Spring Break Day 2

There was a full moon when we were camped beside the Colorado river, but we didn't see it at night. It rose so late, and we were nestled so deep within the river canyon, that it didn't appear until well after we had snuggled down inside our tent. We woke early in the morning, thinking that the sun was already coming up - but it was actually the moon.

We got up not long after that and drove in to Moab for breakfast. It seems silly, perhaps, that we went out to eat so often on a camping trip, but Moab is a touristy town with lots of interesting restaurants and it can be fun to get out and enjoy them. Also, this early in the spring, the desert gets cold fast when the sun goes down, which means cooking dinner and breakfast outside can be uncomfortable. We ate at a small, strange restaurant called the Eklecticafe. Jewelry and photographs by local artists lined the walls and were even displayed, under glass, on the cafe tables. The coffee was disappointingly weak but the food was abundant and delicious.

We returned to our campsite, to play a little bit and to pack up our tent. The campground was located right across highway 128 from the end of the popular Porcupine Rim trail. There was a tunnel under the highway from the campground to the trail, and the acoustics in the tunnel were fabulous.

While we were loading the truck, Chris realized we'd forgotten a piece of equipment, one that we hadn't missed yet but would be crucial at our next, much more remote, campground: our camp stove. We hemmed and hawed about what to do. To our credit, neither of us got angry, which would have only spoiled the beautiful morning and wouldn't have gotten us out of the jam. After going through all the options (head home early, buy dinner and breakfast items that don't need to cook, get charcoal and try to cook over a fire ring) we decided to buy the least expensive camp stove we could find, reasoning that we could possibly recoup some of the expense by selling it on craigslist. So once the tent was stowed away, we went back into Moab to an outdoor sports store. It turned out to be a pretty nice store, stocked with all sorts of interesting things, so we spent some time browsing around before buying a one-burner Coleman propane stove. Then we headed up highway 191 to Deadhorse Point State Park.

Deadhorse Point is probably most famous as the location where the end of Thelma and Louise was filmed. It has long been a popular route for road cyclists, but in the last few years, the park has added a set of mountain bike trails, which we needed to investigate. The trail system is called Intrepid, and it has 3 concentric loops of 1 mile, 4 miles, and 8 miles. We rode the longest loop, called the Big Chief trail. This ride had some of the most spectacular scenery of any ride I've been on. The trail was fun, with only a few obstacles and challenges, so it would be another great spot to bring our family. Hint, hint.

This picture shows the same potash plant that you can see from the Amasa Back trail, from the other side. The overlook where that trail ends is surely visible in the picture, though I'm not sure exactly which cliff it is.

After a family trip around the Big Chief loop, me on the Blur and Chris and Cailan on the yellow tandem, Chris took a turn on his single bike while Cailan and I went to the visitor center and then ate lunch. We had to keep moving around while we ate our picnic, trying to find the perfect balance between being too hot in the direct sunlight but getting too chilly in deep shade. And then it was time for something completely new: I captained the yellow tandem on actual trail. It was short (the 1.1 mile loop) but it went well; we never capsized. There was one rocky slope I didn't make it all the way up, but that was mostly because I didn't have a sense for how long it would take the rear wheel to get to the top and I ran out of steam a bit too soon.

In the mid-afternoon, we got back in our truck and drove to our next destination: Goblin Valley State Park. I can't believe I have lived this long in Colorado, have travelled so much in Utah, and have never before been to this amazing place. I don't think I can accurately describe the landscape: the flat valley floor filled with hundreds of lumpy rock formations, the sandstone cliffs on the far side of the valley with towers and goblins slowly emerging from the rock, the childish glee of running here and there among the rocks, climbing, and hiding and jumping out to say boo. Fortunately, we have pictures:

We wandered through the valley for two hours, until the sinking sun and our grumbling bellies dictated that we needed to go set up our tent and cook some dinner. We were dismayed to find that our campsite, which we had reserved ahead of time and had no option to move as the campground was full, was located at the very windiest point of the entire campground. It was a challenge to set up our tent with the wind constantly trying to tear it out of our hands, difficult to set up extra lines to stabilize the tent on a rock-hard dirt surface, and we all know from El Dorado Lake that cooking and eating in a howling wind is very tricky. I was so relieved, and so tired, when all the chorse were finally done and we could collapse into the tent at last - but then I lay awake for hours listening to the raging gusts and wondering if it would be the tent that collapsed instead.