Category Archives: 2021

After leaving the Balloon Fiesta, we drove to San Angelo, Texas to visit our oldest Grandson, Kyle, who just started college at Angelo State University.

He has turned out to be a wonderful responsible human being and true compliment to his mom and dad’s parenting skills. We had a great time touring the campus, visiting the local sights (although there are not many) meeting and spending time with his roommate and watching them practice their shooting. They are both involved in the Shooting Club and flip back and forth between number one and two on the team.

The Shooting Club where they practice has a pet deer that hangs out there named Pickles. Although he didn’t show up while we were there, Kyle sent me a picture.

On Sunday after church, we said goodbye to Kyle

and back on the road to see the rest of his family in Spring, Texas. We are so lucky to have two wonderful son-in-laws and the added bonus of both being good cooks. Kerry had fresh fried catfish waiting for us when we got there, complete with hush puppies, Cole slaw and fried green beans.

While in Spring, #2 Grandson talked Jim and I into buying the latest fad in shoes, Hey Dudes. This is probably the first time in our lifetimes we have been at the front end of a fad!

The past six weeks has been a wonderful adventure filled with sights from our fabulous country, visiting friends and family and enjoying this blessed life that God has given us. Someday, when we are no longer able to travel we will look back at our Blog Books and get to relive all these wonderful times all over again.

After we left Moab, we drove to Farmington, New Mexico with nothing particular in mind other than a place to stay before we could get a room in Albuquerque. It worked out well because we did some laundry, got caught up on the blog and just generally relaxed. We had no idea how much we would need it.

On Monday we arrived in Albuquerque and decided to check out how to get to the Fiesta field and the museum where we had scheduled a special event. All the people we spoke to said you need to leave your hotel early; like 3:45 a.m. early. The long lines of traffic getting into the field, the waiting lines to pay for parking, and even finding a good spot to watch after you got into the park made this crazy suggestion sound like good advice. After all, this event draws over 750,000 spectators to Albuquerque each year and somewhere between 800 and 1,000 balloonists. We were also advised to buy some inexpensive chairs because when you arrive that early you can’t stand until the first event starts at 6 a.m.

Dutifully we were sitting on the field, early with temperatures in the low to mid 50s and damp ground under our chairs. It didn’t matter that we each had four layers of clothes on, it was still cold and damp. The instructions were to go anywhere you like and if you are in the way, the balloonists will tell you to move. So we just picked a spot, got some hot coffee and donut holes and waited.

One by one the Dawn Patrol balloons started to come to life not too far from where we had set down our chairs. After these 7 balloons were inflated, they lifted off into the dim sky right over our heads and then circled the field.

Suddenly the field came alive with balloons all around us unfolding, filling with air, and testing flamers. In every direction there were balloons to see including a Smokey the Bear about 10 feet from our chairs. Then around 7:15 they all started to lift off in waves coming from every direction. The Coke balloon lifted off with the American flag flying at its base in the barely sunlit sky while the Star Spangled Banner was performed. Not sure if it was a wave a patriotism or just a chill but I know I reacted.

These are some of the balloons we saw:

After about 300 or so balloons were in he sky they began a competition to test maneuvering skill requiring the pilot to drop what appeared to be a beanbag with a long tail onto two targets in the field as they flew over. There was an X and a triangle. A few of the more experienced pilots got pretty close to the ground while others seemed to be way too high. Then after dropping their beanbag, they would land down field which was also fun to watch. There people on the ground that have to grab the ropes to try to stop it, which I’m sure is harder than it looked. These balloons were really traveling fast even though they didn’t look it.

Tomorrow is another early day, but not as early. The crowd is not as large as usual because of Covid and neither is the number of balloonists, which was great with us. But as Jim said several times today, more than two balloons seems like a lot to us.

Today was our day to visit the last of the scheduled National Parks, Canyonland.

Arches National Park is 60 square miles large and Canyonland National Park is 600 square miles but that didn’t mean we were going to do 10 times more hiking. There are only 4 trails marked as “easy” and one of those, according to the Ranger, is lots of steep steps. The scenery is totally different, though, with lots of canyon views that were awesome and reminded us both of the Grand Canyon. Bear in mind the camera never captures what the eye can see, here are some pictures.

