A month ago Chris and I were talking about vacationing in Hawaii or Europe. Then I came upon an unexpected airfare sale so we changed course and decided to fly to Utah, rent a car, and take off on a week-long road trip to see the national parks.
Long story short, my mom saved us by getting us to the airport on time. (THANK YOU!) The flight was nice... I met a nice woman on the plane who showed me pictures of an African safari that she and her husband had gone on. It made the already-short flight go by in no time.
Fast-forward to baggage claim. Two of our three pieces of luggage were missing. We notified an employee who didn't seem to care until I mentioned "one of the suitcases has a firearm in it." Funny how people will jump to attention when a gun is missing. Luckily, the suitcases made it onto the next plane, which was only a couple hours behind us.
We needed to shop for our road trip anyway, so it was no big deal. We picked up our rental car and were disappointed to find that we'd been upgraded to a premium vehicle. Which happened to be a Chrysler 300. Nice car and all, but not really what we were wanting to use for a road trip. Oh well... we looked dumb but it really was a nice, comfortable car.
We found a store and picked up groceries, a cooler, a set of sheets, and some pillows. By the time we were finished, it was time to head back to the airport and pick up our remaining pieces of luggage. And then we were officially off!
Our first destination was Arches National Park, but we didn't think we'd have good luck finding a place to camp by the time we arrived in Moab. So we stopped and camped in Price Canyon. Although we weren't in a canyon. We drove 3 miles up a rugged gravel road (yep, in the 300) until we found a near-empty BLM campground at 8000 feet elevation. We pitched the tent and cooked dinner as it was turning dark.
Meals were simple. We had a small single-burner backpacking stove for boiling water. All dinners consisted of meals that could be prepared with water. Dehydrated backpacking food, instant mashed potatoes, soups, things like that.
I didn't sleep well the first night, and I determined it was because I needed another pillow. The next day we stopped at a store along the way and picked up another. As we continued along, we began to make our way into red rock country, which is was we were there to see. I was so excited to finally be getting my first glimpse of Moab!
No comments:
Post a Comment