Utah and Colorado (We have been busy! )

We have been so busy over the last couple weeks running around Utah and Colorado!  It has been quite the adventure but of course totally worth every moment.

October 21^st – Snow in the forecast

We saw the forecast we assumed we wouldn’t see; snow.  Park City was projected to get more than a foot so we knew it was time to leave the mountain town.  Most of Utah was under an extreme weather warning, so we knew we would likely see snow so we chose a location that seemed to have the least snow and wait out the storm.  That location was outside of Spanish Fork and there was a natural hot spring close to the campground.

We did stumble on a cool place in Springville while killing time.  It was the Legends Motorcycle Museum, and although it was closed the trendy looking area behind it was open. We ended up going for lunch in the area where we “remembered” that Paul had decreased his credit limit of his credit card just in case what happened to Kendra’s card happens to Paul’s card. Well, we remembered when the credit card came back declined.

We did have our debit cards, but we only use them for pulling cash out of the ATM.  Thankfully there was a bank across the road.  Paul ran into the bank where he was shocked there were no ATMs inside the branch; rather they are all outside for vehicles to use (Drive-Thru ATM).  So, Paul stood in line and when he got to the teller, she told him that she can’t withdraw money for me since its not a bank they deal with.  WHAT!?

Paul told Kendra what they said, who responded “I’ll get us the money”, ran to the Drive-Thru ATM and boom money in hand.

 

October 22^nd – Red Ledges

Since we were going to wait out the winter storm, we found a free campground in between some hikes and a natural hot spring.  We thought this would be the best place to keep ourselves busy.

Since today was supposed to be the nicest day we decided to do a hike to some Red Ledges.  The hike was an adventure with the grade of the trail becoming more and more vertical.  Once we reached the top Kendra was convinced, we’d have to find another way down.  The issue was we didn’t know another way down.  We started to follow the rim of the ledges to another path and hoped it would lead us down, which it did, but not before some interesting maneuvers.

All in all, the hike was good, it got our hearts racing a few times, but I think Rupert was the happiest one when we knew it was done.

 

October 23^rd - SNOW

 

We woke up with an inch of snow on the van, but it was around zero degrees so the snow wasn’t sticking to the ground.  With the snow we decided to spend the day in 5^th Water Hot Springs.  Online it talks about how busy the trail can get so we decided to set an alarm to be at the trailhead for the hot springs by 8:30am.

Unfortunately, we had to put in some work to get to these hot springs, 5 km’s worth of work. The trail was beautiful covered with the first snow of the year so the time went by fast.

We were one of the first at the hot springs.  The hot water comes from the river which people have damned up pools to sit in.  There are around a dozen pools, with each one being a slightly different temperature.  We found our perfect pool and relaxed for hours.  We must have looked pretty scary because no one even tried to join us in our pool so we had it to ourselves. According to online you rarely get a pool to yourself, so we feel very fortunate.

The hike back was a bit cold as the snow storm had started and we were wet, but again the time in the hot springs was well worth the effort.

The rest of the day consisted of Harry Potter movies and making warm meals and avoid the wild weather.  Decent day.

 

 

October 24^th – CANADA POST!!!!

Kendra’s credit card had been re-sent and was going to be delivered today, so Paul decided that we would spend the whole day killing time waiting for word it was time to pick it up. We went swimming in the community pool (to warm up from yesterday), we did laundry, got an oil change, went grocery shopping. 

We were surprised that our tracking number hadn’t updated since it was put in the mail so we decided to chat with Canada Post.  Turns out we were killing time for no reason.  Even though we got next day worldwide shipping and three days had passed, our package was still in Prince George.

Defeated, we returned to the same campground we had been the previous 3 nights

 

October 25^th – Leaving Northern Utah

The gods must have heard our plea, we woke up and somehow Kendra’s credit card was in Salt Lake City! 

We didn’t know exactly when it would be delivered, or if someone would be home to sign for the package, but we knew we would have it today.

Did a bit more killing time, which mostly consisted of finding the only Korean grocery store in Salt Lake City, buying a bunch of stuff then eating a bunch of that same stuff.  We then got word the card had arrived so we headed to its location, picked it up and headed for the furthest location south before sunset (Thank you so much Pam!).

The best part was that it was not supposed to get below freezing where we would be camping, this would be the first time we would sleep above zero in quite a few days.

 

October 26^th – Let’s go to Colorado?