In the evening, we went on a boat cruise onto the Colorado River for a light show reflected on the canyon walls with narration and music.

We learned a few interesting facts about the area like Utah gets its name as a spinoff of the Ute people that lived in the area. Also Moab maintained a small population until the 1950s when the largest uranium mine in the world was discovered here. Once the demand was diminished, it went back to its former sleepy town until the 1980s when the Arches National Monument was converted to a National Park and now brings 1.5 million visitors to town each year.

We also learned that it takes about 10,000 years for one of those arches to develop and how to recognize the early formative years of one developing. Now when we drive around we point out baby arches developing.

This was the last Park on the schedule and we are now headed south again to Albuquerque for the 50th Anniversary of the Balloon Festival.

Update Note: If any of these canyon pictures look like something you’ve seen before, its because the famous final scene in the movie Thelma and Louise was filmed going off one of the cliffs right here in Moab.

Well in advance of our trip we signed up for a 4 x 4 tour in Arches National Park and today was our day.

Our guide showed up in a 1997 Toyota 4 wheel drive SUV in less than pristine condition and it didn’t take long to realize why. Our tour was taking us on the original roads established by the family who owned the property before donating it to the government. We are talking dirt roads, and because of the recent rain, complete with deep ruts, mud, and deep water.

Our first stop was to see dinosaur tracks confirmed by the Smithsonian found in this back country. Based on the size and shape they actually can determine the size and type which is amazing to me.

Then we ran into 3 vans of dirt bikers with insufficient knowledge of driving these roads who had gotten themselves stuck in knee-high water and mud. Lucky for them, our guide’s second job is pulling people out of the mud on this road, so we spent about 30 minutes helping these guys. Our guide, Justin, is another interesting Covid story as a double-degree college graduate (Business Management and Chemical Engineering) whose job disappeared before his first day of work. He decided to take his savings and travel and when he arrived in Moab, he decided to stay and train as a guide. Needless to say, his education lent a great deal to his ability to explain all the origins of the mountains and their current status.

After the rescue, the fun began. This is where we started the “rock crawl” where you literally crawl slowly up and down large rocks over roads marked only by tracks from other 4 x 4 vehicles. In fact, the only wildlife we saw during the 4.5 hour tour was a handful of Rubicons in various colors.

Justin took us to see arches you would never see except in this back country including Tower Arch and Whale’s eye.

by the way, Justin identified my “fake” plant as Desert Rhubarb which actually grows a fruit just like regular rhubarb.

It’s over 700 miles from Yosemite to Arches National Park, so we planned a stop in St George, Utah to break it up, an stayed long enough to eat dinner and sleep. The landscape driving from St. George was incredible and changed several times along the way.

Unlike the drive from Vegas to California where it looks the same most of the way, there were spectacular mountains of red sandstone, low desert areas, green mountainous areas and just lots of variety. We arrived in Moab early enough on the 28th to go into Arches mid afternoon and get to see the overall layout of the park and make a plan. Our Senior pass made entry free so it didn’t matter how long we stayed. We decided on a plan of attack and then we checked the weather (guess we did it backwards) only to find out tomorrow was going to be a washout with rain all day.

Time for Plan B. It turned cold (58 degrees) at night and the rain started around 4 a.m. but by 8 a.m. it was mostly gone so back to Plan A and off to Arches National Park. The Park touts over 2,000 arches and is divided into three sections taking in about 35 of the most interesting with hikes varying from easy to difficult. Of course, we were only considering the easy hikes knowing full well there would be some we couldn’t do. Here are pictures of what we saw:

One of the last arches we saw was Landscape Arch which is the longest in the park. In 1991 some hikers were resting under it and heard some crackling which was they thought was thunder. Turned out to be rock breaking away from the arch causing it to get even thinner. Eventually this will happen to all the arches and they will become U-shaped.

When all was said and done, we had walked 9.5 miles and had over 24,000 steps. Actually I wimped out before we saw the last arch on the plan. With all this hiking, we noticed some vegetation that looked almost artificial like something you would buy at Hobby Lobby. Any idea what it turned out to be?