The Road Trip - Arches & Canyonlands

Well we set off from Little America in SLC at 8:30 am on the Monday to go and pick up our camper van at the airport, where LT's booking thingy told her it was.  We trawled all the luggage over to the car hire place aaaand nada.  Niet. Not one sign of the car hire place, so we phoned them.  It turned out they were about 20 miles south of SLC, not north where the airport was...  A $60 taxi drive later (when the driver got lost several times) and we were there.  We needed to grab a pile of things before leaving the city with the camper van, including food, so we hit up Target, Walmart and Joann's.  Living the high life, that's us...

It was a loooong drive down to Moab, and when we got there it was dark.  Which might have been how LT managed to hit an immovable object with the passenger side wing mirror.  I couldn't possibly comment though.  Anyway, it did give us some excitement the next morning as we headed to Canyonlands National Park because we got to stop in at the sheriff's office to report it as per the insurance instructions in the RV.  He was perplexed as there's some law in Utah that under $1000 wasn't reportable, but he was nice and made something up for us.  LT and Laura thought he was kind of cute too, and they did wonder how we might get to see him again...

So after that the adventure really began and we drove up to Canyonlands National Park.  On the way down the road we spotted the perfect place for lunch, so we stopped and enjoyed the view:

Then we headed down to the gate and we got ourselves a national park pass as we were going to be in so many, so now we can come and go through loads of them.  We stopped at the visitor's centre first and admired the view from there:

Me with Laura cluttering up my photo

Next we drove down to where the famous arch is that everyone likes taking photos through at sunrise:

Before we drove all the way to the end of the road.  Doesn't it look like some huge dinosaur thing has been crashing through the landscape behind me?

I met a new friend up there as well.  This is a chipmunk - Laura can't tell the difference between them and squirrels and bandicoots - stupid woman!

Finally we went to upheaval dome, a big dent in the ground:

After a less than stellar meal at the microbrewery in Moab we hit the sack so that we could be up bright and early to go to Arches National Park.  Deirdre, Laura's annoying donkey, decided to bomb my photo here.  She got more amorous as the day went on, it was rather worrying...

These were taken as we drove around:

Don't you like our home away from home?

We hit up Delicate Arch viewpoint from the bottom next:

Before LT and Laura insanely decided they needed to walk up there.  It was a veeeerrrry long walk (ahem, were you walking or hitching?! - LT)  Details...  Anyway, we finally made it to the top 5 miles later (it was only about 2 1/2 each way - LT)  Stupid people can't mark paths properly, we got very lost both ways:

After we'd worked our way out of there we went to look at a bunch more rocks.  Can you see the people climbing here?

How about now?

Look, smoke signals, must mean dinner's ready!

Our final stop was the Windows, so here's one of them eyeing us up:

And then Tunnel Arch - doesn't it look like Africa?

That bloody donkey leapt in again!

This was our view from the campsite before we left the next morning, just in case we hadn't seen enough red rocks...

We made sure we stopped in for a healthy breakfast to see us on our way - cinnamon buns and lemonade :oD  It was a fun wee cafe we'd found the day before when Laura was craving take out caffeine on our way to Arches, so we had to stop in.  Can you see the jewellery for sale underneath me?  The tables all had glass tops and artistic things inside for sale, plus the wall was covered in artwork and photos.  Can you also see the woolly hand warmer on Larua's latte?  We did have a giggle at that!

Next stop Mesa Verde, Colorado...