And Then They Were Gone….

It’s a good thing I posted we were leaving yesterday since (obviously) everything you read on the internet is always true.

Last night the wind kicked up, the temps dropped and voilà…miracles of miracles the little biting bastards were gone. It was like a whole new day dawned on a whole new place. Never in my RVing lifetime have I ever been so happy to see the wind. The absence of pesky little bugs and the forecast of 40 mph winds on the roads up north grounded us for another day in paradise. And what a welcome delay it was. We walked the trails, basked in the sun, sat on our front porch (I kid you not)!

I even managed a close encounter, and not of the planned kind. Polly and I were happily lounging on the north trail lost in the beauty of sea, white sand views and blue skies when suddenly doggie lets loose a blood-curdling howl. I turn around to see a 3,000 lb Bison with horns not 10 feet away with 5 other of his friendly mates right behind him.

Argh!! ****sh*t****!!

I give Polly the emergency “back” command (a command I taught her specifically for dire emergencies) and walk slowly away. As I was backing away I imagined the appalling flash of headlines -> “Dumb tourist rammed by Bison…..Subsequently consumed by gnats…Identification by dental records lead to Mexico…Link to Cartel suspected….” Oh, the horror has no end. Had I been more photographically-inclined I might even have landed the Bison-picture of the century, but thankfully I was not that stupid.

Yet another Nina disaster averted….Phew!

It’s been a welcome extra day and has given us a new appreciation for this wonderful place. Without the gnats this truly is a paradise island in the salten sea, but tomorrow we WILL move on….really we will…

Campsite Lottery, Red Rock Hiking & Friends – Moab, UT

Corona Arch Glory

Evening clouds over the canyon at our campground

It’s finally time for us to leave all the past weeks’ frivolity behind and get back to regular blogging. Or, at least become just a tad less frivolous (I try, really I do). This past week we’ve been hanging & hiking in Moab, UT and I’ve got lots to tell.

First up, I should admit that I was in two minds about coming to Moab. It’s not that this isn’t a pretty place…it is. It’s not that it hasn’t got fabulous views, a great little town and awesome hikes…it has. The problem lies in the fact that everyone and his brother thinks so too which means if the weather is anywhere close to good this place is mobbed!

This sign was out every single day!

Finally settled…phew!!!

Our first impressions were not exactly good. There’s zero boondocking for our size around Moab, so we arrived mid-week and early in the day looking to get into one of the 26 BLM campgrounds around town (I mean, that should be enough choices right?). I stopped at the first campground on U-128  to chat to Watson’s Wonder who were in town. Not only were there zero open sites, but I counted 10 rigs that drove by looking while we were talking. Agh! We continued down the road to no sites, no sites, no sites until by some magic we landed a huge (enormous) site in Big Bend Campground, possibly the last and only one left in Moab(?). Five minutes later there were people fighting over sites across the way from us and the craziness has not stopped since.  The campground has been full every day, has had cars driving through every day and it’s been a test of musical chairs for anyone to get a spot. I’m infinitely happy we landed our huge spot, but the stress is a little too much for me. Yikes!

Having won the campsite lottery we bought a week and decided to enjoy what Moab has to offer. After all there’s a reason people come here, and despite our rocky start I’ll admit we’ve had fun. Here’s just a sampling of the stuff we’ve been doing around town:

1/ Arches National Park

Driving through the “Courthouse Towers” in Arches

The view at Delicate Arch

No-one comes to Moab without a stop at Arches National Park, home of over 2,000 sandstone arches including the famous Delicate Arch that adorns all the Utah license plates. Like all National Parks it doesn’t allow dogs on any of the trails (always a bummer for us), so we didn’t spend nearly as much time as we would have liked exploring the trails, but we did take advantage of free pass week to do the drive-through (totally do-able for anyone in a few hours) and the 3-mile roundtrip hike to Delicate Arch. The park offers a huge array of differing landscapes from towers to arches to crazy badlands and many of the views are visible right from the road. Totally worth the visit!

