Southern Utah- The Most Unreal Place on Earth Part 3: Some Blessings in Disguise

Day 5- Our mission today was reaching Moab and visiting Arches National Park. This would be a very long day of driving for me, but first we would have breakfast at the Wild Rabbit Cafe. This cafe had a lot of gluten free options. All these gluten free options in various places in Utah would be equal to acquiring magical items in a D and D game, or at the very least, a temple where you can get healed for free or a small donation. I ordered a vegetarian breakfast which was bombay! I talked to one of the servers, and they are gluten free-hip, because while Torrey is a small village, it caters to an international clientele, due to the national parks, so those like me can get what they need.

The ever changing landscape continued to do just that. We made a stop at some Wild and Free community to take some pics of some old heritage site, but it also advertised the Wild and Free community which was a few miles down the road. We didn’t want to join them, so we didn’t drive out to meet them. We then stopped at some fenced off ruin, which was kind of generic, but ok.

We then reached Hanksville, which is what I would have considered super hick and scary until I found Carl's amazing art projects on display. This place was amazing! The artists used broken cars and all sorts of random items to construct dinosaurs, creatures, and other amazing sculptures! We hung out here for like 30 minutes, completely amazed by the artwork. Again, my stereotypes of small towns in white America were inaccurate! Everyone we met was nice. Don’t get me wrong, My family and I have had our fair share of racism in white America, which is why I make these assumptions, which I am happy to say have been inaccurate thus far. I finally came up with the courage to approach a man, who I thought was Carl. I rolled my charisma check, and succeeded on a diplomacy roll, and got a short interview with the man himself. More on that in the video.

After leaving Carl’s Wonderous World, we went to the nearest gas station. The store was inside a rock formation which added a lot of flavor to this gas station, making it the best gas station I ever visited. This place rivaled the 7-11 I went to in a little village on Matsu Island in Taiwan. That was the best 7-11, because it was built in the same old school way of the other village homes. Just lots of flavor! Just like that 7-11, I had to buy something, so we got slurpees!

Gas full, slurpee ready, we had two choices. One, we take the shortcut to Moab and get there in less than an hour, or option two, we take the long scenic way which would add a few hours to the drive. We decided to take the long way. We hit highway 95, which was a long but extremely scenic drive!

Ever changing landscapes, awesome rock formations, bridges, and the Colorado River all played into this scenic route. It was long, longer than it probably should have been, but I was driving fairly slowly to marvel at mother nature's dedicated brush strokes. We made our first stop at a trail head. We didn’t hike the trail, we stopped because I spotted a car and wanted to make sure we were going the right way. There’s no wifi out here folks. My dad checked with the woman in the car who had a map and confirmed we were on the right path. Not only that, they said they were headed towards a park called Natural Bridges National Monument. It was on the way, so why not check it out?

Aside from the natural beauty of the drive, the main stand out was a place called Mexican Hat. We didn’t go there, but I was hoping it was the name of a town, but knew it was probably a rock formation shaped like a sombrero, or a Mexican hat. Why they choose the name Mexican Hat eludes me, when Sombrero seems to fit better. Anyways, it sparked some humor and debate among myself and my folks.

We finally reached Natural Bridges National Monument. This was a quickie, but it made sense. This park was drivable. It was a loop that led to vista points and trail heads. We were headed to Moab, which was still at least an hour away, so we did the loop and hit the views but did no hikes. This was super simple. Drive, park, walk a short distance= awesomeness! We saw the Sipapu, Kachina, and Owachomo natural sandstone bridges.

After this short but awesome detour, we continued on our trip to Moab. We passed a couple of towns and even dealt with some rain. Before long, we reached Moab which was a town a lot different from everything else since leaving Layton, where we started. Moab was a town not a village like Hatch or Hanksville. Moab reminded me of a tropical beach filled with old tanned Europeans, because that’s kinda what Moab was minus the tropical beach. There were the denizens of Moab and then old tanned people. It wasn’t the cheapest place, which led me to believe rich people frequent Moab. We went to a Thai restaurant for dinner that night, which obviously had gluten free options.

