Thursday, October 20, 2011 (Travel to Horsethief BLM Campground, Moab, Utah)

It was the start of another gorgeous day as we prepared to hit the road...not a cloud in the sky.  After stopping at the sani-dump, we were on the road by 9:30 a.m. 

We headed southeast on highway 89 until we reached Interstate 70 east.  There were warning signs advising that there were no services for 110 miles...hmmm...that’s interesting.  Steve was disappointed that we would be taking another Interstate, preferring the smaller secondary highways...but it turned out to be an absolutely awesome drive.  The countryside was incredible and there were numerous viewpoints to stop and take in the breathtaking scenery.  I took tons of pictures as we drove the Interstate and Steve took a bunch at each of the viewpoints we stopped at.  As usual, the pictures just don't do justice...

Ghost Rock...

 

Twenty miles east of Green River, Utah, we took the exit to highway 191 south towards Moab.  The turnoff to Dead Horse Point State Park...and Canyonlands National Park...was about 10 miles north of Moab. 
It was about another 20 miles to the State Park where, to our disappointment, we found a “Campground Full” sign.  We certainly didn’t expect to have this problem in the latter half of October but apparently all the schools in Utah are off due to some kind of professional development day(s)...I believe they are out today and tomorrow, making it a nice long weekend.  Consequently, families are taking advantage of the beautiful weather and are out camping.

The frustrating part was that the ‘‘campground full‘‘ sign wasn’t until you turned off the main road so we had no choice but to drive the 4 miles to the State Park gate...where we were told that, yes, they are full.  Our options were to try the campground in Canyonlands National Park, the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) campground (a little ways back down the highway) with no available water or go into Moab.

We decided to continue onto Canyonlands and hope we can get in there but when we stopped at the Visitors Centre we were given disappointing news.  The small campground was most likely full...well, I guess we are going to head back down the highway and try Horsethief Campground (BLM).  There is no water available at the campground and since we had very little water in trailer, we filled our two water containers at the water spigot at the Visitors Centre before heading on.

Once we arrived at Horsethief Campground, we started driving the loops to see if we could find an empty site large enough to accommodate us.  We came across one that would work but decided to carry on to see if there were others.  After checking out the rest of the campground, we decided to go back to the one we had found...only to find that someone else had moved into it...sheesh!  Okay then...I guess we’ll go around the loops again.  There happened to be a short road between the two loops that you wouldn’t go on unless you were leaving that loop and it just happened to have one campsite...which was large enough for us...and empty!  We’ll take it! The only drawback was that its next to the outhouse and the odours would occasionally blow our way.

Steve managed to get a satellite signal right off again but this time it did require some adjustment to strengthen the signal.  Unfortunately, I could not get any internet signal on my rocket stick.  Hmmm...guess I’m going to get behind on our travel blog again...