Back when we purchased Arlene the travel trailer, almost one year ago now, we knew that while we'd likely spend most of our time taking her on shorter, closer adventures, we also wanted to do a big trip someday. Not only would a big trip (this is in bold since that's how we always referred to it amongst ourselves - this was BIG, so it needed the appropriate amount of EMPHASIS) get us somewhere further away and feel like a real vacation, but it would also help us learn if the travel trailer lifestyle was something we'd like to continue once the pandemic passed and we could safely hop on an airplane again. After the turn of the year, and we could see our vaccinations on the horizon, we started planning in earnest; after some discussion, we settled on a week-long trip to Yellowstone National Park and back, and we picked the week before Memorial Day to go, figuring we'd have a few extra days on the back end to unpack, run 800 loads of laundry, and go grocery shopping before we had to return to work and other normal life responsibilities.
This first post is going to be a bit logistics-heavy,
so here's a picture of us in Monument Valley to make up for it.
Sorry.
(but not really - you all know how much I love my details)
In looking at prospective routes, we aimed to cover no more than 300 miles per day as much as possible, or about six hours of "truck time." Towing the rig, we tend to average about 50 miles per hour; although Chris feels safe driving it up to 65 mph or so, with food, bathroom, and gas breaks (along with going much slower on the twisty roads that we'd sometimes have to take), planning for 50 mph is a good estimate for actual travel time in our case. As you'll see throughout the upcoming blog posts, we did exceed this mileage on a few days, but when we did, we tried to plan a much shorter drive the next day (Moab to Salt Lake City), no real drive at all (our day in Zion National Park), or driving, but that I could handle (I don't drive the rig, but I'm perfectly fine piloting the truck itself - see the upcoming blog on Yellowstone National Park).
Taking all of this into consideration, we mapped out a route that had us leaving home, driving first through Monument Valley and into Moab, visiting Arches National Park, detouring to Salt Lake City for a night there, heading north to camp two nights in Grand Teton National Park (and visiting Yellowstone), coming back south for a night in Provo, and spending two nights in the area of Zion National Park, before doing a long day's push to make it home. Other than Chris taking a few short business trips to Salt Lake City in the past, neither of us had ever been to any of these locations, so we'd be seeing almost all of them for the first time. We'd leave on a Saturday and get home the following Saturday, then have the remaining two days of the long holiday weekend to catch up on life stuff once again. All totaled, we ended up driving 2400 miles, on the route itself, around the cities we visited, and within the various parks, monuments, and scenic areas we saw.
Okay, enough with the boring stuff! Let's get this adventure underway!
Our first day's route would take us up the hill to Flagstaff, through reservation land, including Monument Valley, and into Moab, Utah, where our lodging for the night, Slickrock RV Resort, was only 10 minutes away from the entrance to Arches National Park. Since this would be our longest driving day of the entire trip (470 miles, ~9.5 hours), and we knew we'd be excited to head out on the trip, we planned for a super early wakeup; we were on the road just after 6am, and as imagined, the traffic was rather light.
The (blurry) route for Day 1
Let's go!
Light traffic on the 17
We stopped just over an hour out of town, in Cordes Junction, for gas and second breakfast (when you eat at 5am, you're hungry again pretty quickly) at the local McD's.
Noms!
We made it to Flagstaff in a normal amount of time, and after gassing up again just north of the city, we passed
Sunset Crater and Wupatki and turned off the 89 in Tuba City. To get to Monument Valley, which is actually a Navajo Nation Tribal Park, we'd travel through the Navajo Reservation and very close to Hopi lands as well.
Still a bit of snow on Humphreys
The res land is pretty barren,
but it has its own beauty.
Unfortunately, it was overcast and super windy this day,
and since the sun was mostly hidden,
the colors of this landscape didn't have a chance to really shine.
This area is straight north of Petrified Forest/Painted Desert National Parks, and it reminded me of Painted Desert for sure.
The road really does just go on for miles and miles...
As we neared Monument Valley,
weather-worn rock formations started to emerge...
A few hours of driving brought us to Shonto, AZ, where we stopped for gas again; this time, we busted out some pasta salad we'd made a home and ate lunch as well. The Shell station here had a large lot behind the gas pumps, and while we ate, several other rigs came and went; this was a great place for a driving break (albeit a break in the truck, as the wind was howling).
Lunch selfie!
Other rigs joining us in the lot
Not too far past our lunch stop, we turned onto the 163 and headed north, through Monument Valley proper. Although we couldn't do the full driving tour while hauling the rig (it's a bumpy, dirt road), and the visitor center wasn't open (all tribal monuments/lands are still closed due to COVID right now), you can still see much of the famous landscape from the main road, and I snapped away while Chris drove.
Just for comparison, so you can see how dusty/windy it was,
above are our shots, and below is one from the interwebs:
So, yeah. We didn't really see the area in all of its glory.
That's just life, sometimes!
(this part of the trip was only about 6 hours away from us -
at rig speeds - so we can easily get there again in the future.
We plan to do so, on a day that's a bit sunnier).
"Welcome to Utah!
Read all of our signs, please!
There will be a test later!"
We stopped the truck in a designated scenic pull-out, so we could take some stationary pictures, including the one that started out this blog post.
Always have to get a glamour shot of the rig
Click on this one to expand it - it's a panoramic shot
"Aah! I only have 10 seconds to get in the shot!!!!"
It's hard to know where "official" Monument Valley begins and ends, as there are weathered mesas and buttes all over the area, and each one is super neat.
Here's where we almost hit a res dog,
who was standing in the middle of the highway.
Chris honked at him, and he was like,
"eh, fine, guess I'll live," and moseyed off the road.
I'm so glad he did, as there's no way we could have stopped in time,
and we both would have been gutted if we'd run over him.
Ergh. I look at these pictures, and I'm a little annoyed again
by the crappy weather.
Those of you who have visited or seen pictures of
the southwest know how gorgeous the colors are,
and they just weren't on display for us.
Eventually, we put Monument Valley in the rearview mirror and joined up with the 191, which would take us into Moab.
Like, literally in the rearview mirror. Ha!
Onward!
In the next blog, we finish our longest driving day of the trip, setting in Moab for the night and visiting Arches National Park.
Later!
Amy
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