Once we left Moab, we drove down to a little town in southeast Utah called Bluff. There is not much there, only one gas station and no stop lights, but we used it as a jumping point for a few days to explore the desert.

Our first stop was for breakfast at a place called Twin Rocks Cafe. We ordered their version of Eggs Benedict, and went on a quest to figure out why the restaurant was named what it is…

The food came and we started eating and… oh… OH!… so good. I got about halfway through the meal when I noticed Jenny giving me a quizzical look.

“Aren’t there supposed to be eggs in here?”

My “Eggs Benedict” tasted so f**king good I didn’t even realize they forgot the eggs. There was a pile of beef on there, so it wasn’t like I was just eating bread and hollandaise sauce… but yeah. It was so good I didn’t care… until I realized how beautiful some runny egg yolk would have wrapped the whole thing together, and then I got mad at Jenny for ruining my ignorant bliss.

After brunch we drove out into the desert in the direction of Monument Valley. It’s part of the Navajo Nation, and the website already told us it was closed, which is completely understandable given current conditions. So I figured a drive out to the entrance would be a) safe for everyone and b) a beautiful drive. SPOILER ALERT: it was both.

First stop was Mexican Hat Rock, which is literally called that because this rock KINDA looks like a sombrero. Not only that, but there’s a little town down the road called Mexican Hat too. I mean… okay… do your thing I guess.

Further down the road is Forrest Gump Hill. Yes, it’s a thing. Yes, it’s where Forrest Gump decides to stop running in the movie. Yes, people risk their lives jumping out into / running down / lying down on an active Utah highway. Yes, I walked out into the road for a shot, but super quick, and when absolutely no cars were coming.

The highway keeps going into and around those mountains until you pop out on the other side and you’re almost in Arizona.

At this point you’re about 10 minutes away from the entrance to Monument Valley. There’s a slight left turn right before you get into the little town there… where this happened.

As expected the entrance was all closed off, so we just turned around and got a quick shot of one of the ranges there.

Next we drove back down Highway 163, back past Forrest Gump Hill where people were still risking their lives for a photo op, until we got to the entrance for Valley of the Gods. It’s a 17 mile loop on a beat up dirt road through just awesome views. From what I’ve read, it’s Monument Valley’s lesser known brother… kinda like Steph… oh wait, already did that bit. Dammit.

Once we got through that, we headed back to the camper for some food and rest. We ultimately came to the decision of getting some takeout food from one of the two restaurants in town and drive back out to Valley of the Gods for sunset and stars. I was still on my quest to see the Neowise comet, and minus the threatening clouds I figured out in the middle of the desert was about as good a shot as any.

Grabbed our meal from Comb Ridge Eat and Drink and headed out. I had a burger that easily cracks top 10 list of best burgers I’ve had on this trip, and we settled into our temporary campsite for the evening.

We had read that to locate the comet you need to follow the handle of the Big Dipper down towards the horizon. When we did that, we saw three stars forming a triangle, but none of them had the tail we were expecting. So we spent about 20 minutes going, “Is that it? I think that’s it. That’s gotta be it, right? No way, that’s definitely it. I think I see the tail. Maybe? I’m probably just imagining it. Yeah, that’s not it.”

Finally I took my phone out and did an exposure, and sure enough… exactly where I had convinced myself I was imagining a tail… there it was.

Once it got super dark the tail was impossible to not see, but absolutely impossible to photograph. Then a big ass cloud rolled in and that was it for the night. I was able to get another good Milky Way shot… well, as good as an iPhone is gonna get me I guess…

I finally bought a telescope that I’ll be picking up next Monday back in Denver. A couple of weeks late I suppose, but we’ll see what happens. We’ll be heading back into Wyoming and into Montana after Denver, so hopefully I can put it to good use.

The next day we took another drive out into the desert, this time pointed east. We ended up at Hovenweep National Monument, which is a group of prehistoric villages built into canyon walls. Hovenweep means “Deserted Valley” in Paiute / Ute, and was named that in 1874 a bit after it was discovered. We did an easy two mile hike around the canyon and got to see everything. I’d go into the stories on each structure, but that’s Jenny’s domain.

Also, I don’t remember.

