Table For Two

There was so much about our recent trip to Colorado and Utah that wasn't affected by this global pandemic we are living under. Sound strange? Or just a flat out lie? I'm honestly serious about that. Sure I've never gone absolutely everywhere (including on airplanes) on a vacation wearing face coverings, but over the last few months, going out in public with my nose and mouth covered feels sort of normal. What difference does it make if it's in northern Virginia where I live or Colorado or Utah when I'm traveling?

So sure, much of this new normalcy was helped by our choice of itinerary. We literally spent part of every single day except for the few waking hours on the day of our arrival at a National Park Service property, which meant most of our time was spent in the great outdoors in wide open spaces or in a car getting there. No need to mask up in the car and generally speaking when we were hiking or searching for wildlife or just admiring the view, there was nobody around which meant we could breathe the clean, fresh air of the American west unhindered.

But the one part of our experience that was significantly affected by the prospect of contracting a potentially deadly virus was mealtimes. And quite frankly this part of our vacation experience was significantly disrupted.

Bison, green chile and cheddar sausage from Roaming Buffalo Bar B-Que. Eaten from my lap on a street bench.

Before we traveled out west, restaurants in northern Virginia had re-opened outdoor seating areas for dine-in customers; while we were on the road, restrictions at home were further relaxed to allow indoor dining at limited capacity. When we landed in Denver and then traveled further west into Utah, we found the same or more permissive rules in place. Some places in Utah seemed to be just plain open for business as usual, albeit with some variety of "enter at your own risk" sign on the front door.

We refused to let the fact that other people were behaving like there was no risk to talking and eating in close proximity to each other and total strangers change our behavior. We did not dine in anywhere for dinner but instead ordered to go and took our meals back to the hotel. There was one restaurant in northeast Utah where we were the only people inside the entire building, including the restaurant staff and all the patrons at the bar seating, with any sort of face covering. Scary stuff. We definitely felt like outsiders in that place.

Honestly, all this sucked! I've eaten meals all over the country and the world in my hotel room before, but I've never done it as much as we did last month. Once in a while, it's OK. Every day? Not good. Not fun. We even booked a suite in our hotel in Moab where we spent half the nights on this trip so we'd have more room when we needed to eat. Didn't make any difference. Eating in a hotel room is not good.

I get so much out of exploring the local food scene on trips. I love talking with bartenders about what it's like to live wherever I happen to be. I find food recommendations from waiters anywhere from helpful to fully transforming my breakfast, lunch or dinner into something I wouldn't have found without a bit of local insight. I also find relaxing in a cool, vibrant or chill space so worthwhile after a day of hiking or sightseeing or discovering or whatever. All that got wiped out by ordering to go and eating out of styrofoam or cardboard or plastic containers with hands or packaged and sealed to-go utensils and napkins. But there's also no way we were compromising our safety so we could eat like we normally do away from home.

Admittedly, we tried to do what we could to get out of our hotel rooms at mealtimes. That meant one lunch on a bench on the sidewalk near a restaurant; an outdoor seating area for my birthday dinner at another restaurant; and a shared but completely empty outdoor balcony area at our hotel for a breakfast that we took to go. And we did actually eat one lunch inside a restaurant, but only after we were assured of at least 20 feet between us and any other patrons. But none of those meals were completely comfortable. We were either looking over our shoulders at other diners hoping they wouldn't come too close or dreading someone encroaching on our space in some other way.

Turkey. Lettuce. Mustard. Wheat bread. With nobody around. In City Park, Craig, Colorado.

The first truly comfortable meal we ate on this trip was lunch at a picnic table in the parking lot of Hovenweep National Monument in southeast Utah. Ordinarily, it would have been a location that circumstances forced me into with no other option available. This year, it was glorious. It was free, it was safe, it was relaxed (after we checked under the table for rattlesnakes), it was just the two of us eating comfortably without checking who was close to us or who was not wearing a mask or who was likely to sit near us.

And the food? Not gourmet. Not even close. In fact the plainest food we probably ate the whole week. Store-bought, mass-produced sliced wheat bread; a schmear of whole grain mustard squeezed from a squeezy bottle; a few slices of Boar's Head turkey seasoned with some salt and pepper from a to-go napkin set from a restaurant earlier in the week; and a couple of leaves of romaine lettuce.

I'm telling you, in many respects this was the best meal we ate all week. In that location, with a complete lack of stress and concern about getting infected with some deadly virus, that sandwich with the savory, perfectly seasoned turkey and the tangy mustard and that crisp, fresh lettuce was a culinary masterpiece. I know, I'm exaggerating. But I'm also not. I've never felt this way before about a packed lunch. Welcome to the new normal in 2020.

Sandwich making in Naples, Utah.

Packing a lunch became almost a daily early morning ritual on this trip. First thing in the morning, get out the lunch meat, the mustard and the lettuce from the hotel room fridge and start making a sandwich. Napkin down as the world's worst cutting board, bread, mustard, meat, seasoning, cut in half and in the sandwich bag. Drop it in the brand new Yeti Daytrip lunch bag on top of a sealed sandwich bag full of ice. Add another sandwich made the exact same way, then a separate bag of lettuce (got to keep the lettuce separate to avoid soggy bread) and another bag of ice on top. Add an energy bar or a granola bar and we were good to go all day.

The key to a better packed lunch: keeping the lettuce separate. It's like the McDLT.

