Moab Honeymoon

We've been in Moab for 11 nights.
As I mentioned in my last post we started out with 3 nights(Friday, Saturday, Sunday) at the Holiday Inn  Express which was a few miles north of the center of town. Moab is an amazing place surrounded by red rocks.

On the way into town we'd noticed the front end of the van had developed a shimmy. We found a garage in town who said they could do a front end alignment for us on Tuesday. We also looked into tours of Arches and Canyonlands parks and booked four tours, one each day, Monday through Thursday, all with pickup available.
We decided we'd move the KOA campground south of town on Monday and leave Moab on Friday.
While we were staying at the HIE, we decided to lay low and spend most of our
time at the hotel, so we didn't do any exploring except to go out for a meal each day on Saturday (Moab Brewery) and Sunday(Eddie McStiffs).
Our room had a great view of the rocks to our east.

Monday, Sept 23 - We left the Holiday Inn Express and went on our first tour, a half-day raft trip down the Colorado River with NAVTEC Expeditions. This was a fun tour on a river that was 15' lower that it had been in the spring. We started with a ride up the river with amazing red cliffs we hadn't seen yet. Then we had a picnic lunch of sandwiches, fruit, chips and cookies before we boarded the boat. Our guide, Reed, was a great boat handler and maneuvered the boat so that we had a few bumps and splashes even though the river was low. Having never been rafting before we had a great time and enjoyed the company of our tour-mates. The scenery was absolutely amazing, but I didn't bring my camera on the raft but I found this image online which looks a bit like our trip. Not a lot of white water which was fine with us.

The tour ended about 4:00 and we went to Eddie McStiffs for half-price apps from 4-6. Afterwards we checked in to the KOA campground.

and were treated to the first of many lovely sunsets

Tuesday, Sept 24
We took the van in for the alignment appointment and walked to breakfast nearby at the Jailhouse Cafe which was great.
We returned to the garage where we found out it was more serious than just an alignment and we'd need front ball joints, and that they couldn't install them until the following Monday(Sept 30). This meant that we'd have to stay longer in Moab, which by then we realized was perfectly fine. We extended our stay at the KOA through Saturday and made a reservation downtown for Sunday and Monday.
With these details nailed down we took a drive out Kane Creek Drive and saw amazing cliffs soaring over the Colorado River,

 and found Moonflower Canyon.

 A lovely shady spot with a huge tree.

 The short walk up this canyon was nice and cool in the shade. Lots of interesting plants and rocks.

 Mostly it was fun because we knew nothing about it and felt we'd discovered it.

Will doesn't seem too happy in this image, but he's having fun too.
After our short walk up the canyon we returned to the campground and waited for our pickup for the Canyonlands by Night dinner and boat tour/ light show.

 We had a lovely barbecue meal with a large salad bar and a variety of meats, potatoes and beans. Then we boarded the boat which held 144 people!

We set out up the river. Much of the same area we'd traveled by raft the day before but now in a different light. Still amazing cliffs everywhere.

I've forgotten which of our guides told us this but it is said that one sees in the rocks the impression of the world on you. I saw many images in the rocks but this one looks like a picture of my grandfather.

At the bottom of the image is the hat of our tour guide, Preston. Just above that I see my grandfather's eyes and nose and the hint of the outline of his head and ear, as in the image below.

This image was so clear to me. I'm not sure anyone else would see it. But it made me think about my grandfather and his impression on me. I think at least part of the image in the rocks is a shadow because another day I looked for this image and could not see it in the daylight.
There are so many rocks and images made by the desert varnish
(the black coating that appears on some rocks. It is fascinating and still somewhat of a mystery regarding how fast it 'grows'.), fallen rocks and sunlight that one could spend a long time just looking for images in the rocks.
Once the sun had set the light show began. This involved a truck with bright lights driving along the road and shining the lights on the rocks as we floated by. There was also music and narration telling the history of the area from geology to the arrival of man. It was beautiful and interesting. A few times they turned off all of the lights so we could watch the natural light show: the stars. I saw two shooting stars and missed at least one other.
Later, at the campground, we were sitting around the gas fire and there was a huge meteor(10 seconds?) in the sky. It burned bright green for a time and took so long that there was time to say 'Wow!' and have others look and see it. Not sure if it was a shower or just random but this site indicates there were several potential sources and it seem at least one other person(maybe two?) saw it.
Later, we found out that the light show is not very popular with the locals as it disturbs the dark sky, bothers campers along the river, and clogs traffic on the road. We enjoyed it but understand the concerns.

