Saturday, Moab

We got up very early, too early (though not really, as we beat the heat and the crowds), to go out and visit Arches National Park. We were there around 7:00 a.m., well before the big tour buses start arriving around 9:00 a.m., so we were able to see some of the more popular attractions easily.

We did a couple of the easiest hikes in the cool morning.

We returned to the hotel room before 11:00 for lunch (green chile stew, tortillas, and a couple of pastries we had picked up on the way back into town) and a quick nap.

In the afternoon we had planned on going on a jetboat tour. Actually, we had planned it for the morning, but that tour was cancelled since not enough people signed up, so we opted to take the afternoon tour. So we spent the afternoon on the water.

It was relatively cool and overcast which was nice. The tour was just under 3 hours and we went 30+ miles from just outside Moab up to the entrance to Canyonlands National Park. 

Our guide was more witty than informative, which is fine, though I would have liked more information about, say, the geology of the area than a litany of the movies filmed in the area.

After the tour, we stopped by the Village Market grocery store to pick up a few things (bananas, cheese sticks, yogurt for the morning, and more chocolate of course), then we wandered over to Paradox Pizza to repeat our dinner from the previous evening (salads and a 14" caprese pizza).


Judi had mentioned this rock shop to us when we told her we were going to Moab and it was not the kind of place we ever would have stopped, but after a quick look while we were on our way to the boat tour, we decided to come back for a more leisurely look at things.

This is kind of an amazing shop, actually. Never did I think I'd spend, like, $50 on rocks, but we came away with some strange and wonderful things including a bit of dinosaur bone and a couple of fossilized ammonites that I think will work beautifully to make impressions in clay. Dave got a bit of bone white petrified wood and a couple of unprepped fish fossils that he's going to try his hand at working. And we picked up a small gift for my brother, who is watching the cats for us while we're gone.

Inside, the shop is well organized but packed with rocks and fossils and gemstones and jewelry and dinosaur bones and books. But outside is for more purist kinds of rock hounds: There are tables where rocks are just laid out, priced to move, most of them. These in the picture are $10 rocks, but they have smaller ones that are $3 or less. If you're inclined to shop for rocks after hours, they work on the honor system;  is a drop box where you can leave your payment.

When we were done looking around the shop, we came back to the room. I was pretty tired since I hadn't slept very well the night before. I had gone to bed around midnight because of some poorly timed caffeine intake and had gotten up at 4:00 a.m. when the power went out causing everything that was plugged in to beep--my phone and computer and the motel's microwave and A/C unit. That woke me up. The power went back on exactly fifteen minutes later, leading me to believe that it was a prearranged outage, but that didn't help me get back to sleep.

So we came back to the room, which was more like a little cabin, and as I was getting ready for bed, Dave said, "It's raining."

We stepped outside and checked out the rain.

We were staying at the Kokopelli 100 West, which is a cute little compound of modern cabins arranged around a little courtyard with tables and a barbeque and hot tub (none of which we used). It's a block off the main drag, so it's quiet but still centrally located. (It's a small town, Moab, so pretty much everything is centrally located.)

We fell asleep listening to the rain.