After the restaurant, we headed over to Arches National Park. We arrived after 6 so there were no rangers at the entrance and we just rolled in. Like Capitol Reef and Zion, you could drive through the 26 miles of roads that made up Arches. We got there at the perfect time as the sun slowly began to set and the shadows and lights, sun stars, and colors were mesmerizing! We didn’t really do any hikes, but hit a lot of different cuts to take photos.

The park resides above an underground salt bed, which is the main reason why you see such impressive arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and monoliths. Again, while all these parks exist fairly close to each other, they are all so different. We didn’t have time to do hikes, but we stopped at several “windows” and arches. The sunset wasn’t mind blowing, but it did shed an interesting red glow upon the landscape which gave way to some nice photographs. (I hope.) As the sun finally set, we soon headed back to the hotel.

DAY 6- The next day was a cluster fuck and a blessing in disguise. Rarely, does a trip run perfectly smooth. We headed to Arches National Park in the morning and waited about 30 minutes to enter the park. A Jaepeth looking mutha fucka was at the entrance. (Jaepeth is a friend of mine.) My dad has a lifetime pass for all national parks, so we didn’t do any research about entering parks. As I passed Jaepeth my dad's ID and membership, he asked if we had a reservation. I replied, “no.” He told us we could not enter the park without one and we would have to take the exit out. I was pretty fucken pissed off. I don’t like to wait in line for any amount of time only to be declined.

We had to think fast, and I did some research about a place called Castle Valley and hikes. Castle Valley was some random place near the Colorado River. Now, I guess I didn’t understand the dude's blog because he said there were several hikes with similar names of ones in Arches, but Castle Valley was just a village. It was nice, but I didn’t see any trailheads. More time wasted, I was at least going to take a video of a traffic sign I saw before the village with a bunch of bullet holes.

We departed down the road parallel to the Colorado River. We made our first stop and I had to take a piss. Now, the bathrooms I have found on turnouts, camp sites, and trail heads have been quite impressive, in that they are clean. This one was clean as well until I opened the toilet seat and there was a bunch of mud butt below the seat as if someone had a liquid shit explosion. It reminded me of some Jack Ass stunts, and if you know me, I gag at that type of shit. I decided to look up at the corner and saw a spider web and a dead spider that I decided to focus on while I pissed. Upon entering the car, unbeknown to me, my dad also took a piss and experienced the same thing as me. We had a good laugh, then I talked about how I focused on the dead spider and he did the same. Funny times!

We went back to Moab and went to Subway Sandwiches. They have gluten free bread there. I was skull fucked and bought a spicy italian, a sandwich I haven’t eaten in years! I mentioned that there was a state park called Dead Horse. I saw the sign as well as a sign for Canyonlands State Park while driving to Arches. Since we got fucked on Arches, I brought up the idea of going to Dead Horse, which was a wise move. Dead Horse had trail heads but also some amazing landscape views of the scenery below. One of the most impressive views I had seen on this trip, it was a good move to come here. We ate our Subway sandwiches at a turn out with a picnic table and shade. The sights gave way to the Colorado River and Canyonlands State Park.

Again, the views were pretty mind blowing, but what was more mind blowing was when we went to Dead Horse Point for the view. While the view was amazing, it might have been more amazing to see like 50 fat Germans sitting in the shade, all eating burritos in unison. I felt that was a pretty unique and amazing experience; Dozens of fat Germans, eating burritos in Southern Utah, on a cliff, overlooking canyons and rivers.

Dead Horse was easy and minimal walking unless you hit trails, so we left after a surprising gluten free Subway sandwich, beautiful views, and fat Germans eating burritos to Canyonlands State Park, which was mere miles away. We really wanted to do hikes in Arches, but missing out on Arches turned out to probably be a better experience.

Canyonlands had a lot of trails, but we did a couple of the short ones. I thought Dead Horse had the best view, but there were views in Canyonlands that were even more impressive. Canyonlands is broken into 3 different areas: Island in the Sky on the north, The Maze on the west, and The Needles on the east. We only explored the Island in the Sky. Island in the Sky's the park's observation tower, a broad mesa natural place between the Green and Colorado Rivers. The views were legendary and I highly recommend coming here!