DAY 15 – Monument Valley to Moab (150 miles driven, 5.49 miles walked)
It had rained overnight and so sunrise over the mittens was a bit of a damp squib which was a shame but it is such a great view. Personally I felt that once you’d seen the mittens the rest of the park didn’t live up to the most famous view but I was glad we visited.
Today we were travelling on to Moab a place that I associate with a Stephen Fry book and know nothing about.
There were a couple of interesting stops on the way that had been recommended to us by the company that we had booked the trip through. The first was at the Mexican Hat – a rock balanced on top of a hill that looks like, well you can probably work that out for yourself.
Next up was Goosenecks State Park, just a short detour off the road to Moab. This turned out to be similar to the Horseshoe Bend that we visited in Page a couple of days ago but even more impressive as the river below had managed two switchbacks (see above).
We also found here a zero mile marker. Helen and I have become fascinated by these along our route with the numbers increasing or decreasing depending on the road you are on. A quick search revealed that these markers are not, as we imagined, to the centre of a major city or state but the distance from the state border. I’m not sure how useful it is to know this particular piece of information but it was good to finally understand what they meant.
For a nation run on coffee it is particularly hard to find out here on a long drive. The small towns that we have been through often don’t have any store let alone a cafe/diner. The petrol gas stations do coffee but that’s not up to scratch for Helen’s tastes. In the end we pushed on through to Moab which turned out to be an attractive place with a number of independent coffee shops and Helen got the frothy coffee that she craved.
Friends of ours had also recommended a mobile van that sold quesadillas in downtown Moab and they were so good they’d gone back every lunchtime. We literally stumbled upon it and I was so glad that we did as they were amazing. I can see us going back there tomorrow!
Late afternoon we went in to Arches National Park where you can only get in with a pre-purchased, timed entry pass. Even though we had one it still took an hour to get in. Hopefully tomorrow won’t be quite so long…
One Reply to “USA ’22 – Day 15 – Round the Bend Again”