What we finally came up with: drive over to the Market Plaza and buy sandwiches from the deli, then walk across the street (and through the woods) to the place to buy the tickets. This worked very well - we even had enough time for Andy to get the car and move it closer to where we were.
The name of the program was "Echoes from the Canyon" - they only do this program two weekends a summer; we just lucked out to be there this weekend. The concept: a "living history" program with actors playing the parts of pioneers who are a part of the Canyon's history - the people who lived here over a hundred years ago.
What was not mentioned - this program was an hour of standing up in a cemetery. You know, so we can listen to the ghosts of these people. Oh and in the dark. Well, except for the tea lights lining the path around the cemetery. And the full moon.
Interesting concept with at teensy problem - I don't do well with standing for long periods and an hour is a long period of time.
I was the only person to speak up - the ranger was nice enough to bring out a folding chair for Andy to lug around for me all through the cemetery.
They did a fine job - it was very interesting. Towards the 45 minute mark, we noticed that an older couple slipped away and left. And there were a couple of children and some other adult who started sitting on the ground when we changed ghosts.
Would have been great if this bit of info had been specified in the advertisements.
Monday morning we left the hotel sometime before 11:00 to begin the drive to Arches. We had 4 stops planned. Unfortunately, the combination of the somewhat late departure and the time change allowed us to do only two of them.
First was a visit to the Desert Tower at the far eastern edge of the park. It was built in 1932 and had some great views.
We continued on our way for another hour to Tuba City. Even though we were still in Arizona, we seemed to have switched to Mountain Daylight Saving time - i.e. We lost and hour. It was now already 2:30 p.m. And we were just having lunch. We ate at a restaurant called "The Hogan Family Restaurant". We both decided to try what was described as a traditional Navajo dish - roast beef wrap on fried bread. It was huge. I didn't finish mine. I wondered if people actually made them that big at home.
We decided we had to skip the Navajo Museum and also Four Corners in order to get to Newspaper Rock before dark.
I picked up the driving at this point. Interesting experience - lots of open road (one lane each way), sometimes with a fair number of cars on the road and sometimes nobody else but us. After about an hour, we finally cross state lines into Utah, where I promptly saw signs for "Open Range". Twice we experienced exactly what this meant - a small herd of sheep crossed the road (one guy took his time and stopped traffic), and the second time was a random steer (who also took his time crossing the road - I stopped and waited until it made up its mind to go all the way across.
I drove until we came to Bluff, UT - I had identified this town on the map as a potential bathroom break. Fortunately, indeed there was a gas station with not hideous facilities. It's the kind of town that you would miss if you blinked - but they sported themselves a "Welcome to Bluff, Utah!" sign.
Most of the time, the road basically looked like this:
Long stretches where we were the only car for as far as we could see.
By the time we got to Newspaper Rock, it was almost 7:30. Fortunately there wasn't much to it. The rock panel was about 30 feet away from the parking lot.
We got to our hotel around 8:30. Super late for dinner, but we had to eat something, so we went to a restaurant down the street from the hotel called Spokes.
I must say, Moab is not like anything I expected. We stayed in Tuscayan, AZ for our stay at the Grand Canyon - it what was I thought it should be, a town that existed only for the purposes of providing amenities to Grand Canyon visitors. It didn't even have a proper super market or grocery store. When we asked at the front desk about a pharmacy, we were directed to the market in the Grand Canyon itself - which had a very limited selection and also very expensive.
Not so, Moab - a real place, with real shops and restaurants, plus a real super market! We look forward to shopping there to pick up stuff to last us the week.
Day #5 Arches (we have no idea what we're doing; we will figure it out)
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