2/ Exploring The “Arms” & Hiking With Doggie

There are 3 main scenic drives that branch off just north of town along BLM (and thus pooch-friendly) land. I call them the “arms” of Moab and each one has tons of interesting sights & doggie-friendly hikes. The drives/hikes are popular so unless you get to the trails by ~8AM (which is what we did), be ready for lots of people! Still, these are ALL worth it, no matter what time you go:

Utah 128 -> Negro Bill & Fisher Towers

In awe at the base of 243 foot Morning Glory Bridge

This is the closest drive to town and follows a stunning canyon that runs east along the Colorado river and past the most popular BLM campgrounds. A few miles in is one of the best doggie-hikes in Moab = Negro Bill Canyon, that goes through several stream-crossings and ends at a stunning 243 foot long natural Bridge. Fabulous! About 21 miles in is another gem, Fisher Towers where you can stroll below the towers and see crazy people doing crazy climbing up the rocks. I managed to get lost within the first 200 feet of this hike (a new record for me), but I’m sure you’ll do better DO stop at the winery and cowboy museum on your way back to town.

View of Manti La Sal Mountains from U-128

Utah 279 -> Petroglyphs & Corona Arch

All alone at Corona Arch

This canyon road follows an arm to the west of Moab, passing several large climbing-walls and interesting petroglyphs within the first 5 miles. About 10 miles in you can access another fabulous paw-friendly hike, Corona Arch. It’s a fun scramble with a few uphill ropes, but will finish at a wonderful 140 by 105 feet arch. Sadly, this very arch was the site of a death from a swing stunt just last month and we saw the flowers on the base to commemorate it. Some people are just too crazy to understand.

Utah 313 -> Dead Horse Point State Park

Polly on the trail

This road is the furthest north from Moab and is around a 28-mile trip. It will take you up onto the top of a Mesa and across sweeping views all the way to Dead Horse Point State Park, where you can walk the easy 4-mile rim trail with doggie. The rim lies 2000 feet above the valley floor and is one of the best places in the entire Moab area to get an “aerial” view of 10 million years of plateau uplift and rock erosion. Be ready for hot sun and no shade, but fabulous views. This is not just a great place to stay, but an awesome spot to gawk too. Simply stunning!

Nothing beats the panorama at Dead Horse Point State Park

3/ Hanging With Friends

Hanging with our RV buddies at Goose Island BLM Campground

Spring and Fall are the absolute best months to visit Moab so it’s no surprise that other savvy RV bloggers are here too. We knew Watson’s Wonder were hanging in town and had been avidly following the hiking & jeeping adventures of Oh The Places They Go! for weeks before we arrived (seriously check out some of their jeeping posts -> I’m glad they’re doing these nutty roads so I don’t have to!). We all got together for a fabulous happy hour earlier in the week at Amanda&Tim’s lovely waterfront site and enjoyed it so much we gathered again at Pam&John’s very stylish spot later in the week. It never ceases to amaze me how easily we’ve met great folks on the road, and this week was just another example of that. Definitely five bonus point to Moab on this one!

It can be quite gorgeous here. All alone in the early morning on the Negro Bill Canyon Hike

That about rounds up our week in Moab. Despite the campsite craziness I have to admit it’s a cool little town. There’s a good downtown, decent food (check out the top-rated Quesadilla Food Truck), good shopping (Moonflower Market is a fabulous health-food store), great hiking (even with doggie, yeah!), awesome views and good people to boot. I think if we were to come back we’d stay further out by the more relaxed Horsethief BLM Campground, but there’s lots of stuff we didn’t manage to see and we’d certainly stop again.

By the stream in Negro Bill Canyon

A mini-arch on the Corona Hike

Lost but happy at Fisher Towers

Polly plays by the Colorado

Up close in red..

And in yellow…

Early morning hike

Yours truly at Delicate Arch

From “No-Poo” To “No-Deo” -> 3 Reasons To Join The Deodorant Free Movement!

This blog post was inspired by some of the reader questions about Peppermint Oil from Sunday’s hilarious mouse episode. Thanks everyone who commented and shared their own mouse (or snake!!) horror stories. What a total blast!! We have 97 comments and counting!! For those deo-curious, here’s the next installment…..

I’m a free-flyin’ kinda gal!

I have a confession to make. For the past 6 months I have not used any deodorant, at least not the kind you can buy from the store. No, this is not my regression into some kind of primal cloth-wearing savage (although one does get those urges in the boonies). Rather it’s an experiment and a progression from my no-poo transition over a year ago (which I still love and which, by the way, is still the most popular post on my blog at over 500 views per week!)

Can you say 101 uses for Baking Soda?