I can't adequately express the joy I felt eating a picnic lunch at a wooden table on this trip. Hovenweep National Monument. Dead Horse Point State Park. Craig City Park. Rocky Mountain National Park. The view changed and we may have swapped out the turkey for some roast beef on one day but the feeling didn't change. Relief that we were doing something at lunch that was normal like we might have done in years past. No virus. No worrying about other people. Just old normal. The good stuff. The way it used to be.

Don't get me wrong here. All things considered, I'd rather have been eating a freshly cooked burger with a cold pint of beer in a cool brewpub or something like that. But we didn't have that choice on this trip. So we managed and adapted and carved out something special that on any other trip would have been a throwaway meal to sustain ourselves from breakfast to dinner. It also seemed like we slowed down and relaxed and soaked in the views while we ate, which was very refreshing. And some of the views, even if they were in sight of our car or many other cars, were just spectacular.

Lunch view. So there are a bunch of cars (it's a parking lot) but those mountains...

This was a post I never intended to write. It happens sometimes. But the first couple of days ordering food to go on this trip were honestly a stressful experience. So much so that there was a definite sense of relief sitting down at a picnic table for the first time. That moment, and each time we sat down on a bench and unpacked our lunch after that, were special on this vacation. I thought it was worth sharing. Or at least writing down so I can remember it years from now.

From a food quality perspective, these meals were not the best we had on this trip. Not even close. There were actually many better bites of food we had, even from the place where we were the only ones wearing any sort of face covering. Heck, I could have done a lot better if I'd have splurged a bit more and spent some more time slicing fresh veggies with the plastic take-out knife I had at my disposal. But I didn't. And I'm not sure it matters to the feeling that I got out of our completely socially distanced lunches. 

I hope this is the last time I feel this way. I hope the next time I travel I can be eating and drinking next to complete strangers without a care in the world just like we used to do in years past. But I'm not counting on it. I'm fully expecting that on some future trip I take that I'll be packing some sort of lunch and eating it next to our parked car somewhere on the road. It won't be the same as it was in Utah and Colorado on this trip because it won't be the first time I've felt that way. There's nothing like the first time. One day I hope we'll be able to give up the new normal and go back to the old normal. Until then, I'll remember lunch at Hovenweep.

Chorizo breakfast burrito from the Moab Diner. The actual best meal I ate on this trip.

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How We Did It

So I'm not really going to tell you how to buy some bread and sandwich fixings at a grocery story and make a turkey on wheat lunch. There were some worthwhile to go meals that we ate on this trip that I'd suggest you seek out whether or not you eat in the restaurant or somewhere else (even your hotel room). 

Here are my top five places I ate (from) on this trip, in the order that I ate. I'd eat at any of these places again based on my first visit. Click on the name of each place to be taken to their website.

Quesadilla Mobilla, North Main Street at West 100 N, Moab, UT. Food truck located right in downtown Moab serving quesadillas (perhaps obviously). Open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. I can highly recommend the Enchanted Chicken. Get the chipotle-lime sour cream. It's worth it. 

Milt's Stop & Eat, 356 Millcreek Drive, Moab, UT. Milt's is an old-school hamburger joint opened way back in 1954. There are a few stools inside at a counter (although off-limits when we were there) and some outside tables. Expect a greasy burger cooked on a flat-top at Milt's and be prepared to love it. I did. Their website says they are open Tuesday through Sunday. We went on a Monday and got served just fine. Their website also says they serve both beef and bison burgers. We weren't offered a choice when we visited. I'm assuming it was beef.

Moab Diner, 189 South Main Street, Moab, UT. The best meal I had on this trip was the chorizo breakfast burrito from Moab Diner. Nice heat from the chorizo and that green chile sauce smother is incredible. Set it off with some sour cream and those gorgeous hash browns. Man, I could eat another one of those things right now. 

Vernal Brewing Company, 55 South 500 East, Vernal, UT. This was the place where nobody wore masks. Not holding it against them based on the quality of their food. I'm just saying. It is rare that I am wowed by something as simple as a house salad but I have to say that dish at Vernal Brewing Company was amazing. I also grabbed a six pack of their Directional Smoked Porter which I'd drink any day.

Roaming Buffalo Bar B-Que, 2387 South Downing Street, Denver, CO. We ate at Roaming Buffalo right before we headed to the airport to fly home. This is one of those places that's open until they run out of food. Based on the crowd we saw at opening time I can imagine they don't stay open too late in the afternoon. The bison sausage for me was a winner along with the spicy barbeque sauce. I'd pass on the cilantro-lime cole slaw but there are plenty of other sides that sound good.

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The Dentist

The first full day of our late spring / early summer trip to Colorado and Utah started out with just one real agenda item: drive from Denver all the way over and through the Rocky Mountains and down on to the high desert of the Colorado Plateau to Moab, Utah. Goodbye mountains. Hello desert!

The drive from Denver to Moab runs about five and a half hours straight out west on Interstate 70 across gorgeous scenery and through an incredible canyon before dulling out a little and hanging a left down the last 30 miles on US-191 once we got into Utah. It's certainly not the longest drive I've taken in one day either alone or with others but on this trip we figured we'd need a spot to stop for lunch and break up the drive a bit. So we searched for something to see along the way. Plus it was Saturday. I didn't want to just spend all day Saturday in a car and see absolutely nothing of this great country of ours while I was on vacation. 

What to do?

