Leaving Colorado, we drove to Moab, Utah of the red sandstone cliffs. The plan was to check out the park service campgrounds along the Colorado River. Well, it wasn’t exactly cooler along the river in the canyons, pretty yes, cool no. The jeep has a readout that tells us the direction we are going & the outside temperature; when it reached 102 we decided a full service campground would be better. Pulled into a really nice place with lots of shade & a pool & set up. On the way into Moab, we passed a home built into the side of the cliff. It had a fancy front door and glass windows. Looked interesting. When we reached the Hole in the Wall; with a sign painted about 40 feet from the ground in huge white letters we made a date to come back & see this tourist trap. Talk about an amazing place, Albert Christensen, who owned the land inherited it from his father. He and his wife, Gladys opened a restaurant after digging out (or maybe blasting) a large room for the diners and a kitchen. The money from the restaurant allowed them to continue carving out their home. 5000 feet and it was certainly interesting. Albert practiced taxidermy while Gladys was an artist. Their graves are in a grotto just past the house. \
Arches National Park – awesome, amazing, jaw dropping beauty. this is where you will find Balancing Rock, Delicate Arch, Window Arch, Landscape Arch and many others, all in red sandstone. Fortunately the weather had cooled off so we were able to enjoy hiking out to the various sites.
Canyonlands National Park – lots of Entrada Sandstone and lots of rock layers. Much different than Arches NP but similar. There is so much of this park that is not accessible except by flying or boating or packing in. We drove all the road we could but basically it is in & out the same basic road. You can see both the Green River (which was more brown) and the Colorado (which is red) with rafters going down river. These 2 rivers meet in the park but were not visible from the area where we were. We did see some mountain sheep or goats on one of our drives.
After spending time in these 2 beautiful National Parks, we headed up to Salt Lake City for some family history searching. Too warm for us in SLC, we parked the motorhome south of Henefer where it was 20 degrees cooler. Gaylon thought we would spend half a day at the Family History Library and get everything we needed. 3 days later and we were still stumped over his Grandmother Amanda Woods who was a half-blood Cherokee. Sharon hit the brick wall when she found her maternal grgreat-great grandparents came from Bohemia (not a country anymore but part of the Czech Republic). We did take time to visit Temple Square. All the streets in SLC begin at Temple Square (a huge area containing: the Temple, administrative offices, 2 visitor centers, the Tabernacle, Brigham Young’s 2 homes, 2 restaurants, fountains & gardens). The corner of S 400 & E 500 meqns you are 4 blocks south & 5 blocks east of the Temple. In addition to Temple Square, the Mormon Church (aka the Church of Latter Day Saints) has an enormous conference center that seats more than 20,000. On Sunday morning during the summer, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs in the Conference Center for a televised 1/2 hour program. We were fortunate to hear an organ recital in the 7,000 seat Tabernacle, the acoustics were amazing.
Moving on – a return to Wyoming.
