Into the Desert

Colorado National Monument was an overnight stop. While nice to look at, it was too hot to hike and the rim drive was its highlight. It was off to Fruita, CO, to do a few errands, then off to Fruita, UT, the campground at Capitol Reel National Park, about a four-hour drive ... or so I thought.

First, a few errands. The Saddlehorn campground was pretty small and had no dump station or water fill for RVs, but the Fruita town visitor center did, so that was our first stop. While we were there, Bill and Patty pulled in behind us and the Roadtrek conversation continued. After dumping and filling were complete, we fueled up and went downtown to the local City Market for groceries. We were heading into a rather empty section of Utah, where the small towns have markets with limited selection, so it seemed a good time to stock up at a supermarket. Maybe two hours after we left Colorado NM, we started down I-70 toward Utah.

About 15 miles out of town, just past the last exit until we reached the border, another 15 miles on, I realized that I had left our water filter, pressure reducer and pressure gauge attached to the water fill at the visitor center. The other Roadtrek had pulled up as I was coiling the water hose after finishing filling our tank and I'd gotten distracted talking with Bill and forgotten the filter.

This was only a $30 stack of bits, but because it would be irreplaceable where we were headed, we decided to turn back, just in case it was still there. This seemed far from likely as it would be at least two hours later and we still had to drive 10 miles before the next exit where we could turn around. About 45 minutes later, we pulled into the visitor center dump station. There was a travel trailer just finishing as we drove in along side it. We stopped and looked around but the filter was gone.

Then, the woman standing next to the trailer asked, "Are you looking for a water filter?". Ellen replied that we were. The other woman then said, "We have it. We saw it and figured someone left it behind and wouldn't be coming back". Her husband then pulled it out of their storage compartment and returned it to us, looking none too pleased. If we had arrived two minutes later, it would have been gone for good.

A couple of hours behind our original intent, we left Fruita, CO, once again, heading west to Utah. We intended to stop in Green River, UT, along I-70, for lunch. Bill and Patty had recommended the Green River Coffee Company, a little coffee roaster and cafe, so we thought we'd give it a try. By the time we reached the Utah border (again), we'd left the Colorado River valley and were truly in the desert. It was dry and barren as we plugged along I-70. We arrived at Green River about 1 PM, refueled, as we'd gone about 60 miles further than we'd expected and found the Green River Coffee Company.

The sign said "Open 7 AM to 9 PM". We walked inside, and there was a 20-something closing out the cash register. We asked if she was closing early and she replied that she was, but we could order after she finished closing the register for the day and we could only get take-out as she was leaving. We said we'd wait ... a mistake. It took her several tries to balance her accounts. Finally, about 20 minutes later, we ordered our sandwiches, which looked quite interesting on the menu board, and coffee and took it all back to Speedy. Unfortunately, my sandwich was missing the expected prosciutto and Ellen's was missing two of the four cheeses it was supposed to contain, and it wasn't grilled either. The coffee was only so-so. The 20-something was obviously not the proprietor, and probably had been told that she was to serve anyone who came in before she could leave. Clearly she was trying to close up early and our order showed what a hurry she was in.

After that unsatisfying lunch, it was back on the road. We soon left I-70 and turned south onto Utah-24, a road we must have been on on our last trip out here, but going the other way. I didn't remember it. For the first 30 miles, we tracked through fairly flat desert, even passing by sand dunes along both sides of the road. We turned west at the small town of Hanksville and drove along the Fremont River valley. It twisted and turned and was dry, but punctuated with patches of green fields along the river.

The landscape began to change as well. Large buttes started appearing in the distance. Some were enormous such as Factory Butte, which looked like it could be a huge factory complex, albeit one that was 1,100 feet high and made of rock. The cliffs became closer to the road as Speedy twisted and climbed until we reached the "back" side of the Waterpacket Fold and one of our favorite national parks, Capitol Reef.

Being late in the day, we passed right by the visitor center and went directly to the Fruita campground, Loop C. We found a site overlooking the orchards next to the loop and settled in for the evening. There were not many sites left in the loop and we were fortunate to find one in the area by the orchards.

After leveling Speedy and setting up camp, I took a stroll around the campground, stopping at the store in the historic Gifford Farmhouse, just before it closed, to look for pie, a very special feature of this campground. I walked in as three people walked out carrying the last three pies. One them saying, almost gloating, "look, people are still coming for pie". No pie left, sigh.

As Ellen was making dinner, I stopped to talk with the man in the site next to ours, a retired Navy and Alaska Airlines pilot who was now full-timing in a 20-foot Airstream trailer. He was traveling by himself, as his wife was 25 years younger than he with career as a forensic psychologist. He said that he stayed at home for a couple of years after he retired, which wasn't too bad while living in Oregon, with lots of places to visit and hike, but when she took a job in Atlanta, he decided to travel full-time as she wasn't ready to retire (evidently, she's now almost ready, as being a forensic psychologist for the state of Georgia is more than a little stressful).

His career strangely intersected with ours, but never crossed. He'd been and worked in some of the same out of the way places as we had. He had a sister who worked on a day charter boat out of Red Hook, St. Thomas (Virgin Islands), while we were living there and had worked out of Christchurch for four seasons flying to Antarctica, but not at the same time as we were in New Zealand. After too much time swapping stories, it was time for dinner, shredded beef wraps, not unlike burritos. We are back in the Southwest.