We also saw what we thought was a coyote… or a fox… crawling out of the canyon and out into the wilderness. I was not quick enough with my phone, however. My bad.

We left Bluff this morning and are now out in Mesa Verde National Park to see even more prehistoric villages built into rocks! We came out here in summer of 2018, and I’ve wanted to come back ever since. Not sure how many activities will be open with everything going on, but just being in the park is enough for me.

Canyonlands is a weird place.

I’d assume when most people think of Moab, they think of Arches. And I think rightfully so. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I actually came into Moab scared that I was building it up so much in my head that I was ultimately going to be let down. That there was no way it could possibly deliver to the expectation level I had created.

And I was completely wrong. It delivered, and was more than I could have imagined.

Then you turn around and there’s Canyonlands National Park. And it’s like Arches’ lesser known brother. The Stephen Baldwin of the Moab family, if you will.

And you would think it’d be a step down from Arches, and I can tell you… it is definitely not. To keep the analogy going, it’s watching “The Usual Suspects” and being like “oh shit, that’s Stephen Baldwin isn’t it? He’s awesome!” But you have to just stop right there and pretend “Biodome” and that Flintstones movie never happened. Canylonlands is 1995 Stephen Baldwin I guess is the point.

It’s also a weird contrast with Arches as well. When we went to Arches it was a sunny, bright day… Canyonlands was overcast and gloomy. Arches is a bunch of vibrant colors… Canyonlands is a more muted, brown/grey desert setting. Arches has one road that goes through with a bunch of turnoffs for various points of interest… Canyonlands is a bunch of districts that aren’t even connected by roads. You pick one, and if you want to go to another one you have to exit the park and drive all the f**k away around to get to whatever side you’re going to. It’s just plain weird.

That being said, we chose to drive out to the Needles District. Jenny found a bunch of interesting stops that didn’t require a lot of hiking… and coming off our strenuous Arches outing, that sounded just fine.

In our loop we hit: Roadside Ruin, Pothole Point, Cave Spring, Slickrock Trail, Big Spring Canyon Overlook, Wooden Shoe Arch Overlook, and Elephant Hill. I think that’s all of them. Most definitely not the right order, but it’ll do for our purposes here.

The two big letdowns that I will need to rectify at some point in my life:

1. There’s a 10-ish mile out and back trail from Big Spring Canyon Overlook that heads west, down into this crazy valley and ends at the Colorado River. Just looking at the trailhead was awesome, and had we not killed ourselves in Arches (which I do not regret) we would definitely have gone for it.
2. We didn’t really have a good shot of the Needles, so the drive out to Elephant Hill was trying to rectify that. We got as far down south the dirt road as we could before a heavier duty 4×4 was required. Then I looked at a map of the park and realized how much more there is to explore when you have a proper 4×4, so I’m coming back with one. Some day.

Long story short, there’s just so much in that park… I feel even more than Arches… and best part, there was barely anyone there. So when Moab trip #2 rolls around… you know where to find us.

Also, I once again have absolutely no idea what picture is of what, so this is just another chronological dump.

After we got back from the park, we realized we needed some proper food, we needed to go food shopping, and I needed to fill up the gas tank for our move the next morning.

We’re sitting around in the camper, procrastinating, when there’s a knock on the door.

Now, even in a regular house, when someone unexpectedly knocks on the door it’s like a fire alarm just went off for me.

“WHAT THE F**K?!?! WHAT IS HAPPENING?!? IS SOMEONE TRYING TO KILL US?!?!”

In a camper it’s even worse. There have been times I’ve needed to contact a neighbor to tell or ask them something, and you realize there’s absolutely no polite way to just walk up to someone’s camper without feeling like a f**king creep. And forget knocking on the door. Imagine walking onto someone’s campsite and trying to knock on their tent without freaking them the f**k out. These campers with paper thin walls are not much of a step up.

I gingerly open the door, and I’m greeted by a family. Two parents and two adorable little girls. Okay… probably not about to be murdered.

Turns out, this family was driving through Arches a few days before. They were looking out at all the beautiful scenery and drove the damn pickup truck right into a ditch. Destroyed the front axle, total loss.

