Mother Of All Boulders

OK, John admits he made that up.  There really is a Moab in Utah, though, and it is home to the Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.

But first--!  Debbie is in heaven, a self-contained heaven, just north of the Arches park but not in the park.  In fact, not in any kind of park.  We have no services but we paid for this already (and so did you) because it is public land.  If you hear of BLM Camping that is Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that pretty much manages the vast expanse of publicly owned land out West.  There are two BLM options for camping:  assigned sites ($20/night gets you a first-come space near a paved road, access to a vault toilet and --yeah, that's it)...or..."dispersed camping" (grab-it first space off a used-but-not-necessarily maintained road, no other services, but it is FREE.
 ==> see Debbie smiling?).

There are trade-offs to the basic RV Re$ort Park, primary among which --in this desert location-- is the red sandy dust:

But we fixed that with the vacuum cleaner (you have to have a vacuum in your mobile house, because House. Y'see?).   But you also get this at sunset, which you wouldn't get because the neighbor's rig blocks the view in an RV park:

And you do have neighbors, like this quiet guy across "the street" (graded dirt road):

But look at the view! 
{La Sal mountain range}
For our first-ever BLM experience, Debbie and I feel quite lucky that we stumbled into a wide flat area also occupied by two other friendly coaches (but not crowding them at all).  Lou noticed the Brys having the traditional after-a-long-drive family discussion of Where To Park, How To Maneuver, and Why Aren't You Listening To Me over our little hand-held 2-way radios [when you have to back and turn and jig a 40-foot monster, the Driver stands outside where s/he can see and the remaining person behind the steering wheel is supposed to simply take orders-- unquestioningly.  In Theory.]  So Lou from Maine hastened over to say Hi and This Looks Like A Good Spot and basically joined our "chat", as he politely called it. In due course we met his wife, Renee, and our other two neighbors, Marion and Paschia, from Maryland.  After we all had a beer, and somebody lit the campfire, a good time was had by all until bedtime.  This is the life.

This also is delayed reporting because we had a --to the vendor, minor-- problem getting our internet service.  We spent almost all our time from Salt Lake City to tomorrow morning totally out of everyone's loop.  We found the BLM land only by visiting the Visitor's Center in Moab, 11 miles down the road.  Google Maps refused to work on both our phones and on John's iPad without a wifi backup for some reason and family relations were tense until the Winegard tech suggested we get on the roof, unscrew the SIM card and reboot the sucker.  Debbie drew the short straw and here she is with

a Phillips screwdriver in hand, 13 feet above the mile-high desert floor pretending to know how to be an electronics engineer.  Joyous Day! We have our connectivity restored and, thereby, you get to read this.

{For the more technically inclined reader, Winegard ConnecT 2.0 is a three-function unit: 1) casts a "mobile hot spot" LAN for all devices in your coach, 2) reaches out to snag weak wifi signals at campgrounds and repeats them into the LAN, and 3) uses the 4G/LTE mobile phone network to ramp the LAN onto the internet if there's no local wifi free, which there never is while you're driving down the highway.  We're getting 10mb down and up, but the data does cost more than at home.}

One final note on Moab, before we get back to National Parking tomorrow.  The town is just about 2 miles long with US-191 serving as Main Street.  It has a bunch of tourist services, tons of athletic looking 20-somethings who seemingly have no job but lots of time to spend exploring the desert in Jeeps and motorcycles.  The temperature was in the high 70s and 80s (100s in July!), John was still coughing, and the mobile food vendors apparently solved what John assumes was a contention with city hall (cf, for instance, Grand Rapids' battle) by taking control of one block downtown and everybody parking their trucks on that land.


Debbie highly recommends the Enchanted Chicken Quesadilla at Quesadilla Mobilla, which is to the left (out) of this picture.  Very good.

John had struck a determined stance before leaving Michigan that we would eat-out once/week minimum.  Debbie is highly affronted that he wants to spend money.  So, it's been two weeks into the trip before we bypassed the PB&J lunch sandwiches for the quesadillas.  Then, Glory Be! --dinner out the next night!  John says if you're in Moab, find The Spoke On Center (on Center where it crosses Main) and order the Bacon Wrapped Meat Loaf With Garlic Mashed Potatoes and a huge serving of Debbie-approved healthy vegetables.  So much on the plate that he had to get a doggie box to take back to the coach for a midnight snack.  About $24 each, including the craft beers.

PS:  If you're driving a camper through Moab and discover your fresh water tank is near empty while your Black- and Gray Water tanks are full, pull into the Maverik (their spelling) gas station on South Main.  FREE Dump and FREE potable water.   Yes, Debbie was so pleased that we did this twice while camped on the BLM land for 4 nights running.  John even bought gum and gas there (for our Honda C-RV toad); they had diesel also, but we'd filled up in the last state and that 150 gallon tank runs for many miles.

See ya.