JM Roadtrips: Rocks in My Head

Beauty and the Beast

When I was a lad, my mother would occasionally chastise me regarding some stupid activity I might have engaged in: “Do you have rocks in your head?”

I heard this when:

I rode my 24” Schwinn into a wall at nearby Parkmead school after viewing an episode of “You Asked For It.” (I did wear my football helmet, but it still knocked me out cold.)
I started a fire along the banks of a nearby creek to see how big it could get without going out of control. (An observant man on the far bank came to my rescue, likely saving me from a long stint in juvenile hall.)
I turned on the griddle on our stove one morning when ants invaded. (There are few things that smell worse than a 1000 sizzling ants).

Today as I spent my second day in Arches National Park, I was walking down a trail (The Devil’s Garden 8- mile trail), and it occurred to me that the last week of looking at southwest landscapes had indeed OD’d me on rocks. Beautiful? Yes, but the brain can only handle so much eye-candy before its like a Xerox machine out of control. Red rocks. Red rocks. Red rocks. Rocks in my head!! Reminded me of our 3 weeks in New England when we tired of the those %%##!! red leaves. Like eating too much chocolate or playing too much golf (did I say that??).

Janice wisely took the day off today rather than subject herself to the Arches version of the Bataan death march. I was not so wise, and I know that tomorrow morning I will be beyond the reach of Advil. Only a few sips of the fermented grape are saving me now. Janice did enjoy a few hikes with me yesterday checking out the Arches.

An afternoon driving tour took us 13.7 miles up Hwy 128 to the Red Cliffs Lodge. We agreed that this would be our Moab abode in post-RV days. Very classy western-themed place along the Colorado River. It features a museum of all the western movies (and others, e.g. Thelma and Louise) that were filmed in the area. But for the fact that Annika was beginning to sizzle in the car (87 degrees) we could have spent hours there. In the words of our now disgraced former governor, “We’ll be baccccck.”

Moab is a town of activity, catering to every outdoor adventure you can dream of. One could spend a lot of time (and money) here. Just west of us is a federal nuclear waste reclamation project---a left-over from the uranium boom days of the 1950s when yellow-cake created a modern-day gold rush. Folks in the Moab processing plant weren’t too careful with the tailings, so the feds came to the rescue in the 1970s. They created their own railroad to dispose of the stuff in who-knows-where. Between tourists and federal workers, the economic machine is humming here.

Tomorrow’s activity is a 1/2 day jet-boat tour down the river. Just the right sit-down activity for a newly crippled person like me.

Enjoy the pictures.