a very strange set of geology. I'll have to the let sign explain it (though the text is rather high-schoolish). The region depicted on the sign is huge -- it took us about an hour to get through it. And even though the expressway speeds here are 75, it was tortuous enough that Kelley and I have had our first disagreement over how fast to go. She won. Sorry dear, I won't argue again. (-:

I'm not sure what kind of salt the 'Salt Wash' is made of, but it's very white, and it dissolves in water (yep, that's what salt does). Finally, after going up for what seemed forever, we crested the big, flat, tilted terrain and headed precipitously down -- but there was a nice tournout first. Take a look.

I'm somewhere to the right on that ridge. Apparently the clothes I'm wearing blend in quite well. I'll include the sign here so it can describe the geography, if you care.



This area is called a 'reef' and I can kinda see the resemblance. In fact, when we finally reached the bottom, we saw what looked for all intents and purposes, three ships gliding through the desert.

Well, this was one of our shortest trips, just 4 hours (what a relief). The next day we'll see the Arches. The day after that, we were to see Canyonlands, but Dad declared a day of relaxation, because Wednesday (that's tomorrow for me -- ed) we go on a 9 hour trip to Yellowstone.

I'll try to get to the description of the Arches in a reasonable time -- with the day off, I'm only 1 day behind on the blog. (Hooray!) Of the two, Bryce Canyon is better, though....

Have fun folks, I hear that the cicadas have finally reached our part of Naperville, and I can tell you I'm not missing them! There are very few bugs out here, and the relative humidity today was twice that of yesterday at 22%. Gotta love it. (Kelley hated the fact that we have clouds for the first day in weeks -- it's screwing up her pictures. Can't have everything :-) And Moab is right on the Colorado river, so we've finally broken our dry spell of seeing no liquid water except for what comes out of a tap (ok, apart from the Virgin river in Zion).

Cheers to all and thanks for the comments! Keep them coming, we enjoy reading them. And we'll try to send some postcards....we'll see how that works out.