A half hour or so of research on the trusty world wide web turned up a number of options in Colorado. Large trout made out of car license plates in Palisade, maybe? How about a bison sculpted from car bumpers in Grand Junction? Tempting, believe me. Especially the bison. But ultimately, we opted for a little history in Glenwood Springs. And I do really mean a LITTLE history. But we'll get to that. What's in Glenwood Springs, you might ask? Well, it's the last and final resting place of a former dentist from Atlanta named John Henry Holliday.

Although you might know him better as Doc.

Annie's Wishing Tree along Pioneer Cemetery Trail.

Doc Holliday's name is most often associated with the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, perhaps the most famous gunfight in all of the American west. The 30 second (not kidding) event took place on October 26, 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona and pitted legendary lawman Wyatt Earp and his brothers, along with Holliday, against a gang of outlaws known as The Cowboys. The Earps and Holliday won the gunfight I guess, killing three of The Cowboys against zero casualties for their own side. But the feud that erupted that day eventually led to more killings over the next six months which led to more deaths on both side in addition to the issuance of an arrest warrant for Holliday by the Justice of the Peace in Tucson.

Now, the first thing that pops into my head when I hear the name Doc Holliday is Val Kilmer in the 1993 movie Tombstone coughing and sweating and dropping one liners like "I'm your huckleberry!" to goad Michael Biehn's character Johnny Ringo into a fight. I know you are thinking that too. I just know you are. It's OK. There's no shame in admitting it. That's who or what we were chasing that Saturday last month.

I have to confess (and I'm embarrassed because I feel I'm a fan of the old west) that before...oh let's say early June of this year I didn't really know a whole lot about Holliday. I certainly didn't know he was a dentist. But he was. The quick version of his first 21 or so years is born and raised in Georgia, school at the University of Pennsylvania, moved to St. Louis to practice dentistry and then moved to Atlanta shortly thereafter to do the same. He also contracted tuberculosis at age 15, which is why Val Kilmer is coughing and sweating in Tombstone.

It appears Holliday moved out west (first to Texas then to town after town after town all over the place) to get to some cleaner air that might cure his tuberculosis. It didn't, for the simple reason that tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that cannot be cured simply with fresh air, not that they knew that then. Once out west, Holliday gave up dentistry in favor of gambling and drinking and along the way saved Wyatt Earp's life in a gunfight which started a years long friendship which ultimately led to that O.K. Corral gunfight and beyond. For the record, neither gambling nor drinking are proven cures for tuberculosis either.

Doc Holliday's grave. Maybe. Actually...probably not.

After the O.K. Corral and the subsequent skirmishes and the arrest warrant thing, Doc ended up on the run. He managed to find some measure of safety in Colorado due to Wyatt Earp getting the governor of that state to refuse Doc's extradition to Arizona. The exact place he ended up was Glenwood Springs, where he thought he might as well take a shot at the hot springs there curing the tuberculosis.

It didn't. Because just like fresh air, gambling and drinking, hot springs don't cure bacterial infections either.

According to the signage scattered around Glenwood Springs, Doc arrived in town in May of 1887 and he lasted until November 8 of that year before he passed away. He died at the Hotel Glenwood (which no longer exists) after spending several weeks in a coma. Not the way you picture wild west heroes dying, I know. After his death, he was buried in Linwood Cemetery, which was established coincidentally the very month Doc died. That was our destination that Saturday afternoon. Nine years ago, I visited the graves of Wild Bill Hickok and Seth Bullock in Deadwood, South Dakota. Time to add a third western legend to my graves visited list.

Doc Holliday's memorial, Linwood Cemetery, Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

Linwood Cemetery is located at the top of a half mile or so hike uphill above the town of Glenwood Springs. The trail that takes you there drops you in the middle of a sloped site. The downhill side of the cemetery is covered with historic old graves and burial markers; the uphill side is a grassy field called Potter's Field filled with unmarked graves. 

The grave with Doc Holliday's name is about as far down the slope as you can walk on the right hand side of the property as you walk down the hill. It's a fenced off area behind a simple metal barrier with a white marble marker bearing Doc's name and his date of birth and death (August 14, 1851 to November 8, 1887 or just 36 years old!). However, it's unlikely Doc is buried in that spot.

For all his friends in high places and his notoriety, John Henry Holliday probably died destitute and penniless and likely could not afford anything like the marker that stands honoring his name today in Linwood Cemetery. The old west had a lot of folks in similar circumstances but the towns nonetheless took care of getting them buried. I mean, what else are they supposed to do with the corpses?

The mostly likely spot for Doc's actual burial site (again according to the signage in town) was Potter's Field, a plot of land reserved for the community's poorer residents and visitors and perhaps those folks seen as less desirable by society back then. Think prostitutes, minorities and suicides here to name a few.

Nobody really knows where Doc Holliday is actually buried but I guess enough people feel he's somewhere in Linwood Cemetery to make a tourist attraction and local legend out of it. The town, to its credit, is pretty forthcoming about this. There's a marker in front of what appears to be Doc's grave with the inscription "This memorial dedicated to Doc Holliday who is buried somewhere in this cemetery".

At least they are honest about it...

I'm not sure I'm making a habit of visiting resting places of legends of the old west but as a distraction and a place to stop for lunch, Doc Holliday's approximate burial spot and the town of Glenwood Springs made a good enough place to spend an hour or maybe a little bit more. This was probably one of the least eventful things we did on this trip but I'm glad we stopped. If nothing else it boosted my old west graves list by 50%.

