On the Road in the Left Whale: October 1: Monument Valley and Moab

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Said goodbye to my own personal off-grid campground at Monument Valley. Took a last walk about and found 3 horse skeletons… seems skeletons last a long time on the high-desert. Probably no bugs to recycle everything.

Moved just 5 miles up the road to the local town – Goulding. I was booked in for 3 nights (to await some Amazon packages to do some maintenance on the roof). The campground was in a canyon and had its own arch – apparently arches are a dime a dozen around here.

My first mince curry

View down the canyon/campground

There was also a Gouldings lodge, Gouldings supermarket, Gouldings (you get the picture). The lodge had free John Wayne movies every other night – which I unfortunately never got to.

Went for a cycle down some road to see what was out there and spotted a rattle snake near the road…. So doing about 15 mph and I see this shape that should not be there. Turned around and there was a 2-3 ft rattler sunning himself in the riverbed. At last I had seen something that was not a lizard, chipmunk or a crow!!

The Goulding Stagecoach at Gouldings Lodge

My rattlesnake

On leaving Goulding, I stopped at Forest Gump hill to get the picture (not sure where it was in the movie, but I assume it was when he was running). Beautiful vista though.

A couple at the Goulding campground suggested I stop off at Gooseneck State Park for a night – which I did. Totally in the middle of nowhere, but the San Juan river (not the Colorado) wound it way around – it was actually amazing – I parked on the edge of this canyon and from where I sat, I could see 3 ‘wines??’ of the river – spectacular. Was also supposed to be the place to go star gazing, but unfortunately the full moon changed the focus on that a bit.

Breakfast and a view

Morning is breaking

Moon setting

Moon rising - one day I will figure out how to sequence these #)*#@)*@#)* photos correctly. The car belongs to Michelle and Skip - the woman who played the flute

Sunset

Well camouflaged Whale

Some floaters passing below

Zig-zags

My campsite - living on the edge is dangerous, but the view is beautiful - Jim Morrison

As I woke up the next morning, the full moon was just setting and this women from North Carolina came out and played the most melancholic song on a Navajo flute – similar to an accordion, but not quite – sounds similar but only plays minor keys. Beautiful. Really interesting couple. They come and visit their family in Salt Lake City, and take a few weeks to get there every time – living out of their Subaru and sleeping in the tent on top of the car.

From Gooseneck state park I moved on to Moab. When we were here in 2008 it was a quaint up and coming town. Gene remembers mountain bikes, I did not, but man – they are now the feature of the town - off-road vehicles and mountain bikes. Lots of young people and tesla’s and everything is very very expensive. The amazing thing is some corporation bought up the majority of RV parks around town. They also introduced on-demand pricing, so depending on how busy their campgrounds are the prices moves up or down. SUCKS. Everything has more than tripled in price since 2008…. Very similar to what happened in Florida and the south – the big corporations bought up all the mobile home parks and bumped up the prices forcing the locals out and redeveloping the sites. Capitalism is great ain’t it!!!!

So the first night at the Moab dry-camping site I got woken up by some rustling noises. Ignored it and hoped it would go away. Well, it did, but with about 60 of my chocolate flavored gold wrapped Benecol chewies... Dr Newton (my brother-in-law) had suggested I have some each morning to lower my cholesterol.

Well, seems the local field mice got into the Whale - either in Monument Valley - where I caught 1, or in Moab, but they carried away all 60 chewies. I spent the rest of the morning following the shredded gold wrappers all over the Whale but could not find the mice or the stash. The current count is 3 mice caught, but no chewies retrieved.

In any case, stayed 11 miles outside of Moab for the first 2 nights and then Sunday night at Goose Island campground. It’s a first-come-first-serve campground so you cannot book and it is a crazy scramble to get a spot. I went on Saturday to check out who was leaving and started talking to this guy who had booked a number of sites that were going to free up the next day. Turns out he was actually getting married on that Saturday and they had the wedding in the campground and all their friends stayed there. Made me think of Gene and my wedding many moons ago in Rhodes, South Africa.

Saturday I also attempted to ride up into Arches NP. Was great doing it on the bike, as with a car you needed a scheduled entry, and the queue was in any case about an hour wait. Problem was that the great e-bike only does about 50 miles on a flat road, and Moab and Arches are all steep hills and in the end I did 50+ miles that day, but never got to the Devils Playground – the main part of Arches NP. Was fun though and the scenery spectacular.