Day 32: James, Me and Retirees

This is a team post, so you will have to infer who is speaking in first person. It's not that hard, but I thought I should warn you.

Day 32 had to start fairly early.  I wanted to hike into the canyon a bit, and we had a 7 hour drive to Moab.  We opted for a short hike on the Kaibab Trail, 1.7 miles basically straight down then that same 1.7 back up.   Harry, the hotel guy, said we should allow 2.5 times the amount of time for that uphill portion, so 1 hour out would mean 2.5 hours back.

Trailhead.  The trail name sounds like 'kebab',
and we tried to come up with a joke around that.
No luck. Feel free give it a stab and add to comments below.

View from near the top

Looking down

Further down

Scenic overlook on the hike

Sunrise over the mountain

Kate hiking

James hiking in what I call his "girls gone wild hat". Please note he is smiling... this is still on the way down. 

The elevation gain was about 1500ft in that 1.7 miles back up.  At some points, I thought Kate was trying to collect on that life insurance policy with the pace she was keeping.

What James did not mention above is that we were smoked by a woman in her late 60's on her way back up the hill. The pace was not crazy. This trip has mostly been James, me and baby boomers. Since kids are back in school, there are no young road warriors out there. The slow campers are everywhere and the early bird specials are packed. We start to wonder what we will do in our retirement if we are taking this trip now....

Once back up, we were eager to get on the road.  The road into and out of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is about 40 miles long (which is part of the reason it only gets 10% of the Canyon's annual visitors), but exceedingly beautiful.  We spotted this Discovery Channel scene on the way out:

Coyote snacking on something dead

It's a good thing we exercised this morning because the rest of the day will be in the car.  The mountain forest soon gave way to a glimpse of the red cliffs.

Cliffs looming in the distance.  A hint of
what's to come.

Not too long after leaving the Canyon, we hit Utah.

Mile 5407:  Utah!  Land of beautiful high mountain deserts
and bizarre alcohol regulations.

Beautiful red rocks... oh wait, that's an ice cream store. They almost had us...

Dining options were sparse, but we stumbled upon Henrie's Drive Inn in Panguitch, UT (Mile 5480).  These little roadside spots can be hit or miss, but we've had far more hits than misses using Yelp!.  Henrie's was no exception.

Cheeseburger and onion rings really hit the spot.

Pretty soon, we left our 2 lane road for the interstate.  Usually that is not a good thing in terms of roadside aesthetics, but the southwest Utah high desert we drove into blew us away.

Desert

Approaching the distant cliffs

We enter the mountains

Yup... still on the road. It's all about the freakin journey

An overlook

Crazy hobbit-hole looking rocks

The sun is setting behind us, and it is raining
in front of us.  The lighting was kinda freakish.

We stopped at a couple of the scenic points. James showed you a picture of a good one... there were others that were just strange. We stopped at a place called 'ghost rock'. It was a rock that looked nothing like a ghost, but back in the day some cowboy got scared. So, I decided to name a rock.

Christmas Rock- it is red and green. I am great at naming things.

Mile 5731:  Moab, UT

If you have a chance, you should read this. It was too confusing to have a drink

By the time we arrived, it was all we could do to go have dinner and crawl into bed.

Tomorrow:  Extreme Moab