We did attempt to find the former site of the Hotel Glenwood. We found a website that put the Hotel on a site currently occupied by the Summit Canyon Mountaineering store. We found this store easily enough (and even picked up a new water bottle) but it appears the store may have moved since the information was published on the website we visited. If we had visited the store instead at its former address (which is 732 Grand Avenue), we'd have been way better off. Disappointed we got this one wrong but I'm not sure getting it right would have significantly enhanced our experience. Doc's sort of grave was good enough. Besides, the real destination this day was Moab, Utah. No regrets!

Summit Canyon Mountaineering. Cool store but not where Doc Holliday died.

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How We Did It

The Doc Holliday's Grave Trailhead is the start of the half mile hike (sometimes known as the Pioneer Cemetery Trail) up to about where Doc is buried. The Trailhead is located at 1204 Bennett Avenue in Glenwood Springs. The signs at that spot advertise the walk as "moderately strenuous". It's steep in places and is mostly exposed to the sun which makes the walk in the middle of the day a little difficult. Take it slowly and bring water. There's plenty of parking on the street near the trail entrance. Once you get to Linwood Cemetery there is enough signage for you to get around but finding the memorial takes a little looking. Keep going downhill and to the right.

About halfway up the hill on the hike, you'll come to a tree with all sorts of ribbons and beer cans and soda bottles and scraps of paper with wishes and all manner of other stuff tied to it. Local resident Annie Zancanella started tying stuff to the tree while undergoing cancer treatment and a tradition evolved from there. Appropriately enough, she works in dentistry.

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Arches

The plan for our summer 2020 vacation was to spend a lot of time outdoors exploring three of America's greatest National Parks in California: Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite. All three of these places had been on my list for years; Yosemite for I don't know how long and Sequoia and Kings Canyon ever since I visited Redwood National Park in 2008 and found out I was thinking redwoods were actually sequoias. That day was pretty disappointing from a massive trees perspective, I can tell you that.

We never made it to California this year when we originally planned and we have no plans to do so in the near future. The virus messed us up. To keep our trip where we initially booked it (the week of June 22-26) would put us perilously close to the reopening date for some of the Parks and some of the parts of California we were traveling to and we didn't want to chance a park re-closing when it was flooded with more tourists than the State anticipated. Plus, wine-tasting (which we intended to do after the Parks) is not a good socially distanced activity. 

Because we didn't want to move the date of a trip, we pivoted...and decided instead to spend a lot of time outdoors exploring three of America's greatest National Parks in Colorado and Utah: Arches, Canyonlands and Rocky Mountain. All three of those places had been on my list for years too, although maybe not so long as the three in California. But a shorter flight, a lot more remoteness and a lot more certainty about the Parks' open status sold us. Yosemite and the rest will have to wait. Again.

Each of the three Parks we visited this past June was memorable and definitely worth the trip, although circumstances conspired against us taking full advantage of one of the three. Each Park is getting its own post on this blog because we got something way different out of each one. I'm starting with the first of the three we visited: Arches National Park right outside of Moab, Utah.

Sunrise in the desert at Arches National Park.

Every once in a while I want to go see someplace beautiful and amazing and I wanted that out of Arches. Nothing more than that. Laying eyes on towering stone figures carved by mother nature standing straight upright in the middle of a desert landscape in the American southwest. Exploring tunnels widened by wind and sand into the solid rock clear-span arches that give the park its name. Cliff after cliff of red-orange-amber-brown sandstone fashioned over centuries into something both amazing and breathtaking and straight out of the Road Runner cartoons at the same time. Maybe a walk or two along the way to get an up-close perspective on what I'd only previously seen in pictures.

We landed in Colorado on a Friday afternoon and got to southeastern Utah and to Moab by driving west from Denver on I-70 across some of the most gorgeous mountain and canyon scenery I've seen in just one five-or-so hour drive the very next day. I found the 12-1/2 mile long Glenwood Canyon, where the interstate splits into two separate elevations so both east and westbound sections can fit between the rocky walls of the canyon alongside the widening Colorado River, to be especially striking. I'd love to drive that again someday.

But when you cross the state line into Utah, the landscape gets...well...blander. A lot blander. Actually, pretty boring. It's all yellowish green grass on rolling hills as far as you can see. It's some of the most banal land I can remember driving through and it continues that way once you turn off the interstate and head south along US-191 towards the town of Moab. But eventually, about 10 miles or so north of the town, the scenery changes into enormous cliffs of red-orange-amber-brown rock. This is what we were waiting to see. This is why we came to Arches.

As a spot to explore Arches, Moab being a mere five miles south of the main entrance to the Park is perfect. We stayed in town for four of the eight nights on this trip last month and took advantage of the closeness to visit Arches on three separate days, including twice in a single day. There were a couple of reasons we did this other than the proximity: (1) we wanted to experience the park at different times of the day, including at sunrise, sunset and after dark; and (2) the temperatures the week we were in town were in the high 90s or maybe even cracking three digits by noon. And hiking out on the exposed, shade-less slickrock in Arches with the sun high in the sky in the middle of the day was not something we were interested in doing. Hence the multiple visits.

Before we got to Arches, I sort of saw the Park as an introductory drive which led you to three distinct and separate parts of the property: the Windows Section closest to the entrance (although not really that close at all); the Devils Garden deep into the Park featuring the largest arch in the place; and Delicate Arch, so famous and iconic that just that arch alone can stand on its own as equal to the other two spots that have many, many arches to see. 

