Day 36 - Moab, UT

Here we are in Moab Utah where we plan to spend several days, maybe up to a week. But before I get into that, since my last post....
We enjoyed our stay at Canyon Ferry Lake. The restaurant at the top of the hill wasn't gourmet but was perfectly fine, especially being so close to the campground.

Sat. Sept 14 we drove south to West Yellowstone via Earthquake Lake.

This lake was formed in a 1959 earthquake which blocked the river. This picture doesn't show the dramatic landslide that caused the lake to form but here is an image I found in an online article:

  You can see the lake on the left and I think the original visitor's center is that white blob on the left. In the picture with the van, above, the van is facing the collapsed cliff. We didn't know anything about this place before we decided to drive by but it was very interesting.
Our campsite in the West Yellowstone KOA was grassier than usual although it doesn't look particularly lush here, in many KOA's everything was gravel.

 A couple in a nearby campsite, Bob and Sheila, were very friendly and we spent time with them by our campfire. Another couple left a note on our van but we couldn't figure out who they were. They invited us to visit them in another campground inside the park but we weren't going that way so never figured out exactly who they were.

Sunday, Sept 15 we went into the town of West Yellowstone to visit the Grizzly and Wolf Center. They keep animals here who cannot be released to the wild because of injury or familiarity with humans. It was nice to be able to see a grizzly bear without fear.

They hide food around the enclosure and then open a door to let the bear in. He roams around 'foraging' for the food. They explained that they try to keep the food as much like what he would eat in the wild as possible and his foraging is also like it would be in the wild. He seemed to have a great time and didn't notice the crowd watching. After about a half hour he goes back into his 'home'. Then they put more food out and another bear is let out. It looked like they had about a half dozen different bears who each appeared once or twice a day.
They also had wolves on exhibit and several raptors. We watched some young wolves playing like puppies.
A new exhibit was the otter pool. I shot a bunch of video clips but never managed to capture the otters very well. This screen grab from one of them shows Will with one of them. They were very active and seemed to like playing with people on the other side of the wall.

We ate at Bullwinkle's both days (Sat and Sun) we were in West Yellowstone. Our bartender, Sara, was like an instant 'old friend'. We decided we must have known each other in a past life. The food there was also very good. First time I had the elk ravioli which were wonderful and Will had spaghetti which was also delicious. Next day I had a wonderful salad with chicken and Will had the elk ravioli. Wish every town had a restaurant like this! We had another camp fire with our friends Bob and Sheila that night. I didn't get a picture of them, or even exchange information but we had a great time talking with them.

On Monday Sept 16 we left West Yellowstone early and drove through Yellowstone park to see the Grand Tetons. We stopped in a pullout to have our breakfast.

We looked for wildlife here but only saw some ducks which is what I think the person is pointing to in the picture.
At one point traffic was stopped and it turned out to be this bison walking along the side of the road. 

 He looked very old and tired poor thing. I snapped this shot as we slowly drove by.
It was quite a cool morning, and as a result all of the vents and geysers were visibly steaming and could be seen from a distance.

 You can see some steam in the background here too, although it looks a little like a forest fire.

On our way by we stopped at the geyser fields we'd seen in the evening on our tour but they looked a lot different in the bright sunshine.

There was a lot more steam and some of the colors seemed brighter.
This was a quick selfie as we tried to stay ahead of a large group of tourists.

 We stopped at Colter Bay where we'd originally thought we'd spend the night. Will was really tired so he took a nap. I took this picture from the front seat where we were parked:

We continued on and enjoyed the spectacle of the Tetons.

As we drove through Jackson we were a bit put off by the large crowds and what seemed like endless t-shirt shops. We didn't even stop there, we just kept going.
We ended up on a stretch of road with few towns but eventually ended up in Pinedale where we ate at the Wind River Brewpub and then found our way to the Freemont Lake Campground where we went right to bed even though it was only 7:00. The day had been pretty warm and there were thunderstorms in the evening. Somehow we felt much too warm all night and never really slept well. The next day was a slow day and we just hung around the campsite.

It was very quiet at the campground. We were across from the vault toilets and I don't think anyone else used them but us.
We went looking for a place to buy firewood in town but the season was over and no one had any for sale. We were told we could get a permit from the local Park Ranger's office to get our own wood but when we went there they said it was $7 per cord with a 5-cord minimum.... but if we went to the park where we were staying we could gather wood wherever we found it. So we did that and had some nice views of the lake. Our campsite was close to the far end on the right side. The lake is about 3 miles long.