Wed Sept 25
We lazed around the campground all day and had a pickup at 3:30 for our tour of Arches National Park. This was with a different operator, Moab Adventure Center. We received very nice, insulated water bottles at check-in which was a nice perk. Our guide, Sam, was knowledgeable and friendly but often said 'right' when he meant 'left' and initially didn't even know how many of us were on the tour. The bus had been turned off in the sun and was initially very warm. So warm that one couple ended up getting dropped off at the visitor's center and didn't go on the tour. We were near the front of the bus and didn't think it was terribly hot.
We drove through Arches, stopping at several sites.

That's Balancing Rock over my head, although it looks like I've got poo on my hat. We walked all around Balancing Rock.

We stopped at another place where we had to walk between the rock 'fins' to get to another arch:

We also saw Delicate Arch but only in the distance.

 But the zoom on my new camera works pretty well. I used a fence to help stabilize the camera:

 Here I am with another arch in the background.

We ended up at Skyline Arch to watch the sunset. See our shadows in the image below:

 After the sun set we made our way back out of the Park and got a ride back to the campground.

Thursday Sept 26
Our final tour in Moab was an all day 4-wheel drive trip to the Needles area of Canyonlands National Park. Our guide, Chris, picked us up at the campground, on the way south to the Needles entrance. We immediately engaged with Chris and the hour long drive to the entrance flew by.
After a stop at the visitor's center where we saw our route on the relief map, we headed into the park. We stopped at Newpaper Rock where there are many petroglyphs which I don't have a picture of for some reason. These drawings are both old and new. 'Cowboy Art' is the term given to 'glyphs painted in 'modern times', 100 years ago. Anything newer than that is considered graffiti, although once it has been there 100 years it becomes Cowboy Art.
From here we proceeded through a wide valley with enormous mesas looking like Imperial Battlecruisers from Star Wars.

 I took a lot of these pictures through the windows so they aren't as bright and some have reflections.
 We got to a parking lot and then proceeded to climb rocks in the vehicle. Most of the images don't really show how rugged, steep and narrow the track was.

 At times we even had to go up the hill backwards for short distances! At times it was quite unnerving like when we couldn't see anything in front of us or on either side but we never really felt like we were in danger and Chris was a very competent driver.
 At times all I could do was take pictures of the amazing sights as we lurched along.

 We traveled through a wide valley.

In the rocks along side of this valley we were shown the petroglyphs.

 Along side the 'ancient' glyphs another hand print dated 1926 can be seen. In seven years this will stop being 'graffiti' and become 'cowboy art'.
Another petroglyph image:

We are clearly amazed!

Here's Will and Chris beside the vehicle.

 We continued through a few more hair raising rock climbs in the vehicle and eventually we came to a parking lot where we ate lunch and prepared for our hike.

There were six of us on the tour and the two guides. All of the passengers were at least 50 and closer to 60. We all doubted our abilities but 5 of the six of us made it to the top. My camera battery was dying but I managed a few images of the hike.

Our hike accomplished, we made our way back through the park and the long drive back to Moab. We got to the campground at 7:30 which was 90 minutes later than advertised, but that was fine with us. We had a wonderful day with Chris and it was the highlight of our tours of the Parks.

Friday Sept 27
We were really tired from our big day on Thursday so we didn't plan much for the day.
From various tour guides we'd heard that there were a few short drives out of town that were worth taking so we embarked on one of them, Rt 279 along the other side of the Colorado from Moonflower Canyon where we saw the entrance to Long Canyon which looked amazing but is difficult to grasp from this photo.

 Jug handle Arch was across the parking lot

We returned to Moonflower Canyon and saw the petroglyphs we'd missed the first time

There is a little more to our Moab adventure but I'll stop here for now so I can post this before we leave.