I think my preconceived notion of the Park's geography is both close enough to reality and way, way off base at the same time. As an organizing structure as a way to visit the Park multiple times in a bit more than half a week, it worked well enough to give us something to shoot for. But considering those three spots as the only ones worth focusing on completely sold the rest of the Park short. What I saw as an introductory drive on a park map to get to the good stuff was just plain wrong. The good stuff is all around in this place. 

One of my favorite spots which we stopped at a couple of times for a good 20-30 minutes at a time was the Three Gossips, a carved grouping of three massive human-like figures in the Courthouse Towers part of the Park. Windows Section. Devils Garden. Delicate Arch. All cool. But so are the Gossips and a lot more of the other sights along the way. Drive slowly. It pays off. We all like different stuff.

The Three Gossips.

Balanced Rock. Yeah, I know...not many actual arches so far in this post.

So about that walk or two. 

One of the biggest dilemmas we faced in Arches was Delicate Arch and what to do about seeing it. We were legitimately concerned about the heat in the desert and the Park brochures listed the hike to Delicate Arch in the "Difficult Trails" section. Difficult...heat...high elevation. Do we do it or do we not? Surely there must be ways to feel fulfilled in the Park without making that trek, yes? After all, there's a viewpoint to that particular arch so we could still say we saw it without actually walking there in person, right? In the heat. At elevation. Difficult. Right? We planned on skipping the hike, checking out the viewpoint and taking it from there.

We decided we'd go check out Delicate Arch on our first visit into the Park. This was our sunset visit. We'd heard Delicate Arch is amazing at sunset.

Among my misguided, preconceived notions of Arches (like there are pretty much three good areas in the place) was my impression that we probably had to drive into a valley to see all those amazing natural sculptures. You don't. Quite the opposite. One of the most remarkable features of this place to me was that the entirety of the Park is actually on something of a giant plinth. That red-orange-amber-brown rock is the top layer of sediment deposited in this spot about 170 or so million years ago. Driving into the Park involves driving up. So on our first visit, we drove up. Past the Gossips. Past Balanced Rock. To Lower Delicate Arch Viewpoint. Just about in time for sunset.

We were underwhelmed. Significantly. It looked so small. And to be honest, not super picturesque. Validated our decision to skip the difficult hike. In the heat. At elevation.

Delicate Arch at around about sunset from Lower Delicate Arch Viewpoint. What's the fuss?

Two days later we'd make our second Arches visit to really explore, this time driving all the way to Devils Garden for a walk before making a stop at the Windows Section and taking an off-road adventure all the way out to Tower Arch and Marching Men. Lots to see on day two in Arches. And that's not even counting our second visit of the day to see the stars.

Any time we get to see hundreds and hundreds of stars in the night sky, it's a special day. We will never forget our night on top of Mauna Kea in Hawai'i in 2016 on a ranger-led night program spotting constellations and looking through a telescope at the moon close up. I guess living in the city makes the stars in the sky that much more special because we just cannot see them at home. There are a ton visible in Arches when the moon is new or close to it like it was just one day removed when we were there last month. If there's a skill in life I wish I had it would be the ability to identify constellations. I just can't figure those things out; they just don't make any sense to me. But that many stars, including some that were either shooting (or maybe actually moving satellites), is impressive. Quantity counts for me there.

Landscape Arch.

Our morning walks on day two got us deeper into the Park, including a relatively level hike to Landscape Arch near Devils Garden followed by a detour on the way back to the car to see Tunnel Arch (not worth it) and Pine Tree Arch, which is the cover picture of this post and had the most amazing light coming through the arch highlighting the range of colors in the rock with the deep blue sky beyond.

Landscape Arch is the longest spanning arch in the Park, and likely the thinnest too. Its current state of lightness was caused by a massive chunk breaking loose in the 1990s. Eventually, it will collapse entirely, as will all of the arches in the area given enough time. I guess they'll be replaced with new carvings by that time. We turned back at Landscape Arch. It was impressive enough to be worth the time we put into our walk that morning and to keep going to Double O Arch would be taking us down a "Difficult" trail and we wanted no part of that. In case that wasn't obvious by now.

We compensated for our lack of adventurousness first thing in the morning with a very short hike along a paved trail to Double Arch in the Windows Section and a very long drive on an unpaved road (if you can call it that) to Klondike Bluffs in the very northwest part of the Park. Double Arch is worth the quick walk; it's an impressive piece of work by mother nature and there's some shade at the end where you can stand and admire the wind's handiwork. Klondike Bluffs is farther than it seems and there's a long and exposed hike over rough terrain to see anything interesting out there. The heat made us turn back after coming up empty there.

I couldn't help thinking that we might be missing out on Delicate Arch. It gnawed at me.

Double Arch. Windows Section.

The plan for our last morning in Moab was to wake up when we woke up, grab some breakfast somewhere (heck, maybe even skip the free grab and go breakfast at the Best Western and spring for something heartier) and then head north with a couple of stops along the way. But Delicate Arch got the better of me. We had to give it a shot, right? There had to be more to this thing than the pretty boring picture we took from the Viewpoint I was thinking. Damn the "Difficult" rating. It couldn't be worse than hiking to Machu Picchu last May could it?

We found a description of the trail to Delicate Arch that broke the mile and a half each way hike and climb into three sections: a relatively flat first third over paved and gravel paths; a steep middle third involving walking and maybe a little hands and feet action over some of the Park's signature slickrock landscape; and a pretty flat final third before reaching the ultimate destination.

