Moab had a brief boom in the early 1950s due to desert uranium mining and prospecting. It currently has been expanding rapidly because of the millions of tourists who come to enjoy the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.
The town has a lot of jeep, ATV and dirt bike rentals as well as raft trips, sky diving and bicycle tours. Mrs. Phred googled 14 beauty parlors, but the lone barber keeps leaving notes saying he's at a convention. There's a chairlift and a waterpark that seem to be out of business as well as numerous restaurants, coffee shops, auto parts stores and bookstores. Moab is still too small for a Wal-Mart. That might be one necessary criteria for our next home.
We took a ride yesterday along a road on the Colorado river and up to the snowline in the mountains and saw dozens of really nice camping/recreation areas built along the river by the U.S. Forest Service.
This morning, after three sets of tennis in Moab, we had a panic situation. We had to change RV parks and the slide-outs stopped working again. The rear slide was stuck in the extended position which makes the RV undrivable. There is no one in this small town (other than Phred) capable of solving the problem.
Touching the loose purple wire to a hot lead had no effect this time. Finally, after all other hypotheses failed, I removed and reseated the four square relays in the basement battery compartment. That worked. Apparently, some of the relay contacts had a little corrosion.
We've picked up our Jeep for our excursion into the Canyonlands National Park tomorrow. The four-wheel trails lead up switchbacks to the rims of the canyon. The red jeep has satellite radio, air-conditioning, power windows and a big V-8 engine. It feels a little tippy driving because of the extremely short turning radius and big tires.
On Wednesday, we have a ranger-guided hike scheduled into the "fiery furnace" area of Arches National Park. It's a sandstone maze about eight square miles in area. People got lost and died in there all the time so you have to go with a park ranger. The fact that I'm a trained navigator carried no weight with the Park Service.
We gave the Moab library three shopping bags full of books for their book sale section. Two of the books were new Tony Hillermans. Belatedly, we realized that our oldest grandson would have enjoyed them.
On Sunday, we'll be parking the RV here and heading over to the Wendover, Nevada, casinos to visit my brother, Spike, then we drive back across the Great Salt Lake to Salt Lake City for a flight back east to see the six grandchildren.
When we return, we need to decide a direction. I have two trip routes planned. One leads southwest to Death Valley, up the west coast and to New England. The other goes northeast to the Rockies, up to Canada and to New England. There is a 4,000 mile difference in the two plans.
...Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on ...
(But...I could have sworn, the song said, "there's still time to change both yours")
No comments:
Post a Comment