2 October 2017, Monday
Today begins cool and rainy. Breakfast is quick and easy: bran muffins purchased yesterday at the market and warmed today in the campground microwave, along with campground coffee. Wglwof is packed up by 8 and we are done with breakfast and on the road by 9, driving along route 128 looking for Forest Service campgrounds. We pull into Goose Island Campground, the first one we come across going out of town. I check at the first likely site where a couple is hooking up their trailer and preparing to leave. They tell me someone has already claimed their site. I continue walking up the road. A gentleman with a camper and trailer tells me we can have his site. He is about to move to the site I had just checked on. It seems more desirable because it is on the Colorado River side of the road. I notice that the tag on the campsite across from us as an expiration date of 10/3, tomorrow. I chat with the two women from California who are camped there. It’s fine with them if we hang a tag behind theirs tomorrow morning to claim the site. The campground host comes by and we explain our plans. He calls it “the campground shuffle.”
It remains cool and rainy. Bernie, the camper with the RV and trailer, invites us in to show us scenic routes on the Utah map. We are very appreciative of the additional info. O and I are coming to the conclusion that we will have to make a return trip to Utah. I spend the rest of the damp, cold, early afternoon typing and transferring photos to my computer while O journals as well.
By mid-afternoon the sky begins to clear. We drive into town looking for hot chocolate, preferably at a shop with wi-fi. A local bakery is the perfect spot. I begin uploading some of the blog as we sip our hot drinks and warm up. When my computer battery begins to run low we drive to Arches National Park. The park road is being resurfaced so visitors are only permitted in between 7 am and 7 pm. At the visitor center O and I sign up for a ranger led hike next Sunday (the first available) to Fiery Furnace, a maze-like, rugged rock formation. Then we drive half of the park road, up to Balanced Rock view point before turning around and driving to Moab Brewery for dinner. (It is too cold to cook and wash dishes.) Back at camp we journal once more and sweep some of the sandy red gravel from Vincent.