Slickrock. Sounds scary. Rock that's slick? Sloped? What if we fall? How far do we slide and fall and what's at the bottom of that trip? A hard landing I'm guessing. 

Slickrock is everywhere in southeastern Utah but we saw more of it at Arches than anywhere else. People come from all over to mountain bike over this sort of terrain. It's rock that's been worn smooth but very definitely not flat by centuries upon centuries of erosion. It's challenging terrain to walk or ride over. It's rock but it's not rocky, if that makes sense.

The trail description we read was right about the first third of the walk. It was pretty easy. And relatively flat. Straight into the blazing early morning sun but relatively flat. The guide didn't say anything about the sun but believe me when I say "straight into the blazing early morning sun" means like it's directly ahead of you right where you need to look to walk. A big hot ball of gas blinding and cooking you every step of the way. There's no way to look where you are going and not stare right into the sun. It makes this "Difficult" trail significantly more difficult.

Looking back down over the slickrock. Don't believe me about the sun? Check out the length of our shadows.

So here's the thing about slickrock. When it's dry, it's not slick. In fact, the coefficient of friction between slickrock and a Timberland boot is pretty darned high. Did that make the climb easy? No. But honestly the sun made the walk way more difficult than the path itself. I started to think we could do this thing. This walk is no Inca Trail. We got this.

There is something incredibly satisfying about working hard to get somewhere beautiful. I believe if we hadn't done this walk, we wouldn't have left Arches with anywhere near the satisfaction level I have as I write this post today. This walk and this work made our Arches experience. It was hot and it was blinding and the last third of the walk was no less difficult for me than the middle third, but it was worth it.

The last mile or so of the walk to Delicate Arch was entirely over rock. One foot in front of the other again and again until you get to a maybe five or six foot wide ledge running for about 200 feet or so with a view out over the desert that represents the final push, not that you necessarily know that on the way up. Turn the corner and you are there. One of the most iconic sights in all of our National Parks.

The last approach to Delicate Arch. This is me on the way down. Sun too bright for a pic on the way up.

I'll say one thing about the look at Delicate Arch you get from the Viewpoint where we first laid eyes on this formation and took the picture earlier in this post: it sucks! No way does a long distance look convey the majesty, siting and size of this arch.

It's sat on one end of a horseshoe type shaped rock that forms a kind of very steeply sloped natural amphitheater with all views pointed towards the star attraction which is Delicate Arch. This is a seriously steep piece of rock and walking around on the other leg of the horseshoe from the Arch is a delicate (pun intended) business. I walked carefully. No way did I want to slip or fall or roll or have to run downhill to regain my balance. That whole coefficient of friction between rock and Timbas I mentioned earlier? Not enough. I stepped deliberately.

It's also massive. I mean really, really huge. There are actually two people standing below the Arch in the picture below. They are like ants. This is a big, freestanding, rock sculpture made by the action of wind and sand on rock. It's just awesome, especially considering the view behind and through the Arch itself. There's a gorgeous rock wall forming the perfect backdrop to the view. Difficult? I guess. Heat? You bet! Elevation? Sure. Worth it? Definitely. So definitely worth the hour and 45 minutes we spent walking the three miles to Delicate Arch and back. This was debatably the best thing we did on this trip. There's such a sense of accomplishment. This morning walk on our fourth visit to the Park made it all worthwhile.

And downhill with the sun at our back was easy. Definitely worth the walk both ways.

Delicate Arch. The money shot.

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How We Did It

According to their website, Arches National Park is open 24 hours per day, seven days a week, 365 (or 366) days per year. And yes, I know that's redundant. That schedule is essentially true. But if the Park gets too full, which it seems to do routinely on weekends according to the official Arches Twitter feed, access is restricted until some people leave. 

We solved this issue by avoiding Arches on weekends during the day and getting into the Park early on weekdays. We entered the Park before 6 a.m. some days and exited after 11 p.m. on the day we went stargazing. There were cars in front of us and behind us every day we visited no matter the time. This is a busy Park. I've always been a fan of getting somewhere early. That strategy served us well at Arches.

The Park's website also has a parking page, which shows how busy each of the three main parking areas at Devils Garden, Windows and Wolfe Ranch (Delicate Arch) is for the prior day. I found this page showing Devils Garden and Wolfe Ranch being busy to very busy by about 8 am. We didn't necessarily find this to be true for our one visit to Devils Garden; there were a ton of spots when we left this area at 8 am. But it was for sure true at Wolfe Ranch. We got one of the last available parking spots at about 7 am when we hiked to Delicate Arch. Early bird. Worm. That's all I have to say there.

Finally and if it wasn't obvious from the post above, I highly recommend a walk to Delicate Arch. This will be difficult for some. Use your judgement and take plenty of water. I can highly recommend the breakfast burritos at the Moab Diner as a reward if you do. 

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So We Traveled...

Yes, we got on a plane and went somewhere. 

We just got back from a bit more than a week in Colorado and Utah. We couldn't take being at home anymore so we traveled. Having already cancelled two trips this spring, we elected to trade in our already planned week in California for about the same amount of time a little further east. Now we are back home. And it appears we are healthy and safe.

Considering we are still living in the midst of a global pandemic (hence the healthy and safe comment in the previous paragraph), you could make the case that this trip was reckless. You might say we didn't NEED to get on a plane, stay at a bunch of hotels and mingle with a bunch of strangers out west for eight days. We did it simply because we wanted to, because after being cooped up at home working remotely for about three months we had enough. You could also make the case that such a trip might put us and others at risk of contracting a virus that is out there and still not under control.