So now this family is sitting at the campsite in their fifth wheel, no tow vehicle, and the campground is not letting them stay past their departure date. Which is understandable to me, it’s a KOA 15 minutes down the road from Arches… safe to say they’re booked full.

Would I be able to tow your fifth wheel down to the auto shop a few miles down the road? Of course I would. No problem. We were about to leave for town anyways, glad I can help out.

So we towed this nice family’s camper down the road. We had to back it into the spot at the auto shop, and not only did we do it horribly (because we’re STILL not good at it) but we kept scraping their back stabilizing jacks on the concrete. I’m almost positive we did no permanent damage. Almost.

But that was our good deed for the day. They offered to give us money… we refused, so they gave us a real deal carabiner. Holds 5,000 pounds. We’ll absolutely never have a use for it, but we definitely appreciate the gesture. Hopefully they’ll pay it forward one day, and hopefully someone will be that kind to us when we hit some real s**t.

I think the world needs some unnecessary and unprovoked kindness these days. S**t’s f**king crazy out there.

We finally made it to Moab!

We got here Monday afternoon, and were greeted by 103 degrees and a windstorm that covered the truck and camper in a fine layer of red dust. Because of that, we just hung out and decided to leave SUPER early the next morning to go to Arches.

By SUPER early, I mean SUPER EARLY. We left the camper at 3:30am to get to the Delicate Arch Trailhead for sunrise, and we were the first ones there. Literally… greeted by an empty parking lot. By the time we actually started hiking a few more cars had arrived, and since I’m a fat f**k and not at all physically fit, they all caught up and passed us pretty quickly. So we didn’t get to say we were the first ones to the top, but whatever. We still win.

Next we found a comfy spot to watch the sunrise.

Once we were done there, we headed back down to the truck to head over to Devil’s Garden for our day hike. It’s about 3 mile roundtrip to Delicate Arch, and the loop around Devil’s Garden is 7.8 miles when you do all the sidetracks to see the various arches. Oh, and it was going to be 100 degrees by 11am. So we had our work cut out for us.

This is the part where I should continue walking you through our hike and describing all the pictures, but honestly I don’t even remember what’s what. It was four hours of me and Jenny going, “holy s**t that’s f**king amazing!” and then getting out my phone to take a picture. Just make a mental image of us wandering around a desert, wildly flailing the camera around and screaming some arch’s name. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but not completely inaccurate. And I can say these are in chronological order, but past that, it’s just a dump of everything past 7am. Enjoy looking at my dump. Ya sickos.

The last two hours of the hike are pretty light on photos because by that point it was getting past 11am and the heat was starting to get to us. We did pretty well staying hydrated, but four hours in the sun and 100 degree heat started taking its toll for sure.

When we got back to the truck we assessed the damage… my knees and ankles were toast, and Jenny had some heat rash around her ankles, but other than that… we survived! Obviously we drove home and passed THE F**K out. Eventually made ourselves grab dinner, beer, and gelato at Moab Brewery and called it a day.

Tomorrow we’re doing some lower key hikes at Canyonlands, and possibly stargazing and comet tracking at Dead Horse Point State Park, another dark sky site. Then Friday morning we leave for even hotter and more middle of nowhere Utah because… we crazy.

Managed to get a shot of the Milky Way with my iPhone 11. Not even the Pro. Simply ridiculous. Posted to Instagram, but wanted a high-res photo to show off.

Also, the big kinda smudged dot on the left is Jupiter. Next step is finding a telescope somewhere.

This is the first time in about three weeks we’ve had solid, badass WiFi and OMG NORMAL LIFE WHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!… 65 down, 25 up…

Okay…

So after Yellowstone, we drove out to Idaho for a few days before heading down to Utah. We had zero service leaving, so we basically had to drive into Yellowstone to grab some service and punch in the destination. We’ve been using a truck navigation app where I’ve put in the specs of the trailer and it sends us an appropriate way. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get that app working so we had to rely solely on Google Maps. I trust Google Maps pretty much implicitly in a normal situation, but there are times we find ourselves on roads that make us go, “damn, thank goodness we don’t have the trailer right now.”

So we pull up Google Maps and go, “eh, how bad could it be?”