I’ve been keeping this a secret mostly because I wanted to see if anyone noticed. You see, despite a love of all things fragrant and flowery I have a rather poor sense of smell so I’ve had to put my new underarms through more rigorously scientific tests. The first test was whether anyone actually mentioned anything. Now this is a poor test I admit since in polite society few people actually do. Despite this, I’ve kept a vigilant ear on the topic so to speak, and so far no-one has mentioned anything untoward. Check one. Accepting this as a success I’ve moved onto Beta stage and looked for more subtle signs of issues -> people suddenly fainting in my presence, urgent gasps for breath, apparent dizziness…that kind of thing. This stage has also passed with flying odor. Check two. Beta-Plus stage involved putting the substance through the daily motions…you know hiking, walking, lounging, general miss-behavior. This stage too was overcome with scent success. Check three.

Thus, with three flying checks I have declared my Deo-free experiment a success and am finally ready to blog about it.

In all seriousness though, why would I do such a thing?

1/ To Avoid Weird Chemicals -> I try to live my life with as little weird chemical interaction as possible. Many deodorants, especially the stronger kind contain various fun ingredients like aluminum compounds (which can accumulate in the body), parabens, triclosan etc.This leads to many deodorants that come with a warning label of the sort “avoid use if you have kidney disease”…rather scary I think. Chemicals are everywhere in life, but I try and stick with as natural stuff as I can.

2/ To Save Some Moolah! I always love saving $$. Home-made deodorant cost pennies, has only a few ingredients and is super-easy to make. Why not try it?

It smells good too!

3/ Because It Works! The last reason was a side-effect I did not expect when I started this experiment. To put this in perspective keep in mind I was the woman that used Clinical Strength deodorant because that seemed to be the only stuff that worked for me. Really!! That’s before I started to get reactions from the stuff and decided I really needed to change. I tried all kinds of brands with no results until Lu wrote her post on home-made deodorant last year. Although initially a huge skeptic I decided, finally, to give it a try. When I moved over to the home-made stuff it took a while for my body to adapt, but after a few weeks I was sweating less and had better odor control, and within a month my body had reached a happy equilibrium. Amazing, but true.

The recipe for the home-made stuff is super-easy and comes from this site. I use the 2nd combination which works out as follows:

• 6 T coconut oil
• 1/4 cup (4 T) baking soda
• 1/4 cup (4 T) arrowroot
• Peppermint Essential Oil (optional)

This little cup of deodorant will last me many months

Just mix and store. I keep it in a small ramekin since it does get soft when hot and this prevents it from flowing out and making a mess (conversely it can get rather hard when cold!). You only need a small dab each day so this one recipe will last me many months. The peppermint oil is optional, but it smells really good and gives you a pleasant minty freshness (plus, you now know other uses for peppermint oil, right?).

It may not be everyone’s cup o’tea, but for those of you curious enough to try it I invite you to join the experiment and give it a go. Let me know how it works out for you!

P.S. We’ve got lots going on in Moab and will get back to regular blogging next, but just in case you didn’t know it’s Free National Park Pass week (Apr 22-26) which means you can get in FREE to many of the fabulous National Parks across the US all this week!! We’ve been taking advantage of it here and hope you do too.

So What the “EEeeeeeeeek” Happened???!!

I’ve kept you in suspense long enough and it’s time to open the can, so to speak, and let it all out. Our story starts just over a week ago at our boondocking site at Goosenecks State Park. To set the scene just imagine a typical relaxing morning at wheelingit headquarters…a calm breeze, blue, sunny skies, a wide-open space of nothing and a world of calm . Yours truly was lounging in the sofa while hubby was lazily whipping up a morning brew…

“I just saw something” said Paul, sounding rather strange

“Huh?” I mumbled, my usual early-morning plucky self. I turned to see Paul frozen over the kitchen drawer with a haunted look in his eye.

“I just saw something” repeated Paul, apparently zombie-like.

“Erhmmm….What????” I managed, suddenly feeling wide awake ”A UFO? Microraptor Gui? Purple Elephants?” Something about the way he was looking told me I would be happier if said object was not actually real.

“It was brown” he replied “furry…and it might possibly have had a tail”

“EEEEeeeeek!”

Within microseconds I was standing ontop of the sofa in karate-chop stance (not that I have any actual karate experience you know, but mentally it was helpful).

“NO, NO, NO….it’s not possible” I reasoned “I mean we have TWO CATS, for fricks sake!” (keeping it PG here)

Don’t bother me…I’m sleeping

I looked over at our furry killers who were both currently lounging in their cat bed by the window. They raised their heads nonchalantly, laid back down to sleep and flicked their tails in indifference. “The puny schemes of mice of men doth not us import”…was the obvious retort.

They could at least have got the quote right, I thought.

