News, Castleton, and Moab

Last week during my car saga, my boyfriend got a job offer that is two time zones away.  The offer is for a research position that is the very perfect first step down a great career path.  These sorts of post-doctorate positions usually last 1-3 years.  I'm so proud of him!   He'll be moving to New York City in late July.  I will be staying in Colorado, holding down the fort until who knows what or when.  I'm excited to visit him in such a neat place!  Suddenly, our time together is limited and there are lots of big upcoming plans already made that don't include each other, so we needed to make the most out of this week, our only free four days together until July. 

Every spring we take a trip to Utah to take in the beautiful rock formations and do some camping and hiking and sometimes backpacking.  This year we woke up on Sunday and decided we were sick of the rainy weather at home and needed to get out of town.  We packed up and hit the road in my new Subaru.  We really didn't plan anything ahead of time, but had a bunch of possible places to go.  As we got to the top of the divide in Colorado, we were welcomed with an intense snow storm.  We had the car manual out, trying to learn how to use the windshield wipers in front and back as well as the windshield heater.  The good news is that the car handles well in the snow and I successfully made it over both passes, something I never felt comfortable in in my tall, wobbly Explorer. 

The first on the list of possible things to do was near the Fisher Towers on the road that follows the Colorado River between I70 and Moab.  The place was featured in an article showing one of the best places in the world to camp, near the top of the dome leading to Castleton Tower, or at least that was my initial impression.  After turning down that idea (no, I didn't want to pack my pack and climb 1000 ft at 7pm without having eaten dinner and camp on a ledge), I found out later the proposed camping spot was on the other side of the fin in the above picture.  Apparently this is one of the top 50 places for climbers in the world.  We left after I sufficiently disappointed Dave with my not wanting to hike up.  

Castleton Tower

Cane Canyon campsite.

We drove around looking for camping for quite some time.  This is Cane Canyon.  Just take a right at the McDonalds in Moab and it leads you down this beautiful canyon with lots of camping.  Unfortunately, I wasn't up for going down the unpaved part of the canyon with my new vehicle just yet, so we decided on this awful campground that was $22 a night.  Oh the bad decisions I make when I'm hungry!  At least it had a pit toilet! In the morning, there were hundreds of birds and insects making really loud noises.  I didn't sleep very well!

Dave making the best of my poor choice of camping spots. 

Don't worry, things got much, much better as the trip went on...