Bad. Really bad.

Instead of just sending us out the west entrance of Yellowstone and taking Highway 20 down, we went out the southern entrance down Highway 191. Once we were out of Yellowstone, the next direction was a right turn on “Grassy Lakes Rd.” In my gut I knew that sounded like a terrible idea… sticking to roads with numbers as names is usually the better bet. But against my better judgement, we made the right turn and started down.

Within 30 seconds I knew we made a huge mistake and had no way to turn around. One lane dirt road with huge potholes, construction vehicles and oncoming traffic to somehow work around… treelines right next to the road, branches 10 feet up reaching out… a complete f**king nightmare.

No biggie, we couldn’t have been on it for too long, right? WRONG. 40 miles. And it took us 4 hours to get it done. 40 miles in 4 hours. 10mph average. Ridiculous. Fortunately the only lasting injury was sideswiping a tree branch that ripped off the cover of one of our awning arms. The awning still works at the moment, but the electronics are all exposed, so I’m sure one rainstorm will short something out and f**k it completely.

Once we finally got to Idaho and drank copious amounts of alcohol to calm down after four hours of white knuckle driving, we eventually made it to Grand Teton National Park, specifically, a place called Jenny Lake!

About halfway through the hike we passed the visitor center and turned to the other side of the lake. Along the way we passed this fella!

On the way to the park I noticed a sign for Grand Teton Brewing Company while still in Idaho, and even though it was 8am I made a mental note for later. We left the park about 2pm and drove through Jackson Hole, WY to stop for food and beer on the way home. It would have been awesome except for the throngs of tourists wandering the streets, so we decided to pass and head to the brewery.

With a brewery in middle of nowhere Idaho, I had no doubt we’d have an interesting time dealing with non-mask wearers and people not giving a crap about social distancing. We were absolutely thrilled when we walked into a brewery where everyone was outside, wearing masks, keeping the f**k away from each other… little sections chalked out on the grass so the individual groups could hang out an acceptable distance away from everyone else. They even had a clean/used sign that you flipped to “used” when you sat down, so the people at the bar knew to disinfect before someone else sat down.

Good on you guys! Not only responsible, but great beer and great merch! I added another trucker hat to the collection, and Jenny bought a new shirt.

After that, we needed some gas so we pulled into just a random gas station in Swan Valley, ID… total population of 231. The place was called Rainey Creek.

As I was pumping we both simultaneously noticed a sign on the door of the shop with the words “TRY A SQUARE ICE CREAM CONE.” F**king… what? Clearly we need to investigate this further. So once I was done pumping I went in and bought one.

It’s literally just a square ice cream scoop and they put it in a cone. It was very good ice cream. And a very good waffle cone. But I spent the next 15 minutes of the drive with sooooo many questions… Is this an Idaho thing? Do a bunch of places do this? Is it just that gas station specifically, and we literally just stumbled upon it by chance? Is this a big thing in the area?

So we Googled “square ice cream” and found this site. First result for us.

In case you don’t want to click the link, we’ll just tell you this site claims that this extremely plain gas station gets “thousands of people in a single day” and “on the 4th of July, the shop usually expects crowds of over 15,000 people.”

It’s a town of 231 people, as previously mentioned. It’s an hour and a half to Grand Teton National Park… two hours to Yellowstone… how the f**k do “thousands of people” make their way to some very ordinary gas station out in the sticks of Idaho? What radius of miles would you need to go out before you include enough towns to get to “thousands” of people? The population of this town quintuples every day? Just from people buying ice cream?

And the town population grows 6400% on 4th of July? Get the f**k out of here. The logistics of this is just ridiculous.

NO… we’re not done here…

Okay… assume it’s open 24 hours a day on Fourth of July, and 15,000 people is an accurate number. That means 625 people are walking in every hour? 10-11 people a minute. A person walking in every 5.76 seconds. Consistently over 24 hours. That’s f**king absurd. And you’d have to assume it’s really only about 12 hours of business, say 12pm to 12am… so double those numbers.