“Argh!!!” Paul gurgled, snapping me back to the present and general kitchen area “I just saw it again”

Paul shines a flashlight into the “bowels” of the kitchen

“OH SH*T” (we harmonized on that one), followed by various other very-non-PG swear-words. This was NOT good. I immediately had visions of teeny mice-teeth chewing their way through the entire underbelly of our rig…tasty wires, yummy fuel lines, sumptuous RV connectors. We were no longer “the beast” -> we were a mobile mouse dining-al-fresco restaurant, and the invitation for all-you-can-eat dinner was out. I suddenly envisioned an entire family of mice-happy feet scrambling in our walls and munching on the RV while the cats enjoyed the TV show from the comfort of their afternoon sunning spot.

“Seriously cats” I threw at them “WHERE is your killer instinct???!!”

Flick…flick…still no response.

EVERYTHING out in the RV…including around 100 screws

I tuned to Paul and our brains did a Vulcan mind-lock….or perhaps the bleeding obvious just came to light. Clearly we needed to get rid of this beast and clearly it had to be NOW. We were 100 miles from the nearest purchasable mouse-trap so we needed to do some serious brainstorming. Our engineering training clicked into gear -> debug the problem, contain the issue and eliminate the threat. Or, something to that effect.

We engaged the enemy like mice-marine-killers on the move. First course of action was to take apart ALL accessible areas of the RV and follow the clues. Every drawer, every piece of wood and several hundred screws later we discovered lots of happy mice droppings and a neat little trail to a “nest” underneath the bathroom sink where said invader had been enjoying the fruity delights of Paul’s Peruvian seed-necklace. Found you, you furry menace. Thankfully no chewed wires were apparent.

Peppermint…the secret mouse-repellant?

Seriously, no-one likes this stuff…not even mice

Next we cleaned, scrubbed and disinfected everything and then moved onto plan B. This involved leaving everything open, giving free access to our mice-killer cats (as you can see I am an eternal optimist) and putting in scent deterrents that I had read about on the internet. Apparently mice hate the smell of Irish Spring Soap (as do we, which is naturally why I’d bought a Costco-load worth 2 years ago and stored it for never-use later…duh!), and Peppermint Essential Oil (which I just happened to have in stock for use in my home-made deodorant).

We proceeded to load up everything we could with both items placing fresh bars of soap and containers of cotton-soaked oil in each and every corner. I even toyed with the idea of leaving a cheese-trail to our boondocking neighbors who had blasted outdoor music the entire previous evening (who does such a thing??), but alas my better nature prevailed.

The final result was a complete transformation. I can honestly say that NEVER, in the history of RVing, has a “beastly” rig EVER smelt so minty fresh. We had created a 40-foot Peppermint garden, a minty Eden, a leafy green vision in RV. The odor was so strong it made us dizzy, and gave us an overwhelming urge to chew gum…or drink Mojito’s depending on the hour. It’s possible my application de Mentha had gone a tad overboard, but I was on a mission and there was no way I was dialing back on this baby.

 

This is NOT a pretty gap-filler job…but it is effective darn it!

We maintained said situation, renewing the scents twice daily for several days, and then crawled around inside and under the RV to plug up each and every hole we could find with gap filler. There were several, surprisingly and it was not a pretty fix, but at this point we didn’t care.

It’s been over a week since “the incident” and so far no more mice-poos and no more furry sightings. I am hopeful the threat has been eliminated. Either that or the darn animal has decided to re-hibernate until better days. Of course since this time we’ve managed several other masterpieces -> our vacuum motor has burnt out and we’ve discovered a major plug in one of our sinks, all events bound to happen when you’re out in the deep boonies (and thus with zero access to hardware stores…universal RV rule #3 I think?). But all of this pales in comparison to the horror of little furry feet and sharp teeth. As long as the mouse is gone, I’m happy to hand-wash outside and live with a bit of dirt. And to think some people think boondocking is just sitting around and relaxing.

Oh and bloody cats too….

Crazy Utah Weather & Cliff Dwellings On The Trail Of the Ancients

Our front window view…clouds a-coming!

Weather makes for colorful sunsets out our RV window in the cottonwood trees

We’ve made it back to “civilization” and once again have an internet signal….yeah! The past few days we’ve been boondocking deep in the Utah boonies and it may well have been the most weather crazy streak we’ve done to date. Wind, sandstorm, thunder, rain, snow(!), fog AND sun all in the space of a few days?? Oh yeah, it’s just a typical Utah spring -> a fickle, fickle time that can give near-perfect temps, wipe you out with wind or strand you in surprise winter storms. We knew this coming in and were keeping tight track of the weather forecast through our phone (the awesome WeatherBug App) and the Satellite TV (you’ve gotta stay ontop of these things in the boonies), but Mother Earth Utah managed to surprise us even then.