 

We had camped near Green River which had some interesting sites.  The first was a launch site for a nuke that had been decommissioned quite some time ago.  It was fun to wander about, and we kept on thinking about googling more information about it and what exactly was done there, but we still haven’t. (It was Launch Pad 3 near Green River, if you want to do our googling yourself).

The second site was a Cold Water Geyser created when people were doing oil exploration and hit a carbon dioxide bubble in the ground.  The topography was awesome. It goes off every 12 to 16 hours, so we didn’t have time to wait for it to go off, so we walked around the area for an hour, had a snack, then left.

By this point we are within an hours drive of Arches National Park, a location we were really excited about.  The only issue was that the campground we wanted to stay at had been booked solid for months.  However, on November 1^st it becomes First come First Served; so we knew if we woke up early enough, we’d have a chance to camp in the park on November 1.

We had a lot of discussions about where to go until November 1^st, which came down to two main options. 

Option 1: do a bunch of things in South Central Utah and work our way back or go to Colorado.

 Option 2: Check out Colorado, hope for no snow, and see what Colorado is all about. We had heard about a place called Mesa Verde National Park that looked amazing so we started to head east.

Paul had read that the second largest concentration of arches outside of Arches National Park was McInnis Canyons National Reserve just on the Colorado side of the Utah/Colorado border.  We decided to head there but we’re surprised to learn we would have to drive through Colorado National Monument National Monument to get to it.  Well, that Colorado National Monument was just like a National Park and was unbelievable!!  We ended up spending the rest of the day going from overlook to overlook.

We had planned to spend the night in the McInnis Canyons National Reserve, but when we finally got to the entrance of the reserve it was so muddy Paul was convinced, we would get stuck.  Kendra wasn’t sure so she convinced Paul to drive 250 meters down the road.  Well, we almost got stuck.

 

October 27^th – IT’S FREEZING

The day more or less started at 2am with a loud and bright thunderstorm.  We ended up listening to it for an hour or so before finally falling back to sleep again.  When we did wake up we were frozen, it had snowed and the van said it was -7 degrees.  The van was not somewhere we could comfortably sleep at that temperature.

While shivering we made some food and brushed off the van before returning to the Colorado National Monument.  We had hoped to try to enter the Reserve again, but the snow on top of mud made us weary of even trying. We will just have to save our first experience of arches for Arches.

It took us an hour to warm up. We enjoyed seeing the stark difference of the area with snow on it compared to what we had seen yesterday; but we seemed to be chilled to the bone.

We had warmed up by the time we left the higher elevations and the temperature had returned to a much more reasonable 7 degrees, so we decided to do a hike to the Devil’s Kitchen, a hike that would end in a “room” created by stone columns.  We did make it but we went twice the distance it was supposed to take as we relied on All Trails, which tried to take us on a different trail.  Regardless of the extra distance the destination was worth it.

Within a couple hours drive was Black Canyon National Park, so we decided to head there and check it out. The Black Canyon was near Montrose, UT which was covered in snow, and at the high elevations of the Black Canyon there was so much snow that most of the park was closed.  The only thing that was open was one view point and the visitors center. It was a bit disappointing but we were told that they hoped to have the park mostly open tomorrow, once they can acquire a snow plow.

We returned to Montrose and learned that it was supposed to get down to -8 degrees tonight and stay around that temperature during the night across western Colorado.  We decided to book the next three nights in hotels.

 

October 28^th -Through the Mountain Passes

We had planned to return to the Black Canyon but after killing time at a coffee shop and giving the van a wash, the Park was still not open beyond the visitors centre, so we decided to continue south.  The drive was beautiful following the Rocky Mountains.  About halfway through the drive we stopped into the Ski Community of Telluride which was awesome, but super expensive, a pint was over $10 at one of the breweries. We ended up just walking the streets with Rupert, taking photos before continuing our drive to Cortez.

We checked into our hotel but by this time we had blown the budget and eaten out a couple days in a row, so we decided to go to a local park to cook some dinner.  I think some locals thought this was really interesting because we started to see a few people driving through to make sure we weren’t up to no good.

 

October 29^th – “Are you Paul & Kendra?”

We woke up and headed to Mesa Verde National Park; a park known for buildings built in the cliffs and petroglyphs. We had seen pictures and knew we had to check them out.

Our first stop was the summit of the area which gave views of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.  Yes you could see things in each state from the view point.  As we approached our vehicle a couple came up to us and asked “Are you Paul & Kendra?” 

We have never felt so famous in our lives!

