Smithereens: Moabites continued

During our time in Moab, we stayed at a new location. There's a church in Moab that owns a cabin about 30 miles outside of town, up in the mountains at about 8000 ft. They rent it out to pastors and their families for a song. Literally. I just met them at the church and sang a verse and chorus of "All Creatures Of Our God And King" and they gave me the keys.

Okay, not really a song. But dirt cheap. The song was just out of gratitude.

It's a 40 minute drive, through a beautiful winding canyon that follows the Colorado river and then up another beautiful winding road to the cabin.

We'd seen pictures, and they made it look quaint and clean, but we had very low expectations; the attraction was the price.

It was all we'd hoped it would be. Yes, quaint, not too big (2 beds, 2 baths, living room and kitchen), but very clean, very quiet, very comfy, and gorgeous views.

Yeah, the decor was probably leftover from the 70s and 80s, but it was warm during the cold nights, had plenty of chairs and couches for us all to sprawl out to relax and read in the evenings, and had a rustic feel without feeling like we'd moved into the Ingalls' cabin and needed to chop wood for the fire, kill a deer for food or sew a quilt by hand. And, where else could we stay and enjoy such a delightfully retro shower?

When not at the cabin, we did make a trek into Arches Nat'l Park. We couldn't be that close and not pay some of our favorite arches a visit.

And we saw them in a way we'd never seen them before.

See all those colored dots below Double Arch? Those are people. Scads of people. This was the first time in our 7 years of visiting that the park was bursting at the seams with visitors.

We didn't stay too long. We have too many fond memories of quiet moments under and near various arches to have them tainted by the huddled masses and the dull roar that they bring with them.

During our lunch stop, in front of Turret Arch, we were serenaded by a man playing some sort of Native American instrument. Kind of like a really big recorder, only tuned to a pentatonic scale. And if that means nothing to you, think of a hollow sounding flute that only plays 5 notes and you get the idea. Mildly soothing for about 30 seconds, then borderline annoying, then just background noise for the crowd that gathered to snap pictures of Irritating-Indigenous-Flute-Playing Man as I fondly have dubbed him.

He did move on and tootle his magic flute near another majestic formation. I appreciated the relocation.

We found a hike that was off the beaten path (it didn't lead directly from the parking lot to an arch), so spent a nice 45 minutes away from everyone else, and Emily practiced her rock-climbing skills.