Wind whips up the clouds behind “the beast”

Late Sunday, after several days of T-shirt weather at the rim we were warned of big winds and decided to leave our exposed site at Goosenecks State Park for a much more protected spot around 60 miles north. We found a new boondocking site tucked behind a massive ridge in a cottonwood tree wash . The next few days were going to give us a show and we were nestled in the perfect spot to watch it without getting too badly hit. No phone or internet here, but we were prepared for the onslaught…mentally anyway.

This fine red dust will go everywhere…!

Warm sunset, but chilly temps!

The winds started almost as soon as we set down our jacks in our new site, whipping up a famous Utah red dust sandstorm from our previous location. We saw the dust-clouds rise like giant billows in the south and blanket the sky with a deep red. The super-fine dust is a notorious phenomenon in the SE of Utah. When it rises it does so suddenly and completely blackens out the sky, filtering through the cracks in your rig and into your pores. It’s worst in the open plains and may only last a few hours, but it will obscure everything and get into every single open slot (I tell you, you’ll have red dust coming out your a** by the time it’s over). Our previous boondocking spot would have been wiped out, but we passed the storm in relative protection in the valley, shook out as much dust as we could when it was over and enjoyed almost a full day of T-shirt warm sun and flowing clouds before the next act.

The day AFTER the snowstorm

An afternoon clearing at our boondocking site

The weather started again with drizzle in the night and a few claps of thunder, all pretty mild stuff until temps dropped and the rain transformed into snow! By the time we got up in the morning our view was covered in light, flying tufts of snowflakes blanketing the valley. WOW! Temperatures had dropped to near-freezing and the sky was grey and thick. The morning continued grey, but several hours and many cloud-bursts later it suddenly cleared up again. Sunny, cold but completely open blue sky. The dark clouds had moved north and were dumping snow on the higher roads so we decided to wait out one more day for the weather to stabilize before moving on.

Could we have seen more weather in a few days? Thank goodness for the flexibility of boondocking!

The fabulous “House On Fire”

Butler Wash details

Despite the fickle spring craziness we managed to explore. This area of Utah, bounded by the corners of Comb Ridge, Grand Gultch, Grand Flat and Cedar Mesa is called the Trail of the Ancients and has one of the largest concentrations of ancient pueblo dwellings in the US. Some are developed and have accessible trails, but many are hidden in the canyons and only discovered by back-country exploring. Even more lie completely undiscovered, hidden gems yet to meet the human eye. These dwellings date from the very first settlers, the Basketweavers (200-700AD) who lived mostly on the mesa tops to the Anasazi or Ancestral Puebloans (1060-1270) who built elaborate structures in the mesa cliffs. There are literally hundreds of these scattering throughout the area, and what’s even better is that they’re almost all on BLM land so you can camp and bring doggie along for the trek. What a gift!

Butler Wash ruins

Paul poses by a ruin in Mule Canyon

Polly does a pretty pose

We started our exploring with Butler Wash Ruins, a short ½ mile marked hike from Hwy 95. The overlook is accessed via slick-rock (looks slick, but it’s got a lot of grip) and a total of ~20 cliff rooms can be viewed. Cool little visit. Our next stop was House On Fire. This fabulous ruin can be accessed via a ~1 mile hike along South Mule Canyon, just past mile-marker 102 no Hwy 95. It can take a little to find it, but once you do you’re rewarded with an up-close and personal masterpiece dramatically framed by ridged rocks in “flames”. At just the right time of day (around noontime) the light bounces off the inner canyon and lights up the dwelling. Gorgeous! There are plenty of other ruins in this canyon if you can find them too. We ended the trip, right before the next round of weather hit with a short visit to the “Mule Canyon” ruins, a developed set of ruins just north of House On Fire. Totally worth the drives!

Map of Ruins in the Trail Of the Ancients. Every dot is a spot!

We may not have seen quite as much as we’d like, thanks to the crazy UT weather, but it’s been a fine drive and will keep us coming back for more. A wild, but totally fun coupla days. We’re already settled at our new site in Moab and will be catching up on the blogs with 2 boondocking site reviews…and the long-awaited “eeeeek” story.…Oh my!

Taggart stays warm

Snow??? Seriously?!

Utah stone sculptures

Cat on the move…

More Mule Canyon Ruins

Mom, what ya doing up there?

Hiking Mule Canyon

Biking at our boondocking site