Well my pancreas decided to completely riot and shut down on me, following our hike day in Zion. I blame the awful, evil, two horned shuttle driver, who caused me an extra 3/4 mile hike in AND out of the Emerald Pools. All kidding aside, I spent most of the evening doing unspeakable things in 2 sq ft of camper bathroom space and slept not a wink. Of course that meant that Ben didn’t sleep either, considering the bed is only 1.5 feet from the bathroom. I’m also claustrophobic, which means the bathroom door is never closed during any act. 🙈 Romantic and intimate. Yes!
So, because I’m a trooper, I put on my old girl panties (aka an adult diaper) and told my outrageous gurgling innards to simmer down, in anticipation of a LONG 8 hour day in the truck. We had planned a couple of “stretch our legs” short hikes at two national parks, on the way to Moab. Not really what my digestive tract was up for, but I really wanted to see these Dr. Seuss type rocks that I’ve heard rumors about. Even with careful planning, to ensure that I didn’t have any massive eruptions along the way, I could still tell that this would be a challenging day. 🤢
So we said goodbye to the lovely Zion campground. We had made some lovely friends there. By lovely, I mean we sometimes learned their first names and where they were from. If they had a dog, then we for sure remembered the dogs name, but not the owner’s name. The joys of making campground friends is that you can chat away about anything, knowing you’ll never see them again. It’s fabulous for someone like me, who never remembers names or pretty much any other information someone gives me. At least not the first time we meet. Usually by meeting 20 or 30, I get some of the info correct.
So we were off, on our way to Moab, with my new best friends (the baby wipes, a paper towel roll, puke bucket, emergency poop bucket and Febreze), carefully stashed in the backseat of Ben’s shiny new truck. The Airstream potty was a mere 10 feet behind my passenger truck seat, but I was uncertain if I could make it that far. Heck, I was uncertain if I could crawl into the back seat, even in emergency mode.
The plans were to stop through Bryce National Park and Capitol Reef National Park, but neither of those stops went as planned. Bryce National Park didn’t want us to stay. Not one single parking spot that a truck and Airstream could fit into, in their “overflow” parking. UGH It provided a somewhat scenic, yet stinky potty stop though. We illegally parked the Airstream in front of a row of dumpsters labeled “no parking,” just so we could do our business before traveling on. 😝 Take that, Bryce NO PARKING National Park! Out of spite, Pepper left a poo memory behind, as well. She may or may not have sampled someone else’s poo memory too. I tried not to test my tummy, so I purposely didn’t pay attention to what she was sniffing or taste testing.
Unfortunately, by the time we got to Capitol Reef National Park, I was a total mess and we had to skip it completely. Just not my day. I was just praying I’d make it to Moab and Ben wouldn’t ditch my sorry ass on the side of the highway somewhere. My gurgling colon was making us both cranky and he was already crabby pants about traveling with two emergency buckets in the backseat of the truck and the possibility that I might completely ruin that “new truck smell” he’s been enjoying.
So let’s talk about some of the roads and highways, out in the western states. I’ve always wondered why you can’t tell your GPS that you’re dragging a monster camper behind you so that it doesn’t take you down the shittiest roads known to mankind. 🙄 There has to be a navigation app that has a “truck and trailer friendly roads” filter. If not, then someone needs to get on that. Pronto!
I felt like I had burning boulders bouncing around in my stomach and our GPS takes us down a diabolical road named, “John’s Valley Road.” Now I didn’t meet John, nor did I see him off in the distance but I did meet many of John’s pets. John’s Valley may be a perfectly great road for a farmer/rancher on a tractor or four wheeler, but geez was it BUMPY and it was chock-full of wandering cows. Cows everywhere! These cows have so much land to freely roam, I don’t even think they realize they might be tomorrow’s dinner. And they didn’t give a cud whether a giant vehicle was driving at them or not. It made our journey just a little more interesting.
So, bad road, badass free range cows and the road went on for HOURS, DAYS, maybe even YEARS. Okay, it was hours but endless hours with zero cell signal. None. Instead of zero cell bars it said SOS “shit outta service!”