I'll accept all of that. Life is full of risks. And this is one we took but I do feel we did do a lot to distance ourselves from danger. In case there's someone else out there wrestling with this same dilemma, here are some strategies we used that we feel made our trip safer.

Yeah not taking a cab or Uber to the airport these days.

Ground Transportation

Unless we are flying out of town for five days or fewer, we typically take a Red Top Cab to either National or Dulles airport. But there was no way we were chancing close quarters in a cab with someone, even though I'm sure it would have been a fairly low risk activity. Instead, we drove and paid for parking, which can add up over eight plus days out of town. By switching our destination and using some frequent flyer miles, we ended up saving over $1,200 in cash. Why not use some of that to be a little safer and park within walking distance to the terminal? 

Totally worth it. A quick 25 or so minute ride out to Chantilly had us in Parking Garage 1 within walking distance of the terminal with pretty much nobody around us coming or going. The entire airport for that matter was pretty empty which made us feel way better about our decision to travel. It wouldn't be the same out west.

As luck would have it, we caught an additional break here. Dulles Airport dropped the price of parking right near the terminal to just $10 per day to allow people to park safely, which at $90 for a little more than eight days of parking ended up being cheaper than a $60+ cab ride each way anyway.

Flying

It may seem counterintuitive, but sitting on a plane for about four hours isn't actually that risky. I mean, after all, you are in a closed space with a bunch of strangers which might seem like an airborne petri dish. But the risks can be minimized. There are also a few ifs, most of which are out of your control. IF the airline provides masks to passengers. IF the passengers wear the masks. IF the airline intentionally caps capacity so only 2/3 of the seats are full. IF you don't get up and touch all sorts of surfaces and then touch your face. And IF someone who has the virus doesn't sit right next to you. If you can get all those ifs in place, you are in space with highly filtered air with more air changes per hour than most hospital wards.

There's one thing we did to maximize the chances of all those ifs coming true: flew Southwest. Early on in this pandemic, United Airlines made a big deal of blocking out middle seats to allow some distancing between customers, only to be later revealed they would only do that if there were few enough passengers booked to allow that to happen. But Southwest is deliberately capping capacity so nobody has to sit in a middle seat, in addition to providing masks to all flyers. Southwest is the best!

We did three other things to minimize risk: picked Denver deliberately because we could fly non-stop each way, used the overhead ventilator on full for the entirety of both legs of our journey and sat in the very last row. We figured we would only have to deal with bathroom traffic during the flight, there would be nobody behind us breathing our way and we'd avoid the inevitable crush and rush to get off the plane once the fasten seatbelt sign was turned off. And believe me, that crush did happen. So much for social distancing...

Emptiness. No issue social distancing here. 

The Itinerary

The plan for our trip to California was to spend some time exploring some of our National Parks before heading up to the Napa Valley for three days. When we moved away from that idea, we also moved completely to outdoor attractions. Colorado and Utah seemed like an ideal choice since we could basically spend every day outdoors seeing something new each day.

But we did a couple of other things to lower risk here. We stayed away from parks with historically high numbers of visitors on weekends in favor of long drives between places and parks with historically low numbers of visitors. This meant we hit Rocky Mountain National Park (4.7 million visitors last year), Arches National Park (1.6 million visitors in 2019) and Canyonlands National Park (733K visitors in 2019) on weekdays. We spent an entire Saturday driving between Denver and Moab, UT in our rental car by ourselves and spent the next day on Sunday at Hovenweep National Monument, which drew just 35,000 visitors last year, about what Rocky Mountain averages in three days, although attendance in the summer is way higher than that.

We also shifted our travel dates to allow this itinerary to work better, flying out on a Friday afternoon and coming back the following Saturday rather than Sunday. That meant instead of mingling with folks enjoying the weekend, we were traveling home. We could have stayed a day longer but why risk it?

Hotel room eats. OK at first but gets old. The sweet potato tots from Denver's Highland Tap & Burger were amazing.

Eating

One of our great loves when we travel is exploring the local food scene. We do our research ahead of time and find some great spaces with even better food and spend an hour plus eating and drinking after a full day of sightseeing. The ability to hang out and unwind before and during an excellent meal with a beer or two (or three...) is one of the joys of traveling. We skipped it entirely on this trip. Even in Utah, where from our perspective restaurants were fully open for business.

One of the highest risk activities we could identify during a weeklong National Parks-focused trip was spending time indoors with a bunch of people opening their mouths over and over to eat a meal while talking and expelling virus particles into the air. No way were we going to do that. We took almost (there were two exceptions) every meal we ate to go, whether it was grab and go breakfast from the hotel or a sandwich taken with us for lunch (we invested in a Yeti Daytrip Lunch Bag for this trip) or dinner to go from a restaurant.

Did that mean our culinary experience suffered? Honestly, yes. But we tried to find well-regarded places that were offering take out service of their regular menu or had shifted to provide a focused and excellent reduced menu. I think we ate some good food on this trip but the eating experience was not the same and some meals didn't stand up to the out of restaurant experience as well as others.

Mask off. Mask on.

Protection

After electing to drive ourselves to the airport; carefully selecting our airline; creating an agenda that was likely virus free; and then eating every meal away from other people we had to take some additional protection, right? Wipes to clean everything close to us on the plane and inside our rental car? Sure. Of course. And masks to wear everywhere? Yep, took those too.

