Arches, Moab, People

I’m just not good at providing factual info about places that other people know about, so I’ll tell you about my impressions.  

I don’t like being around people, partly because I’m out of the habit.  It’s kind of like watching TV or listening to music: if either is on, my attention goes there, and I can’t think of anything else. 

Same while hiking. I get distracted by people’s smells when they pass me. (I bet she’s wearing Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion. I wonder if they make that in sunscreen these days? Seems like they’d have to, because who buys tanning lotion anymore?) By their families. Their nationality. Both. (Why are the mom and daughter wearing the exact same thing, and pure white to hike in? Is that what they think American women wear? I don’t think that’s been the case since Courtney Cox danced with Bruce Springsteen in that video. Is that a New York City t-shirt the son’s wearing?  They sure get around.  Or maybe that’s where they flew into? Is there a hub from there to here?)

I get distracted when we pass a woman on her own who smiles at me. (With our smiles we say, “Look at us hiking. I see you and I love that we’re both here.” Isn’t that glorious?)

The hardest is after a morning of hiking on a popular trail. I call it the receiving line.  We’re coming down off the trail after our early hike, with this long line of people coming at us, just hitting the trail. They don’t realize they’re part of a long line, and they each and every one try to make eye contact and greet us and sometimes ask a question about the trail. So, we reach a point when we’re not hiking anymore, we’re in this moving receiving line. If I were wearing white gloves and dancing shoes, it’d be just like my days at cotillion. The only difference is that the people I have to greet aren’t surly teenage boys. For the most part. 

This is all a very long introduction to our time near Moab, Utah, and in Arches National Park. This place is crowded. During our stint on the receiving line coming down from some arches yesterday, we saw park employees on the way up with post-hole diggers to erect barriers to keep people from trampling all over delicate desert plants off-trail. People are in such a hurry to climb the highest peak, get to the photographed spot, do all they can in a short amount of time. It’s like a race, not time spent in nature. 

I realize many people have little available time in popular parks. And I’m being all righteous.

But we really do like to get to a hike early, since that’s when the birds and other critters are still out. And we like to hike slowly and quietly, looking and listening. We don’t like to have to hear people’s loud conversations or dodge their unsupervised children. 

All this vies for my mood when we’re in a beautiful place.  

I was all prepared to complain about fellow boondockers, too. Outside of Chaco, a guy raced down the wrong way on a one-way loop to beat us to the last remaining camping spot. Outside of Canyonlands, we returned to the trailer after a hike to find a guy with his trailer in our site (no big deal, there was a bit of room), but he’d also put chairs in the area in front of our trailer, saving it for his buddy’s trailer, and that was right where we would have had to pull out. If we hadn’t beaten his friend there, we’d have been blocked in.

Of course the guy was running a generator, too, all the entire morning he was there, until he retrieved his chairs and moved down the road where his friend pulled in next to him.

Here outside Moab, we just knew we wouldn’t find a spot to park in.  It’s flooded with people, all here to see Arches and to do the outside sporting stuff Moab is known for.  Tracy had three boondocking sites chosen, but we were prepared to drive one after the other and then out and skip the area all together, if we had to. 

Instead, we found this sweet parking spot right at the first location.  It’s in an Utah state park that hasn’t opened yet, so the regular campground is still closed off.  The three small loops of primitive camping are open though, and we found this spot tucked into a small canyon, perfect for us.

We spent one morning in Arches, one running errands, and next we’ll hit the northern sections of Canyonlands and some dinosaur tracks and bones around here, then another morning in Arches. 

It’s hard to tell from that picture of our spot because there are indeed campers in the shot, but hardly anyone’s in this state park, seeing as how it’s not officially open. It’s amazing what a bunch of land with no one on it will do for my mood.

The photo way up top is Landscape Arch, the widest one of the 200 in the park, 360 feet base to base.