Sunday 5th February 2017 – Arches National Park on Super bowl Sunday

Despite being surrounded by about 2” of snow it didn’t feel any colder over night than the last few.  No more snow had fallen and it was another bright sunny day.

The drive to Arches National Park (NP) was only estimated at approximately two hours.  However, the drive takes a lot longer when you are stopping regularly to appreciate another stunning piece of scenery. I apologise if the last few days have mostly contained pictures of bits of rock in various formations and sizes!  Brace yourself for more:

The Abajo mountains

Church rock with La Sal mountain to the left

The Wilson arch - entrada sandstone

Although we had already been into Utah the previous day, this is a nice sign and note the services sign (it says 83 miles) - this will become relevant!

Our now very battered atlas!

Despite stops and a lunch break we arrived at Arches NP just after 2pm having just passed the 11,000 milestone of our trip.  Without our Park Pass it would have set us back $25 to get in – boom!  We’ve nearly made our $80 back already!  Having already topped up with gas once today at an over-expensive station we had then underestimated the scale of the park.  Once through the entrance we studied the map.  The highlight of the park is the ‘Delicate arch’.  We couldn’t help thinking that we’d seen the arch somewhere before…. Then we noticed that it is on both the front and back covers of our irreplaceable road atlas – we’ve seen the image every day for the last 3 months! (right)

We had to go and pay homage to it!  But it was roughly a 12-mile drive from the entry point to the park and there were numerous other viewing points along the way for other spectacular natural geological formations:

 

The Moab valley with Arches NP visitor's centre in the middle

Beautiful Park Avenue Canyon

We had planned to do the 1.5 hour hike up to the arch but if we did that we would not have time to see much else. We were delighted when we discovered a cheat – there are two other viewpoints for the delicate arch that are only a third of the distance to walk and far less strenuous – a no brainer really! It will be hard to whittle down the number of photographs for this blog post but I'll try... The park was absolutely stunning. 

My version of the Delicate arch - with people for scale.

This may mess with your head a little though!

Harvey providing the scale near the double arch

There was a campsite on the NP.  However, being Super bowl Sunday we thought it would be good to drive back to the town of Moab which appeared to have some life (and RV parks) and watch the game in a bar.  The game was kicking off at 430pm Mountain time so it quickly became apparent that we weren’t going to make the start.  Firstly we had to get off the Park before we ran out of gas having added about 30 miles meandering about the scenic trails and viewpoints.  The warning system on the dashboard had been beeping madly at us every time we switched the ignition on and had given up estimating how many miles we could still travel, just stating ‘mileage range LOW’!  This was the lowest we’d run it so far but luckily we made it back into Moab and to a gas station.  Now to find an RV park near to a bar showing the game.  The ones we’d seen on the way through earlier today turned out to be closed as it is out of season.  Our PA sites were between 3-5 miles out of town with no local amenities.

Our view of the big screen

By this time we were famished and the game had been on for forty minutes.  We decided to try and ‘do a Florabama’.  No cocktails involved thankfully, but we hoped that if we go and patronise the Atomic burger bar and Grill in Moab, then maybe they would be happy for us to just park in their lot for the night?  We had no problem getting a table with a clear view of the big screen and were handed Super bowl party menus with a list of discount bar food and drinks.  We settled in and tried to make sense of the rules of American Football again.  We thought that we’d support the New England Patriots because of the ‘England’ link!  But when we entered the bar everyone was cheering for the Atlanta Falcons who were streaking ahead 21-0.  I say ‘everyone’, it wasn’t exactly buzzing in the bar.  I’d say there were thirty people in there, tops, and the majority of them appeared to be employees because they were just walking behind the bar and helping themselves to drinks. 

It wasn’t long until the first half was over and it was time for the world famous half-time show with Lady Ga Ga… well the locals seemed impressed even if we weren’t!  In any case, our food had arrived so our attention was focussed elsewhere.

The second half was a much better game as the patriots fought their way back and the Falcons lost their nerve.  Towards the end, we cleared our tab and tried the old ‘we’re in an RV and we need somewhere to stay’ line with the waitress.  The penny clearly didn’t drop.  She went to speak to her boss and came back suggesting we try one of the many BLM sites either to the north or south of the town.  Ermmm, what’s a BLM site? Turns out it stands for Bureau of Land Management and means that the land is public land that you can park on… for free!  This was news to us.  And we now count ourselves as advanced RV’ers! I got to work on Google and found a map showing us where we could go.

We watched Super bowl history unfold as the game became the first EVER to go to extra time when the patriots equalised 28-28 within the last couple of minutes.  We had no idea what this would mean.  How long is extra time?  Fortunately, it turned out to be ‘sudden death’ so the winner would be whoever scored first.  Extra time followed the course of recent play and the Patriots sealed the win with a touch-down.  Game over, we left swiftly to find our temporary home for the night.

We headed to the nearest BLM site North as that was our direction of travel for the morning.  We arrived within a few minutes and it appeared to be a free-for-all.  We trundled along in the darkness until we found an empty plot with no ticket attached to the number post (which appeared to suggest that the spot was ‘booked’).  No hook up at all, but on a campground with other like-minded people.  So we briefly stuck the heating on before bedding down for the night.