They were the sister of a co-worker of Paul’s (shout out to Joelle).  We all knew we’d be in the area of each other but we’d never met before nor had any plan to meet up.  It was awesome to hear their plans, and compare notes.

We visited the overlooks of the cliff buildings and villages.  They were unreal!! Highly recommend!

We couldn’t go to a National Park without doing a hike, and we were told the best hike was the Petroglyphs hike.  It felt like a hike where you were walking the same path the indigenous people (or Indians as they are called in America) of the area had done for thousands of years.  It is probably Paul’s favourite hike right now and it ended at some Petroglyphs!

We ended the day with a pint from the local brewery and some Dominos Pizza in bed as we watched Impractical Jokers and enjoyed the ability to control the temperature of our sleeping accommodations.

 

October 30^th – New Best Camping Spot!

Cortez is pretty close to the Four Corners Monument, a spot where you can stand in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado on the lands of the Navajo People.  The monument is administered by the Navajo Nation, so after purchasing a ticket we were able to take all the photos we needed of us going from state to state.

We then stared our journey towards Arches National Park.  We had about 4 hours of driving so we thought to break up the trip by going grocery shopping. Well, we learned on Sunday in rural Utah all grocery stores are close.  Guess we will make due with what we have.

Close to Moab (the municipality closest to Arches National Park) is a road that goes to a number of outlooks around the area.  The area around these overlooks is BLM land or land administered by the Bureau of Land Management.  Usually BLM land, often national forests, are free to camp in, so we were confident we could find a spot.

We did one overlook then began searching for a campsite. The whole area was dynamic with a giant canyon that stretched for miles.  Paul was convinced if we followed a side road we’d find spot on the canyon rim.  He was right, the campsite was unbelievable.  The only issue is Paul thought we may struggle getting out, but that is a tomorrow problem.

 

October 31^st – ARCHES

Although there was some concern about getting back to the main road due to some big rocks, and a sandy incline, the van was able to get us to Moab, the community just before Arches National Park. 

This was the first time in the states we heard so many other languages and saw RVs and vans from all over the world.  Tomorrow starts first come first served camping inside Arches National Park.  We were concerned that others had the same plan as us.

We picked up some groceries and decided to see some arches outside of the national park, namely Corona Arch.  The hike ended up being about 7kms to see three arches, with Corona being the best.  The hike itself was pretty reasonable, but I wouldn’t want to do it in 40 degrees, the temperature the area is known for in the summer.

 

November 1^st – We made it!

The alarm went off at 5:45am.  We were convinced that lots of others would probably have our plan so we drove to the Devils Garden Campground, arriving about an hour later. 

Our plan worked; we got an awesome campsite right beside a number of trailheads. 

We decided against having a nap and instead decided to do a 13 kilometer hike seeing numerous arches and the area known as the Devils Garden.  It was an amazing hike, and although we were dead tired after, the pictures on our cameras more than make up for the sore muscles.  Our favourite Arches in the order we them saw were the Navajo Arch, the Double O Arch, the Private Arch and the Pine Tree Arch.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and having naps, recouping for more hikes tomorrow.

 

November 2^nd- Checking off the bucket list.

Today started similarly as yesterday, but instead of seeking out a campsite we were seeking the “world famous” Delicate Arch.  After a short hike in the dark with our headlamps, Paul turns to Kendra and says “we are off trail”.  Luckily we were minimally off the trail and were able to reconnect with the trail to reach Delicate Arch in time for sunrise.  Photos of this arch are usually crowded since it is the most famous arch. We shared sunrise with about 15 other people and had a 10 minute moment where everyone sat back and watched the arch once the sun was up (no one was taking photos under or near the arch, which is rare). While we had read sunrise is the best time for this arch in the summer, we suggest staying around after the sunrise group has left and enjoy the view because it was not busy at all about 20 minutes after sunrise. We also went to the upper and lower Delicate Arch Views and the experience of being close to an arch is significantly better.

After Delicate Arch we stopped at a few overlooks before heading back to the campground for some breakfast (we hit 10,000 steps before breakfast!). After breakfast we headed out to another hike that we were worried would be inaccessible tomorrow if it rained.  Tower Arch did not disappoint and we had the entire arch to ourselves!  We spent more time taking photos than any other point on our trip, but it feels so rare to have an arch to yourself that we had to take full advantage of it.  This hike was rated Difficult and meant that we have hiked every hike rated difficult in a US National Park (within 24 hours of our first hike in the park)!