July 27-29: Vagabonds Sans RV

We wanted to depart Moab sometime this weekend.  But we had a number of chores to accomplish first.

We spent much of the weekend in the library getting out our first blog.  While Janet got everything uploaded, I found some great local information in the library.  Since the library is closed on Sundays, Janet sat for several hours in the local McDonald’s blogging, while I washed and waxed the car.

  (As if that would last long.)

Blogging takes a lot longer than we imagined, especially when the internet connections are not terribly fast.  In Moab, each photo took 3 or more minutes to import into the text.  The text itself, of course, takes a while to organize.  So we were spending 2-3 hours on each blog.  It’s hard to do that on the road, let alone find an internet connection that even works well.

(The same slowness hampered us in Vernal, Utah, in the northeastern part of the state.  Happily, at the moment, we are blogging from Price, Utah, and the photo imports are taking seconds instead of minutes.  We celebrated by eating lunch at the Burger King.)

We also had to do some housekeeping.  We rented a 5 x 5 storage unit in town for $30 a month and are using it to keep items we brought with us but do not need or want if we are doing a lot of traveling.

We left our big tent and air mattress and are using the backpacking equipment we purchased this spring:  a two-person tent and self-inflating pads.

  Turns out, we kind of like the small tent and pads better.  The best part about the little tent is that it has zippered doors on both sides; so we can get in and out without crawling over each other.  We left the portable table, and lamps, and electric extension cord, and folding clothes closet, etc. in Moab.

We find that blogging gives us a good reason to take some “down time.”  And we are excited about being able to stay in touch with family and friends.

Monday, July 30, we said a temporary good-bye to our friends, the La Sal Mountains,

 and left Moab heading north.  We would be leaving the red sandstone canyons of the Canyonlands region and heading up Utah 191 and the desolate area of the Book Cliffs.