Somewhere thousands of miles down John’s Valley Road, out in the middle of nowhere, we suddenly came across a herd of bicyclists. Like they had been parachuted in for some bizarre road race and with no one supervising them, especially if they needed help. I’d love to know where this spandex biker gang came from. They were mooooving so fast I couldn’t even get a pic of these crazy people. On road bikes, in the middle of nowhere with no cell signal or potties and free range cows that mentally thought THEY owned the road. NO THANKS! They should get their money back for that arranged bike tour.
I’m thinking John, of the famous John’s Valley Road, has a few side hustles going and probably gets a few good laughs out of it. I imagine he has hidden cameras in the bumpiest parts and the most cow populated parts of the road. John also probably has his own Instagram where he posts funny videos of his victims who bravely, but naively go bumping down his road, only to encounter grumpy cows. For all I know, he could be one of the world’s richest social media influencers and we’re now famous, in a bad way. 🤣
One more thing to add… if you ever find yourself on John’s Valley Road, watch out for falling rocks! That’s all I’ll say because it’s SCARY how some of the biggest boulders are hanging on for dear life, just above the road.
After what seemed like days, we finally made it to civilization and the highway to Moab. Home to 5,000 full-time residents and the place felt like a metropolis! There was no sneaking into town though, at least not with our rig. The “normal” mode of transportation in Moab was either a Jeep or a 4-wheeler and we were a little larger than both. Luckily the one police cruiser in town didn’t actually catch us barreling into town because it was parked on the side of the road, with a giant stuffed dog, residing in the driver’s seat. I guess that’s how their officer gets a night off! LOL
I walked into the local Moab supermarket with confidence and only a few slight adult diaper waddle noises. The people working there couldn’t have been nicer, but looked like they were straight off the ranch. Considering I looked like a crazy haired city woman, who was on her last leg, or at the very least, maybe partied too hard the night before (I WISH!), I can’t or shouldn’t comment much on their style. They were completely gracious about helping me fill my cart with the necessities at 10x the price I’m used to paying.
I just don’t know if I could live in a town without a big box grocery store, or at the very least a somewhat bigger franchise type grocery store. The Ore-Ida frozen potato selection was awful! It had me in tears! Steak fries and plain hash browns were my choices. Not a dang tater tot in sight. When I asked the lovely man in the freezer section, who by the way, turned out to be a lovely well-muscled farmer type woman, 😳 if they carried any form of tater tot, whether it be crown, extra crispy etc., I must have sprouted alien antennae and turned green. I’ve now met the first person in this world that didn’t know what a tater tot was and I didn’t even have the energy to explain it. Ugh 😣
Either way, they were happy to answer all my dumb questions about products they didn’t carry and even allowed me to push their cart to the street to load the groceries into the truck. Again, the parking lots were designed for Jeeps and 4 wheelers. Our rig would have taken up the whole parking lot, so instead Ben illegally parked on the street. Luckily, I spent all of Ben’s savings on one cart of groceries, so we weren’t there long enough for stuffed sheriff dog to ticket us.
With fresh, expensive groceries in hand, it was time to head for the campground. We pulled in and most of the campers/trailers there looked like it was their final resting place. I also detected a light whiff of skunk, which frankly I don’t mind but I’m weird like that. Skunks and coffee grounds smell the same to me 🤷🏼♀️ However, it’s a bad combination of signs when the campground smells a little skunky and the office is locked at 4 pm. Did the skunks run all the humans off?
It was a good thing the handler of such matters had taped a sheet of scratch paper to the door with her phone number scrawled on it. Within seconds of Ben dialing the number, she appeared out of nowhere. Shew and thank goodness! I needed our potty hooked up and hooked up now!
For me, getting parked and all set up was a relief, in more than one way. We had one small issue getting the poop connection cap off, but luckily our new neighbor, whatever his name was from Wisconsin, had the perfect tool to help. You can always count on Wisconsin folk to be helpful and talk funny. 😆 Three nights of stability meant I might be able to recover and enjoy our days in Moab. Even though the campground didn’t have all the usual perks, like shade trees or a pool, it was clean and quiet.
My understanding is we have a lot of rocks to see in Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, over the next few days. Who doesn’t love ROCKS?!!! Hopefully my pancreas, colon and stomach make the decision to let me see all those cool rocks!
TaterTotTales 