Day Nine
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Up the Creek Campground
We enjoyed a leisurely morning in the shade at Up the Creek Campground in Moab. The kids packed up the tent while I took a shower and then we hauled everything out to the parking lot to load the car. Our first order of business was to find Megan some wifi before her noon Zoom meeting. We checked the library first and it was closed for the day, so we went to the Moab Information Center downtown. They let Megan use their wifi and set her up in the back of their theater room, where she could also plug her laptop in to charge it.
I didn’t want to leave Megan there while we went to do something else in town, so Joey and I fixed the tent pole that had cracked in the wind back at City of Rocks. We had plenty of space to spread the pole out on the lawn of the visitor center without being in anyone’s way. It seemed like a productive way to kill some time. Tent pole fixing is something I usually save for at home, but I always bring along the supplies just in case.
After the wind cracked both poles in multiple spots at Kodachrome Basin in 2018, I ordered a new pole that I took apart for making repairs. The rest of the pieces went into my tent repair kit which also includes some bungee cord and a stick pin to make threading the bungee cord through the pole segments easier. It’s not my favorite thing to do, but considering how many times we’ve camped in the wind and cracked our tent poles, I’m glad to have found the trick to make fixing them easier! It was also nice to get the job done while we waited for Megan.
An Afternoon in Moab
After Megan was done with her Zoom meeting, we spent the afternoon wandering in and out of the air-conditioned shops in downtown Moab. We enjoyed pizza for lunch at Zax…Spuds Supreme on one side and BBQ Chicken on the other. Both were delicious after days of camping food. We also picked up huckleberry ice cream cones at The Spoke on Main, a requirement for any visit to Moab. The shops were still struggling with supply chain issues from the pandemic, so there wasn’t as much to look at, but it was still a fun afternoon.
Scenic Byway 128
I’m not sure why we didn’t head out to our campsite at Arches National Park yet, but we decided to go for a scenic drive instead. Highway 128, right outside of Moab is also called the Upper Colorado River Scenic Byway. The road runs alongside the Colorado River, with tall canyon walls on the sides. It’s a gorgeous drive!
Milt’s Stop N Eat
We didn’t go far before we decided that maybe we should hustle back to Moab to grab some supper from Milt’s Stop N Eat before it closed. Milt’s is another of Utah’s best places to eat! Joey and I enjoyed their Western BBQ Brisket sandwiches and Megan had a cheeseburger, both of those with fries.
I had to look them up to see if they were still around, and their website says they celebrated 70 years in business from 1954 to 2024, and that they they still do things pretty much the same as they always have. They make their burgers by hand and have a list of the local businesses where they source fresh food supplies. The best part is that this place is pretty cheap for such good quality food!
We took our food on the road, as we do, and headed into Arches National Park for the night. It had been another record high temperature day, so I think everyone else had the same idea to visit in the evening. There were a lot of folks driving through the park.
Arches in the Evening
I almost hate to give away this little secret, but visiting parks with pretty rocks in the evening makes the pretty rocks even prettier! The colors stand out more, instead of being washed out by the harsh daytime sun. We had been enjoying evening drives through the Badlands on our way home for years, and have determined that evening is our favorite time to visit there, so we were excited to see what Arches National Park was like in the evening.
It did not disappoint! The sky was as amazing as the rocks! Don’t get me wrong…you still want to see it in the daylight, but an evening drive through Arches is magical. We stopped at every pullout on the 45-minute scenic drive to the campground.
We spent every last bit of the waning, evening light to stop and look at pretty rocks. It was amazing how different the park looked than when we had been there on a bluebird sky kind of day. I didn’t want the drive or the light to end, but eventually, there was not enough light for good photos. It was 9pm by the time we reached our campsite in Devils Garden Campground.
Moonlight at Devils Garden Campground
We set up our tent and left the top off for the night since it was still plenty warm outside and zero chance of rain, plus that would make it faster to pack up in the morning.
We decided to do some night photography to end our day. Light painting in Arches National Park is not allowed, but the moon lit up the sky, and someone was using a red lantern in a nearby campsite, so both forms of light highlighted the rocks behind our tent.
A couple nights earlier, we had figured out a way to light up the tent so that nobody had to sit inside turning the flashlight on and off. We could leave a light on with something covering it up so it barely gave off any light. The campground was super quiet, so our new light trick came in handy, making it so we didn’t have to talk while we photographed our glowing tent against the night sky.
I hadn’t noticed our neighbors sitting outside in the dark across the road until they asked what we were doing. I suppose it was a fair question since one would wonder what the heck someone is taking photos of when their tent is barely lit up and the milky way wasn’t out yet. I chatted with them for a few minutes and noticed that they had a giant telescope set up in their campsite.
Photographing the tent in the moonlight, in the warm desert air, was a peaceful way to end the day. We didn’t stay up until midnight to see the milky way, but I bet it would’ve been amazing with the rocks and the glowing tent if we were facing the right direction for it to be in the background. For all I know, we may have been turned around and it showed up on the other side. We needed to get up at the crack of dawn for the drive to our next stop, though, so no milky way for us.
We have a four hour drive and an 11am tour in the morning, so stay tuned to find out where we’re off to next!
I’ve been writing about our adventures since March 2, 2023. Somehow I’ve managed to keep this crazy project going for two years! There are still more stories to be told, so if you enjoy reading about our misadventures in tent camping on road trips, be sure to subscribe!