1,250 people every hour. 21 people a minute. A person every 2.88 seconds. Consistently. Over 12 hours. THINK ABOUT THAT… to get all those people through in that time, someone says the ice cream they want, the employee grabs the cup/cone, grabs the scoop, scoops x number of scoops, hands it to the person, rings up the total, runs the credit card / grabs the cash, gives the receipt / change, and moves on to the next person…

…in under 3 seconds. Okay, say there’s three people working… under 9 seconds. Except there was only two registers… so you’d almost always have someone waiting for a free register. Maybe you get an assembly line thing going, but if maximum efficiency has a person doing each phase of the transaction, I think you have so many people back there you smother it anyways. Long story short, I don’t think you’re cracking 3 seconds per order.

I wish I had the square footage of the store, I’d calculate how many people are in that store at any given moment consistently for 12 hours a day and show how impossible it would be. Also, how much f**king ice cream would they have to have stocked to supply all those people? How much square footage of freezer space would you need to store all of it? Are they including the cost of electricity to keep all that ice cream frozen in their prices for that day? SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!

So… no way. And I’ve probably wasted way too much time in my head over this. As well as this blog. Easiest answer is… that website is full of s**t… moving on…

On Thursday we moved down to just outside of Salt Lake City. I had booked this site super early in the process, and clearly didn’t know what I was doing yet at that point. First off, I booked a site made for a camper half our size. On top of that, it’s right next to an… wait for it… amusement park. Why did I do that? No f**king idea. It was probably 6 months ago. Jenny and I both somewhat dislike theme parks and there was zero chance we’d go in there, even without, you know, an ongoing pandemic. I must have been high or something.

So we spent two days listening to roller coasters for ten hours a day, surrounded by little kids running around like maniacs hopped up on cotton candy and fried oreos, and trying not to run them over when we pulled out with the truck.

Also, Utah is f**ked. One day we drove by a massive crowd squished on a sidewalk waiting for a shuttle from the park… maybe 1-2% wearing masks. Just so out-of-this-reality incredible to us and, at this point, I don’t even know what to say about it anymore.

We did manage to make it over to Antelope Island State Park, a designated dark sky area. I was super excited as I’ve been wanting to see some stars and the Milky Way, and I thought this was the perfect chance. We got there right around sunset and made a quick hike up to Buffalo Point.

Unfortunately the skyline lights of Salt Lake City and Ogden took over too much of the sky and I gave up after a few hours. Today we drove further out into the sticks on our way to Moab, so we’ll have a couple of nights here to see my stars. To be honest, we’re in the middle of nowhere Utah and Colorado until the end of the month, so I think I’ll have my chances.

After this we finally get to Moab where it will be 105 degrees during the day… NBFD. Between that and tourists (of which I’ve grown to severely hate and completely, unironically do NOT consider ourselves) we’ll be heading out crazy early. Basically, like we did with Yellowstone. Hopefully we’re headed home when the crowds and heat roll in.

We left Buffalo, WY on Friday and made a quick drive over to Yellowstone to begin our weekend boondocking in the woods with our friends Jack and Sarah. We actually stayed just outside Yellowstone’s eastern entrance. About 3 miles outside at a campground called… wait, for it… Threemile Campground.

We spent Friday grilling some dinner and planning out the weekend. We decided to just hang out Saturday for the 4^th, then head into Yellowstone Sunday.

Our site was backed up against the Shoshone River, so we made sure to get their doggos some play.

Sunday morning we hit the road at just about dawn and started our loop around Yellowstone.

First official stop was West Thumb Geyser Basin:

Next was Old Faithful (obviously):

Next we found the parking lot for the Great Prismatic Lake. From there we did a quick mile-ish hike up to the overlook:

Continuing on our clockwise loop around the park, we started the drive out to Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We had been seeing buffalo and elk and bears all morning, but we hadn’t really caught a herd. We saw a small road with a bunch of cars stopped, the tell-tale sign of animals hanging out, so we took a small detour to check it out.

Okay, now here’s the story from my perspective:

We see a couple of buffalo:

At this point, Jack wanted to get out and walk over for a closer look. No problem, been pretty much doing it all day. Jenny and I were going to stay in the car, but Jack asks for Jenny to come and take a picture of him and Sarah in front of the buffalo. At that point, I don’t feel like sitting in the car alone, so we all trek out across the field.

