Day Moab to Zion 09/07/11

So I slept well the night before watching the moonlight drift on the walls of the Colorado river canyon.  In the morning I had finished packing and having a piece of Melissa's bread when Ellen yelled at me to come over and eat some sausage.  So I had to get up and say goodbye to Steve and Ellen over a few pieces of Canadian Bacon, breakfast sausage and coffee. As I loaded my bike I met some of the campers who had arrived late to our campsite - they were headed back to Colorado and Texas from Burning Man.  I had guessed that from the looks of their bikes the night before.

I then headed into town to talk to the visitor center about what to see that day before I hit the road.  As I came out to my bike I ran into Con and his wife taking a look over my bike. Con had a DR650 and his wife a little Kawasaki Sherpa - she was looking at switching over to a V-strom.  They were retired, from AZ and pretty pleasant to talk to, directing me to a local coffee shop, WakeNBake, where I checked email, let my phone and ipod charge and met a web series author named Amy who was moving from New Mexico to Vancouver, BC. Overall Moab was a pretty fun little tourist town that had a lot more than I had expected in it, with a cool little vibe and people from all over.

I decided I would drive through Arches park, walk around and take a few photos before heading down to Zion.  Up the road I passed an interesting US department of Energy site called the UMRA project; a quick search on the web showed that it is a Uranium mining site.

Arches was fantastic.  Really hard to describe the beauty of the park past pictures you have probably seen, and I only drove through a portion of it.  While I was here I decided that I would need to come back at some point and spend more time appreciating all of it.

Met an Israeli and his girlfriend, they were pretty nice, taking pictures on their iphones and ipad.

From Moab I drove back to 70, and fueled up in Green River.  I was a little concerned, as the previous day I was told the stretch without services was 200 miles, but I have come to learn on the trip, while asking people is a good way to find out information, never take it as a hard fact.  It turned out that the stretch was 105 miles, which is much more in my range than 200 (maybe possible on my bike, not sure?)

The ride to Zion was beautiful as we skirted entrances to Bryce Canyon, but not as notable as Moab had been.  I wasn't sure the fastest path into Zion, so asked a fire and rescue truck out of Leeds, UT who informed me I was only 25 minutes or so away from the entrance.

I took a few pictures on my way into the Canyon/ park area.

At a gas station close to the park entrance I purchased a couple beers for camp that night and a couple locals let me know a place I could camp out for the evening for free just back up the rode 10 minutes.  Which beat the $18 fee in the park.  It was already dark, but I set up my tent in spite of my initial impulse to sleep under the open clear moonlit skies.  One of the neighbors had mentioned the idea of Scorpions out which was enough change my attitude towards the tent that night.  I did hear some rodents or something through my stuff outside the tent that night as I read, and felt pretty good about making the best decision at that point.