27th Dec – 3rd Jan
We pulled out of our camp in Monument Valley and headed north, although then we were going south and then the tarmac ran out in a decidedly rough settlement of native homes. So before we became the protagonists in a scary movie plot, we back tracked and found the correct road, and then we were actually heading north. We had booked three nights in a small town called Bluff which was only about 40 miles away. It was on our road to Moab and had 3 or 4 restaurants and an old historic fort and a museum to amuse us. The managers of the RV park were away and had left us a welcome pack outside the office. As we pulled in it was fairly obvious why they had taken the opportunity to take off. The place was deserted.
We parked up near the tiny shed that housed the single toilet and shower and after lunch walked down the road into ‘town’ to assess the offerings. All four restaurants, the visitors centre, the museum, the fort and the laundry were all closed. The only open place was the petrol station/shop, so we called in to confirm that Bluff was indeed ‘shut’. We bought beer and headed back to assess our options. Three nights was going to be entirely excessive but snow was forecast overnight and it seemed silly to be planning to move on the next day when the roads were still being cleared. We could amuse ourselves for two nights. I messaged the managers who agreed to refund us our 3rd night, and advised us that they were sure that the restaurant at the other end of town was open the next day. The beer and a mini scrabble tournament killed the rest of the day and when we woke in the morning, it had indeed snowed, and was still snowing. This was a little bit exciting for us as we have lived in the sub-tropics for 16 years and only seen snow on a few ski trips. After a very lazy morning we rugged up and set off on our day’s expedition: a two mile walk to see if the restaurant really was open for lunch. We were, as usual, the lone pedestrians. Cars, trucks and RVs were passing through town caked in filthy snow and ice. The roads were open, but it didn’t look like fun out there. We were happy on foot and holed up in our private camp-ground for two. We turned the last corner, empty of stomach and full of hope, and were very pleased to see the carpark of Twin Rocks Cafe full and the doors open for business. Hoorah! We indulged again in the lusciousness that is Navajo fry bread, hot chilli, and a burger. And then we walked home again. Busy day.
The next day we headed up to Moab. This is the town that services Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and is surrounded by lots of other state parks and miles and miles of off road driving trails. It is a playground town, full of businesses catering to the bazillions of people that head to this area in spring, summer and autumn to ‘recreate’, visit the parks, and hire wrangler jeeps and go trail bashing. It was much quieter at this time of year. The snow had petered out as we approached Moab and the sun was shining, but it was cold. We stocked up on provisions in town and then found our camp which was about 2 miles north. There was a good cycle trail back to town and we were confident that this would be achievable on bicycles to get back from a bar on New Years!
For those of you following the US news, you will be aware that the federal government standoff/shutdown had affected the National Park Service. The Utah State government had realised that, even in the winter, its National Parks of Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce and Zion are the main reason that many tourists, us included, visit the state and it had agreed to provide interim funding to its parks to keep them open, so we were going to be fine….
The next day was gloriously sunny, but Nick was struck down by a cold, and didn’t feel like doing anything. So we didn’t. We had bags of time to visit the parks…but then it snowed overnight. We woke on New Years Eve morning to four inches of snow. Snow that the National Parks had no extra funding in place to clear with snow ploughs. So they shut anyway. There seemed little point off loading Tin Can from Big D as there was nowhere really to go.
We assessed our options for New Years Eve celebrations. Our research discovered that the only bar actually open all the way up to, and beyond, midnight was at the other end of town, 3 miles away, and now our ‘easy cycle path’ into town was a now an icy, slushy, filthy, partially obscured adventure death-trap trail. A dicey prospect even in daylight and sober, let alone well-oiled at 1.00am on a freezing inky dark night. So we resigned ourselves to the prospect of a Tin Can New Year’s Eve, and decided to go out for lunch instead. The rest of the morning was filled with that very grown up and mature activity: building a snowman. This took longer than expected as the snow was very dry, but we persevered and created ‘Mo’ (short for Moab)
Lunchtime was then upon us and we set off walking, gingerly, and of course alone, along the aforementioned cycle trail, committing to stopping at the first eating establishment that we came to. This was a Denny’s at the one mile mark. It appeared like an oasis in the cold, snowy desert and we celebrated the outgoing year with a gallon of diet coke and a pile of hot, unhealthy food. Perfect!