We also took a few neck gaiters (or snoods, for those of you in England) so we could breathe a little easier through the thinner material in the middle of the desert during the day and still protect ourselves from random outdoor encounters with strangers, of which there were many each day. These things are also generally UPF 50+ rated to block at least 98% of the sun's UV rays which is smart in late June in southeast Utah.

Did all that make our trip 100% safe? Absolutely not. No way. Impossible to do. Life is really full of risks, even without a global pandemic. We figured after more than two months working at home, not seeing friends or family at all and going everywhere that we had to go on off hours with face coverings, a trip with layers of well-planned risk mitigation strategies would be safe enough. I think we were right.

Will we do this regularly? Nope. Not even close. But if we do it again anytime soon, you better believe we are doing everything we did on this trip to protect ourselves as much as we possibly can.

Blog posts to follow.

Flight to Denver. Not full at all.

52

Today is my 52nd birthday. If this isn't the most bizarre year I've spent on this planet, I'm not sure I want to know what's coming in the future. Although let's face it, this next year may be even stranger. I'm buckled in pretty tight for the next seven months or so at least.

The plan for year seven of this blog was pretty modest. Sometimes it happens that way. Our travel whims generally have about the same amount of travel in each calendar year but the distribution isn't necessarily spread out evenly between birthdays for me. That means some years between name days have more travel than other years. Year seven happened to be a light year by design. But not as light as it turned out to be.

We planned to complete four trips over the past year. I know. I know. That sounds like a lot. But only one of those four was planned to be a week in length. The other three were long weekends, either four days or five days away from home. A week plus in Ireland? Done. Lots of rain, but done. Long weekend in The Bahamas? Also done. Pirates and Goombay Smashes and beach time and rum cakes! Awesome! But the other two trips, to Costa Rica's Tortuguero National Park in March and northwest New Mexico in May, never happened. Cancelled! Victims of this global pandemic that is still very much out of control.

So understandably, this is not the birthday post I thought I'd be writing. If everything went according to plan (and we've already established that is very definitely not the case at all this year), not only would I have had time in Costa Rica and New Mexico under my belt, but I'd also be hoisting a beer in the cover photo of this post somewhere in central California after hiking among enormous trees in Kings Canyon National Park this very day. But that trip (planned for this entire week) didn't happen either.

But I am on the road. I'm out in Utah (of all places) on a plan B scenario that's worked out about as well as I could have hoped. It's incredible country out here and I'm excited to explore this place for the next few days before heading home. Given all that's happened over the past four months, I'm pretty excited about getting away for a week to some place this amazing.

Does all that mean year seven was a waste? Absolutely not!! Sure we lost a couple of long weekends in Costa Rica and New Mexico (we'll get there or back there one day) but we snorkeled and explored strange rock formations and played with swords and dug up some skeletons from the past that my native country tried to bury. Along the way we walked a lot and learned and found good food and great drinks, sometimes with music. We also got to travel with friends (or friend) which I love to do. I appreciate the fact that our friend Bryan came with us to Ireland. He definitely made that trip better for me. I love the perspective that other people bring to traveling. Hope we can do it again soon.

All that's not too shabby I'm thinking.

At Giant's Causeway, Northern Ireland. Cold, wet, windy but amazing just the same.

I've traditionally used my birthday post to write about how I'm doing on the goals I've committed to achieving and what my plans for the next year are. Let's not let a global pandemic affect that reckoning, shall we?

Year six of this blog saw me knocking off three of my five goals for my second five year period of exploring the world. Three of five! In one year!! Pretty darned good if I do say so myself. Continent number six? Check! Cologne? Check! Machu Picchu? Check!

How did I follow that success up this past year? Well...by accomplishing absolutely nothing on my list. Seriously. And it was deliberate. Really. Why rush things? I have three more years after this one and the only two outstanding promises I've made to myself is to visit the balance of the 50 states that I haven't set foot in (just four left, if you must know) and to make it to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Although honestly...this virus out there makes me want to rush a bit more. It's amazing how quickly something that you love so much can be taken from you. I mean that on many different levels.

So what's next? What does year eight hold? Honestly...I have no clue whatsoever. Yes, we have two trips planned already but there are absolutely no guarantees we are going on those or anywhere for the rest of this year and maybe beyond that. I think for the foreseeable future we are going to just remain flexible in our travel plans and open to any possibilities that present themselves. Particularly with the number of destinations that appear to be off limits to Americans considering we lead the entire planet in deaths from this pandemic. So proud!

I've read a lot about the future of travel in the last four months or so. Most of what I have read has suggested more planning is the way to go. Reservations for flights, restaurants and attractions are going to be more important than ever. We can't plan more. We regularly commit to travel plans a year or sometimes more ahead of time. I think for us the answer may actually be to commit later than we usually do and keep all our options open. Sounds counterintuitive but for us over-planners that might be the way to go. I will commit to providing a progress report a year from now.

No matter how it happens, it won't matter at all if we don't take care of ourselves. Throughout this duration of this pandemic, we are fortunate to have not known anyone to be seriously ill with this virus that's out there and I hope we can continue to be so lucky. I know there are so many who are not in the situation we are in. We'll keep pushing the envelope in a very very safe way to travel and explore where we can. Stay safe everyone. Happy birthday to me!

Our first view of New Providence island in The Bahamas. Pretty much paradise.