Day 15 - Moab, UT to Sunglow campground - Starting to find a rhythm

Today was a travel day but also a laundry day.  So, while Amy started with breakfast and packing up the camper I ran into town to do some laundry.  I found a laundromat that had the truly industrial washers so it was all done with one washer and then one dryer.  I need those things for the house.  Ha!

I stopped at the store for some fresh fruit and then got back to camp to assist with packing up the camper.  While not easy, we’re getting better at this, though some is due to the fact that we ate through a fair bit of food in the past week so we have less to pack up (did I mention that we had overpacked for the beginning of our trip?!!).

Once Rover and Dover were reconnected we started heading West to see what a few geology professors we had met called the hidden gem of the National Park system - Capitol Reef.

We made a brief stop at the park to walk over the mighty Colorado river as it wound its way toward the Grand Canyon.  One the river, Sebastian got to see some of the rafters floating their way downstream.  At this point in the river, floating downstream sounded pretty nice!  For  us though, we piled back into Rover and hit the road.

Capitol Reef isn’t that far from Moab so it proved to be a short travel day.  We drove through the park, seeing the fruit orchards along the way.  There was such lush vegetation in the park - very different from the rest of the desert we had just ridden through.   However, because of the crowds and Rover + Dover’s length, we just drove through and went straight to our campsite at Sunglow.

Sunglow may prove to be the hidden gem that Amy found.  It’s about 20 minutes outside the park, but was absolutely isolated and wonderful.   There was water in the park, though not at the actual site, but no electric so we had to put the solar panels and generator to use.   Great to have it around so we could still have some warm stuff to eat.  After lunch, the boys played in the  creek running behind the site while we got Dover set up, put out the panels to charge up the generator and then left to the park.

As usual, we started with the visitor center to get recommendations from the ranger.  They recommended a few places to stay away from, but  when they heard that I wanted to hike inside the canyon walls, they sent us over to The Narrows.

 

The Narrows at Canyonlands has two access points and you can hike between them.  One was off a paved road in the middle of the crowds and the other was off an unpaved road with far fewer crowds.  Rover, it’s time to find out what you can do.   We headed up the scenic road before we turned left off the paved path!  Rover handed driving through the rough gravel just fine and off we went to hike.

The hike was glorious.  It followed the wash basin and was surrounded by the canyon walls - some 800 ft high according to the ranger.  To us, they just looked BIG.  While the hike started warm, every time we got around a bend, we were pushed back into the shadows of the canyons and it felt great.   While it was a long and tiring hike, we all enjoyed it.  The boys particularly enjoyed acting like The Hulk and picking up rocks and smashing them in their fists - sandstone is fun!  One other highlight was finding one of the pools that keep water for some time after the rains.  Inside we found plenty of tadpoles swimming around.  That was a neat treat.

                  

After the hike we headed back to camp and had a wonderful relaxing dinner.  Because of the remote area, we all stayed up to watch the stars come out.  There were a lot, but it was still a little bright.  But the highlight for me was the couple of shooting stars I was able to see.  It’s amazing to watch those flashes of light jet across the sky and know that what I was seeing was a meteor burning up in the atmosphere.  

Another great day for us.  Here’s hoping that starts a trend!

Total miles travelled - 3,581

# States (Provinces) - 10