We get as close to the buffalo as you’re supposed to, and Jenny starts to take their picture. At that moment I realize I left the windows open and my wallet was sitting on the center console in the truck. So I take a moment to turn away from everyone and make sure no one is walking by or hovering around the truck. And WOULDN’T YOU KNOW IT… I turn back around and I see…

“WHAT THE F*CK JUST HAPPENED?!?”

Seriously, that’s my gracious and poetic declaration in this beautiful moment. Don’t believe me?

I’m a jerk. Sorry all. But Jack gave us absolutely no heads up and that was my genuine reaction. It’s his fault is what I’m saying.

Jack and Sarah, we love you guys and we’re so f**king happy for you both. We were there for your first “I love you” and now we were there for the beginning of your next chapter. We’re so proud to call you both friends.

Once everyone’s shock wore off, we got to the canyon and started the hike out to an overlook point. Unfortunately, I picked the lower deck which took us waaaay down this winding path… not a problem until we had to turn around and hike all the way back up. Kinda brutal, but some nice shots.

After a long day of driving and excitement, we headed back to the campsite, drank some celebratory champagne, ate some dinner, planned every detail of the wedding OBVIOUSLY, and called it a weekend.

The newly engaged couple had little to no service all weekend but were able to shoot out a quick Instagram post when we hit a hotspot in the park. We took an over/under bet of 50 for how many text messages would pop up on each of their phones once they returned to civilization. I took the under… and lost. 70 and 72 messages each from what I was told.

We are now sitting in bumblef**k Idaho, and just the drive out here deserves its own post.

(Spoiler alert: it was the worst drive we’ve had this entire trip… possibly ever in my entire driving career. Never trust Google Maps with a 40-foot, 9-ton rig.)

To be continued…

So we left South Dakota and drove across the border to Wyoming. I don’t know how the border between the two states was decided (I’m sure I could Google it), but there’s a weird transformation right around that moment. While you’re driving through western South Dakota you see mostly rolling grassy hills with some trees and bushes. Then within a few miles after the border you’re suddenly surrounded by red rocks and cliffs and all sorts of goodness. Then you start seeing big boy mountains in the distance, and you realize you’re not in… well, South Dakota… anymore. It feels like they somehow did it on purpose.

In other words… MAN does it feel good to be back out West.

We landed in Buffalo, WY on Monday afternoon, and very quickly realized we were back home. We both grew up in New York and lived most of our lives in the Northeast. But getting back in the mountains just felt… right. We even have Denver local news. Not to mention Jenny was thrilled to be out of the humidity. Something about her hair, I dunno… I buzz cut my hair like two months ago and stopped worrying about it.

We’re an hour outside of Bighorn National Forest, so yesterday we decided on a 12-ish mile out-and-back hike to test this 36 year old’s busted knees. We started at a place called West Tensleep Lake, and started out towards Mirror Lake.

The lake is about 3-4 miles in, but it’s off the trail and very easy to miss. We would have stopped and enjoyed it longer, but within 0.2 seconds of sitting down by the shore a bug bit Jenny pretty good, and we were OUT.

The trail continues on after that as you work your way to what’s called Lost Twin Lakes, an appropriately named pair of lakes that live up in the mountains.

And then… payoff. We only went to one of the lakes because to get to the other one required another uphill climb. By this time it was late afternoon, we were absolutely exhausted and still had a good 5-6 mile hike back to the truck. No regrets here. I think every hike Jenny and I do for the rest of this trip will have to have a lake at the end of it.

Then you turn around and realize you have a whole new set of ridiculous views on the way back.

After about three hours of hiking and another hour drive, we got back to the camper and decided on stuffing our faces with cheap, greasy, s**tty McDonald’s Big Macs and McNuggets and fries and… hey, does McDonald’s still sell apple pies? We wanted them but had no idea if they still sell them. FYI the McDonald’s in Buffalo, WY is operating with a limited menu, so couldn’t get a clear answer on that. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Today was chores day, and tomorrow we set out for more boondocking out in Yellowstone. Fourth of July weekend probably won’t be too bad there, right? Like, not many tourists? Right?

::looks around::

RIGHT?!?