Most of Thursday was spent driving on interstates. From Boise, I headed southeast on I-84 toward Salt Lake City. My goal was to stop at the REI store there, and pick up copies of the Utah Recreation Map and Gazetteer. Traffic on the freeway in SLC is just nuts. LA drivers are cautious and courteous by comparison.
In spite of that, I did make it to the REI store and purchased my maps. I stopped at the nearby Canyon Rim Park for lunch. Then, it was onward and southward in the direction of Moab. I chose to follow U.S. 6 through Price and Wellington. The route passes through Soldier Summit, which I recognized from our epic cross-country train trip half a century ago.
I stopped for fuel in Green River, and noted that there was a State Park in town. I thought I could make that my base of operations if camping could not be found closer to Moab. I also determined from the map that most of the land between there and Moab was BLM land. I determined to drive out on the Ruby Ranch Road south of Floy and see what I could find for a camp spot.
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| The view northwest toward Green River |
At the top of a rise about 10 miles south of the highway, I found a pullout. There was no traffic to speak of (a single ATV went by shortly before sunset), so there was no need to search for a longer spur.
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| Looking southeast toward the La Sal Mountains |
Even though I was far enough from the highway that there was no traffic noise, I was surprised to find that I had 5G coverage. The camp spot was not too far from a gas pipeline and overland power line, so it may be that the utilities arranged a repeater for convenience. In the evening calm, I noted that there was hardly any noise at all: No traffic, no crickets, no wind.
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| The Ruby Ranch Road below my camping spot |
It looked like it would be a clear night, so I set up the telescope and used Venus to calibrate the spotting scope. My first peek through the spotting scope revealed a bright semicircle: Not Venus, but the Moon. I was surprised because I had overlooked it in my first glance in that direction. The instant of the new moon must have occurred mere hours before. (Consulting Google, I found that it occurred only a few minutes before sunset at that location, so I was viewing the moon less than two hours into its waxing.)
After dinner, I used my the 5G service to make a reservation for Saturday night at the Green River State Park. As with my reservation at Eagle Island, I noted with some irritation that ReserveAmerica tacks on an exorbitant $8 transaction fee. Anyway, I thought it would be good to refill the water tank in the camper, and might also be useful to have electricity and cell service for further planning. I had checked on recreation.gov for availability of campsites within the Arches NP, but there were none. At first, I set up an alert for just Friday night. But then I went back and made the alert entry flexible to within + or - 3 days.
A short time later, I got email saying that a site in the Devil's Garden Campground had come available. I reserved that spot and then started to release the site I'd reserved at Green River. After entering the information, the ReserveAmerica service wanted to charge me another $8 transaction fee and refund none of the money I'd paid to reserve the site. (I had to read the reckoning carefully, because the non-refund was listed as "Reservation Cancellation Fee". Anyway, (*expletive*) if I was going to pay for the privilege of letting someone else pay again for the privilege of using a site I'd already paid for. I decided to keep both reservations and use them both.
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