And we saw where it appears they dammed the river to make the lake or maybe they just control the level this way.

We found plenty of wood and ended up having a wonderful evening burning it and watching the stars in the clear sky above, even though on our way back from getting the wood we saw showers in the area.

But we keep forgetting how far you can see here and this shower was long gone by the time we got back to our campsite.
That night it went down to below freezing and there was frost on the picnic table when we got up. We were warm, though, because we'd bought an extra blanket for nights like this.

Wed. Sept 18 We didn't have enough battery power to make coffee and so decided to go out to breakfast in Pinedale at the Wrangler Cafe which had great pancakes.

As we left the campground we saw this power boat on the lake but otherwise it was very quiet.

After 2 nights of 'primitive' camping (no running water) we decided to stay at KOA again and drove to Rock Springs, Wyoming which was a pretty big town. At the KOA we showered and did laundry. We were very close to Hwy 80 and also the train tracks so it was pretty loud but we had a fenced in area which made the campsite more private.

It is a little difficult to see the campsite but the van is making the 4th wall of our 'enclosure'. Our picnic table had a sun shade, a fire pit and a charcoal grill. We had electricity and wi-fi which seemed luxurious. We had a fire there with wood from Walmart that was only $2.50 a bundle, about half what we've been paying. It was much warmer here and we didn't need our extra blanket.

Thurs. Sept 19 we left Rock Springs and drove to Vernal, Utah and the KOA there. All along the way we saw references to dinosaurs. Looking at a brochure of the area it turns out there is a lot of dinosaur stuff to see and we may end up passing that way again to investigate.
We saw lots of sweeping views as we drove by the Flaming Gorge area

I enhanced this image of the 'flaming' part of Flaming Gorge:

 You can see reflections as I took it out of the window.

The last image is as we approached the Flaming Gorge Dam.

The town of Vernal was bigger and more interesting than I expected. We found the Vernal Brewing Company which was housed in a very new looking building. Both the beer and the food were wonderful. I had roasted Brussels sprouts with candied bacon for an appetizer and a delicious kale salad with salmon. Will had the French dip. We met a nice guy named Howie and enjoyed talking to him about traveling. Turns out there are at least 2 other brewpubs in town. I'm surprised one town can support 3 brewpubs. Maybe there is a college in town.

Our KOA campsite was on the edge of a large field and the whole place was grassy and much more restful than the night before with all of the road noise. I neglected to capture an image of this campground, though.
We had another nice camp fire. I don't always mention it but we've only had a few nights without one.

Friday, Sept 20 we got up and had only one cup of coffee before heading towards Moab, the idea being we'd stop along the way and have more and eat breakfast. But, it turned out there was no convenient place to stop for a long time. It was after 11 when we finally found a place in an interesting valley that had lots of pump jacks. I didn't take a picture but here's an image I found:

 There were many of these and signs for Berry Petroleum which I just learned is based in Bakersfield, CA but gets 13% of their crude oil from the Uintah Basin which is where we were.
 Again, there were many amazing sights as we drove but somehow my pictures don't seem to capture the grandure.

I'll try enhancing this one and see if it comes out any better

 Actually that seems like a big improvement. I'll have to do that to more of the images. I'm using Goggle photo so I have to upload to Google then download again which is a bit time consuming.

Sometimes I think the unexpected things we see are at least as interesting as the famous parks we visit. 

I think this is part of Canyonlands but we just saw it as we approached Moab.

We arrived in Moab and went to a grocery store but found the parking lot very crowded. There was a Mexican restaurant adjacent to the same parking lot so we decided to eat there after shopping. when we came out of the grocery store we noticed a lot of people along the side of the road, waiting for something. We asked someone and they said it was the Homecoming parade. At 3:00 on a Friday. Even though there is a lot going on here, it is still a small town. So it turns out to be a good thing we decided to eat because it would have been a wait for the parade which was over by the time we were done. The restaurant had pretty booths so we took some goofy pictures:

And, we're all caught up. We arrived at the Holiday Inn Express after we ate and hunkered down in the room for the evening. 

As I mentioned we plan to be in Moab for a while so will try to report in again before we leave the area.