DAY THREE: Panguitch to Moab (to Chance)

Greetings from Moab, Utah, a city that HAS entered the 21^st Century, and provides free wireless access in most hotel rooms. (Thanks for the encouraging notes, folks – believe us, we’ll post as often as we can!) Here’s the thing about today – once we got here, we saw insanely spectacular sights at Arches National Park. But our decision to take the 12-24 combo highway out of Panguitch really, really paid off. It’s a “Scenic Highway” or “Scenic Byway” that takes you through Capitol Reef National Park, atop a few mountains, and through a variety of terrains that made you feel like you had perhaps slipped through a rift in the Twilight Zone and ended up on some alien planet. Highly recommended – making the drive with either a Corrs playlist (something about the Irish flute and fiddle sound on their more traditional numbers) on the iPod, or firing up the soundtrack to the space Western Firefly. Also entirely appropriate – the B-52’s “Planet Claire,” which was kind of where we felt like we were.

So the drive – fantastic. And Arches – fantastic. And the hot tub at the Super 8 in Moab? Warm at best… but that in no way had a negative impact on a day full of incredible sights. Utah – who knew?

Miscellaneous Day Highlights:

--Seeing the distinctive smoke pattern of a wildfire burning, followed by a “Utah-trans” Sign on the side of the road reading “Natural Fire – Do Not Report.” Well then, okay.

-- There were a lot of cows grazing in fenced off lands just off the highway. Only two “free range” cows decided they wanted a piece of the freeway, including one inquisitive young mooer who made like the giant bird/bat from the other night, and took at run at the C-RV. Fortunately, this cow peeled off before impact. Moo!

--After “arching” a photogenic spot at Arches National Park (if you “summit” a summit, then when you go stand in the middle of an arch, you’re “arching”, right?), Emily got all “Johnny Hiker,” and set off on something called “The Primitive Trail” back to the parking area. This seemed like a good idea, and, in fact, it turned out to be a great idea. We only had to consult Isis once or twice (Isis assuring us that the CR-V was within a thousand feet of our current location, it was just on the other side of that massive, impassible sandstone arch), and there was NOBODY else who took this trail for the whole 30 minutes we were on it. So there we were, on the back side of an arch, with nobody around for miles. We had the park – miles, and miles, and miles of Utah countryside, to ourselves. It was very, very quiet, and very, very wonderful.

--“Arching” another arch, and Colin getting moderately stuck on the way back down. (Getting up was the easy part, but if you’ve ever seen Colin dance, you know the problems he has with getting down… (These are jokes). Eventually, and carefully, he made it down, just beating the sunset, and the rapid onset of darkness.

-- The couple up in this somewhat hard to reach arch before us? We saw them later at the Chevron station in Moab. They were from the L.A. area, too… La Mirada, I believe, on their way to Denver for a wedding. They had come from Grand Canyon (current destination of Doctors Ponder and Campbell) and were going to hit Bryce and Zion on the way back to L.A. Told them about the 12-24 combo. Their loss if they miss it!

--We’re not entirely sure, but it seems that Isis is getting a bit jealous of all the attention Car Woody has been getting from the blog. Before giving us directions to Interstate 70 today, Isis started going on and on about the Mattel toy recall, and how Car Woody was probably next. Odd…

-- Final Daily Score card:

Free Range Cows: 2

Free Range Coyotes: 1

Free Range Lizards: 1

Not-so-free range bugs on the front license plate after car was meticulously detailed before start of journey: Incalculable

Number of times Emily quoted Trading Places: 4 (For those who know the film, we ate a lot of beef jerky, and ended the day in the Jacuzzi.)

Current Mood: Jazzed

Current Location:


On Tap: Denver! Red Rocks! Bad Beatle Cover Bands!

DAY THREE: Scene from the Road

DAY TWO: All Aboard the Flying M

Greetings from PANGUITCH, a city in Utah that we can’t pronounce (we’re too embarrassed to ask a townie for proper pronunciation). It’s our stopover between Zion and Arches National Parks. Panguitch is a row of motels and coffee shops right off the highway. Late tonight, we landed at the Flying M restaurant for a piece of apple pie, and as a bonus, got a waitress with all the town gossip. Said waitress tipped us off to the bait and switch pricing scandal at a nearby hotel, and it was on her recommendation that we turned the CR-V in to a Doc Brown-modified DeLorean, and went back to 1952…

Or at least, that’s how it seems in large parts of Panguitch, a city where the thin line between “gimmicky retro” and “not upgraded in five decades” is oft-blurred. So here we are in 1952 at the Lamp Lighter Inn, which is definitely on the “original” side of the scale… in a good way.

Things that happened today that were good: Breakfast with Doctor Kathy Campbell, and her lovely husband, Doctor Steve Ponder, at the Food Network-featured “Coffee Cup” Diner in Boulder City, NV. The drive through spectacular Nevada, Arizona, and Utah countryside. XM Satellite radio. Emily taking her first turn behind the wheel. Zion National Park. Getting a great WPA-designed poster of Zion which is going to look fantastic in our house. Hiking the Riverside Trail at Zion, stopping only when we had to start wading through the water The pie and tater-tots at the Flying M. Not getting sunburned.

The not so good: Emily pulling on to the freeway after a gas stop with the emergency brake still activated. (Whoops.) No Internet access at Lamp Lighter. (What, they didn’t have the ‘net in 1952?) Car struck by a flying bird/giant bat at sundown. Our GPS device (“Isis,” we call her, after the Egyptian goddess of navigation) trying to find a Starbucks located inside a casino, and sending us on a fourteen mile Interstate detour. (What, they didn’t have Starbucks in ancient Egypt?) Completely forgetting about the Mountain Time Zone, and discovering on our return to the Zion visitors center that it wasn’t 5:45, it was really 6:45, and an extra hour had been snipped out of our day.

The great: Ending the day, safe and secure, looking at 100+ photos of day two, writing this blog, an air conditioned room. And heading for Arches National Park, possibly via a very scenic highway, in the morning. After we check out one of the other cool diners in town…