Capitol Reef, Utah. Pretty, isn’t it?
We are flying over Seattle, gliding through gray, cloudy skies, high above equally gray, but still water. As I look out the window, I wonder where my travel mojo has gone.
This year, I’ve logged more medical appointments than any 65 year-old should. Among too many pulmonology, cardiology, dermatology appointments, as well as weird appointments for infusions, hand surgery and busting a vein while traveling, my usually active travel mojo vamoosed.
Where does travel zest come from and how does it leave?
The simple answer is that travel mojo springs from curiosity and a desire to know more about the world. How it evaporates, I do not know. Perhaps I mistaken left mine at a doctor’s office.
We are beginning a trip, our first in many months, a tour of four Utah national parks. As our plane floats over the deserty red lands of Idaho and then Utah, passing mountain peaks dusted with snow, I wonder if travel mojo can be rediscovered while traveling.
Given the unsteady, chaotic political state in DC, an impeachment inquiry, unrest, protests and violence worldwide, rising hatred…. I could go on — my missing mojo doesn’t really matter — except to me.
How did the mojo search/trip go?
As our plane glided over the beautiful, desolate Great Salt Lake, I felt hopeful and a little excited. We arrived in Salt Lake City on a late Sunday afternoon. On the taxi ride to the hotel, I watched the sprawling, unpretty Salt Lake City pass by. I witnessed a disorganized mess of strip malls, industrial buildings, car dealerships, and big stores threaded along freeways and all living under smog ladened skies. I expected something prettier. The next day as we set off in our rental car, wanting to put miles between us and the freeway villages’ clutter, I knew travel mojo could not live in such a place.
Somewhere outside Boulder, Utah
On car trips like this one, I’m reminded that the west encompasses vast, uninhabitable lands, places mostly devoid of water, with harsh, unwelcoming soil, hazardous terrain, uncertain weather. Land wild and unused by humans.
Capitol Reef was our first park visit. We stayed about an hour from the park in Boulder, population 225, at Boulder Mountain Lodge. On the hotel property is Hell’s Backbone Grill, a renown restaurant that offers mostly celiac safe food.
On arrival, my first thought was — we really are in the middle of nowhere…..Cows, the free-range type, were everywhere and noisy. We slept with the hotel room window open and fell asleep to cows vocalizing well into the night. What in the world do cows discuss at 1am?
For mid-October, Capitol Reef seemed busy. I understand why some folks say the national parks are being loved to death. We hiked the old-people’s paths and marveled at the rocks, taking in the beauty.
A stop in Escalante National Monument before reaching Bryce. Beautiful.
Next up, Bryce
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