Following
yesterday’s heavy rain we watched the weather news this morning and it was
more promising for today than expected. Our plans are that we go to a place
called Moab in Utah and we could via the Interstate or take the much longer
country side route which we decided to do. We went south out of Grand Junction
and took the side roads the long way round to Moab. The journey was quite hilly
and then we came to a place in the middle of nowhere called Gateway where that
had a magnificent resort hotel and it should be at $ 400.00 per night. We
walked around the site and lashed out on a cup of coffee and the headed of in
to the most amazing drive we have done for years. We drove through canyons and
over the tops of mountains with the trees in fall colour and this went on for
some hours with ever improving views to the point you could not say wow any more We stopped for lunch overlooking a mini Grand canyon and read about
the ‘Hanging Flue’ which sound strange but it is one of the top one hundred
places which are under threat. Basically in the 1800’s the gold miners needed
water to wash the stones looking for Gold and they built this amazing water way
out of wood alongside the cliff face for over thirteen miles. Not much is left
today but they have tried to rebuild this amazing piece of work and they unfortunately
failed financially as their process was designed for small stones of gold
rather than the powder variety and hence they went ‘bottoms’ up’.
An
amazing place indeed and well worth the visit. We continued our journey through
the mountains via a place called ‘Paradox’ which is quite an unusual name until
we arrived in Moab in late afternoon. We are booked in the Best Western which
is probably not the best we have been in but it had a big advantage in being
cheap. We had found a a well recommended place for Dinner called Desert Bistro
and the food was excellent if on the slightly expensive side but really
enjoyable. We had a beer prior to dinner in a bar restaurant called Zaq’s which
was busy and fund but noisy with the typical 25 televisions playing American football,
which to us Brits is a pointless game’ and baseball which our girls school play.
With the football they play for ten seconds and think about it for four or five
minutes, then change all the players and start again and the game goes on for
ever and ever.
And then
back to the Hotel where the Wi-Fi internet if off and on at the moment so
perhaps we can hope its back on later.
Tomorrow
we plan two National Parks, and then dinner in
a Pizza place or similar.