2019 saw itself in. This was the first New Year’ that I have slept through since I was in my early teens. Our plans had been different, but what with Nick’s residual snot situation and temperatures falling to -17 deg C / 2 deg F at night, curling up in bed under our entire blanket collection was by far and away the more attractive option.
We woke up in 2019 to ice on the inside of Tin Can despite having had the heating going full chat all night. The day was sunny, but the temperature didn’t rise above -4 C/ 24 F all day. The upcoming days were showing no signs of temperatures increasing. The nearby parks we still closed with no prospect of opening. Our next planned destination, Bryce Canyon National Park at 8,000ft, was likely to be colder and shut now if it had snowed and definitely shut in a few days once the emergency funding ran out. After that, Zion National park, would also shut once funding expired if the shutdown continued. The combination of the partial federal shutdown, and winter conditions much harsher than we had expected meant that our Utah experience was falling way short of expectations. We had ANOTHER reassessment of plans. We came to the following decisions:
- Living in a RV is way more fun when the temperatures are above freezing.
- We knew that the Utah parks were amazing and we have the luxury of being able to come back to experience them in all their glory, sunshine and fully staffed orderliness later in the year.
- There was no point staying in Moab. We would (begrudgingly) back-track through Monument Vally and head to the Grand Canyon as our next stop, before, not after, Las Vegas.
- On our way to the Grand Canyon we would have a night in a hotel. A warm, dry hotel room with no ice on the inside. And a bath. This was to be my birthday present to me.
Of course everything was closed on the 1st, so difficult to action our changes, so we loafed. We needed to do laundry but the park’s machines were out of order due to frozen pipes, and we needed antifreeze. The temperatures were going to be equally low for the next few nights, so on the hotel night, when we weren’t going to be staying in TC, so it was going to be better to winterise, even for just one night. On the 2nd Jan we unplugged and drove into town, got the stuff, did the stuff, came back, plugged back in and made our bookings. By now Nick was feeling much better, but predictably I now had The Cold. Oh Happy Winter.
After another bitterly cold night we sorted ourselves out on the morning of the 3rd Jan, did the winterisation (draining the water and replacing it with antifreeze ) and headed back down the road we had driven up 8 days earlier. This would have been a bit depressing if it hadn’t been such a beautiful drive. The landscapes on this section of this trip have been universally stunning. The sun was shining, all the roads were clear and we pulled into our hotel carpark in Tuba City at about 4pm.
My birthday hotel room was in a newly built Navajo owned hotel, the only half decent establishment in this area. To get a big bath we had booked a very reasonably priced ‘luxury one bedroom suite’. This was about 10 times the size of TC and was notable for its size rather than its luxury, but it was perfect. On check-in we had to declare that we were not going to smoke and not going to bring any pets or alcohol into the hotel. We could honestly declare that our overnight bag (very stylish re-useable shopping bag) definitely didn’t contain contraband cats or poodles, but we might have lied about the six-pack… How naughty.
The bath was bliss and I spent so long in it that I was minutes away from morphing into a dolphin. I was lured out of the water for dinner which was at the diner next to the hotel, another Denny’s. Never been to one before, now this was our second visit in 4 days. We spent the rest of the evening romantically watching different things on different TVs in different rooms of our suite. After many months of 24/7 living in each other’s pockets, this was also a little bit of bliss. I had a terrible night’s sleep with a completely blocked up nose, but was very thankful to be miserable in a huge bed in a massive, warm hotel room. Of course I managed to squeeze in another bath in the morning, we had breakfast and then hit the road again. Next stop, the Grand Canyon.