This morning we woke up from our little desert camping spot and hit the road again by about 11am. It was a beautiful sunny day.
A couple hours later, we pulled into a little town called Moab, in Utah, where we found a laundry mat / car wash with free wifi. We spent a couple hours there washing our clothes and drying them, both in the big dryers and also on the roof of our car in the parking lot. (Things dry very quickly in this heat!). Nick washed the car, I blogged, and we charged all of our electrical devices.
We grabbed some Subway for lunch as a treat and soon found ourselves following the Colorado River through some very beautiful terrain.
Suddenly, Nick got a great idea. We had clean clothes, enough food for dinner in our cooler, but still really needed to shower. The River seemed as good a place as any. We pulled off to the side and quickly discovered that it was freezing mountain run-off. But we really wanted clean hair. Ironically, I pulled out my kind of expensive, salon-purchased shampoo and conditioner while I rolled up my jeans and got ready to wash my hair in the brown silty river. It was… an experience, lol! And very, very cold. Also, the sand in the River is just like what I would imagine quick sand to be. I stepped one foot too far and would have ended up fully in the river on my hands and knees if Nick hadn’t been there to grab me! My foot just kept sinking deeper and deeper and there was no going back! We survived and our hair was much softer. No where to plug in a straightener, though…. ;)
We passed a campsite around 6pm, but we pulled another “surely there will be one further on”, and this time we were rewarded by finding one that was JUST closing as we pulled in. It was a little overpriced at $33.00 a night, but he threw in free fire wood if we wrote a positive review. And that price WAS discounted just for us because apparently we’re super nice people! The reason it was so expensive is that there were - wait for it, yes, that’s right, SHOWERS. There were showers. We did not need to wash our hair in the Colorado River after all. There was also wifi in the far corner of the camp ground (so not SUPER helpful, but we managed to pull in a weak signal right in our tent from, well, we’re not sure where!). The fact that we were right along the river probably also did not help the price, but it sure was lovely. Except for the trains. The trains sucked. Directly across the river were train tracks. The first one at 4am scared me half to death. The following three, spread out nicely about an hour apart, were more just plain annoying.
We then climbed into the tent and both edited (me - photos, and Nick - video) under our warm blankets listening to the river roar by literally 10 - 15 feet from the tent door. I left my fan in Portland, so this made me soooo happy as I sleep best with white noise. Unfortunately the free random wifi wasn’t strong enough for me to also upload photos or else I really would have been blogging in real time! Instead, you get these a day later curtesy of McDonald’s really, really, really slow wifi.
Suddenly, Nick got a great idea. We had clean clothes, enough food for dinner in our cooler, but still really needed to shower. The River seemed as good a place as any. We pulled off to the side and quickly discovered that it was freezing mountain run-off. But we really wanted clean hair. Ironically, I pulled out my kind of expensive, salon-purchased shampoo and conditioner while I rolled up my jeans and got ready to wash my hair in the brown silty river. It was… an experience, lol! And very, very cold. Also, the sand in the River is just like what I would imagine quick sand to be. I stepped one foot too far and would have ended up fully in the river on my hands and knees if Nick hadn’t been there to grab me! My foot just kept sinking deeper and deeper and there was no going back! We survived and our hair was much softer. No where to plug in a straightener, though…. ;)
We continued on through even more gorgeous terrain eventually coming up to the main highway the leads to Denver, Colorado (which was far less pretty).
We passed a campsite around 6pm, but we pulled another “surely there will be one further on”, and this time we were rewarded by finding one that was JUST closing as we pulled in. It was a little overpriced at $33.00 a night, but he threw in free fire wood if we wrote a positive review. And that price WAS discounted just for us because apparently we’re super nice people! The reason it was so expensive is that there were - wait for it, yes, that’s right, SHOWERS. There were showers. We did not need to wash our hair in the Colorado River after all. There was also wifi in the far corner of the camp ground (so not SUPER helpful, but we managed to pull in a weak signal right in our tent from, well, we’re not sure where!). The fact that we were right along the river probably also did not help the price, but it sure was lovely. Except for the trains. The trains sucked. Directly across the river were train tracks. The first one at 4am scared me half to death. The following three, spread out nicely about an hour apart, were more just plain annoying.
Anyway, I digress. We had our site set up by around 8pm and decided to quickly run back into town to stock up on groceries. We bought enough food and snacks to last us the next few days camping and restock our dwindling cooler. We also bought ice for the first time in a week! (Tara, I know you’re reading this and you should be impressed. We scored free ice at our motel rooms and it lasts without melting too much in our cooler for a couple days at a time).
We headed back to our site to make dinner in the dark around 9pm and were very thankful for the borrowed lanterns we have both from our friends, Tara and Paul, and also one from our friends, Ryan and Michelle, (thanks, guys!!). We fried up some veggies in tin foil over the fire and cooked up a few steaks that we picked up for $1.25 each at the grocery store. Yeah, they probably should have been marinaded, but they were still tasty.
We then climbed into the tent and both edited (me - photos, and Nick - video) under our warm blankets listening to the river roar by literally 10 - 15 feet from the tent door. I left my fan in Portland, so this made me soooo happy as I sleep best with white noise. Unfortunately the free random wifi wasn’t strong enough for me to also upload photos or else I really would have been blogging in real time! Instead, you get these a day later curtesy of McDonald’s really, really, really slow wifi.
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