Tuesday May 9, 2023 - Moab UT to Helper UT

 

Well we are clean after showers and a good hot tub soak last night, and nice clean clothes. It is a real treat to stay in a hotel after being on the road for 5 days, but we are looking forward to getting back on the road. We also enjoyed the hotel breakfast which was a good one with eggs and bacon and fruit. The people working there had to have been to the “be really nice to guests” school and they were very pleasant. And the hotel had a cappuccino machine in the lobby which I hit up on the way out the door.

Moab is a pretty cool town but we got the sense that living there was like living on an island. There are no big cities nearby which are nice to do some serious shopping or go see a show now and then. But it is a great town to visit.

We filled up with gas before leaving town since it was kind of unknown where we were going to end up today. We drove north on RT 191 and turned left just north of town to go visit Canyonlands National Park North, or the “Island In the Sky” part of the park. There didn't seem to be much traffic into the park but as we learned later, 8 am is not prime time. Made another $30 at the ranger station with the Senior Pass (ka-ching) and then stopped at the visitor center to get the latest info. Since we toured Canyonlands South yesterday, this was less awe inspiring today, but pretty dang beautiful.

We took a hike to Mesa Arch which is a natural bridge and a good place for pictures. An older couple from Virginia let us take their picture and they were like kids, having a good time together. Very cute.

Next stop was all the way to the end of the road to Grand View Point, where we nabbed the last parking spot and a park ranger was just starting a geology talk. I have to take a geology course some day. This stuff is fascinating!! We walked a mile or so to an overlook where we could see the entire park basin. Pretty impressive. We noticed quite a few foreign accents among the people there so it must be amazing to see for people from small countries. It's all so vast.

By the time we returned from the hike, the parking lot was overflowing with people parking all over the sides of the road. This is what the visitor center worker said would happen about 10 am and sure enough, it was about 10 am.

Another stop to see the amazingly twisty, skinny road our South Dakota friends had told us they took their camper on. Yikes! The Shafer Trail looks too dangerous to walk down but it is cut into the side of the canyon wall with no guard rails. Did I say Yikes!!

OK, enough crowds and it was time to head north again on RT 191. We climbed out of the Moab basin and the landscape got pretty normal again (uninteresting?). We hit I-70 this side of Green River and stopped at an Alien place and bought a couple of cold drinks (at ridiculous prices of course). A few exits west we got off I-70 (speed limit 80) and headed north again on RT 191.

RT 191 became more like an interstate than the two lane road we had been on. It was three lanes wide with lots of passing lanes which helped a lot with the increased truck traffic. And you left the road using exits. It took us a while to realize that this is a shortcut from Salt Lake City down to I-10 if you were going east and that's why the road got so busy.

The plan was to stay at Scofield Lake State Park tonight which is off RT 6, which is off RT 191. We stopped at a little town called Helper and did a drive through this cute little town. It looked like an old mining town.

We took the RT 6 turn and then headed up the mountain to the state park. As we climbed we saw more and more snow. We got to the park, which is at 7600 ft altitude, and the gates were all chained shut. The website showed sites available but it was obviously closed.

There were other options which we began ruling out and then Deb looked at iOverlander and found an RV park back in the cute little town of Helper. So back down the hill and we found this amazing little RV park right on the Price River with a very nice couple checking us in. And it was $29 for a tent site (with water and electricity) right next to the river. Wow.

They recommended a new brewery in town (Helper Beers) so we walked the mile or so to it via the downtown. There is no mine right in town but the outlying canyons had a lot of coal mines. The town did have a switching yard for all the trains and they housed all the “helper locomotives” which seems to be how the town got its name. Nice little town! We sat at the bar and shared a delicious wood-fired pizza and talked with the owner and employees.

We walked back along the river path that took us back to the RV park. We chatted up the second shift RV park managers who have been living in their RV full time since 2015 and volunteering here in exchange for a free site.

And so ends another day on the road.