Canyonlands National Park, With A Side of Pucker!

I’m happy to report that we are skunk-free, to start the day! The vinegar soaked rags worked and my clean sheets stayed fresh and our breakfast was mostly stink free (Ben overcooked the bacon a little lol). 🙌 Mr. And Mrs. Wisconsin are packing up so FAST that I’m curious if maybe they got the full brunt of last night’s skunk attack. But I also don’t have oodles and oodles of free time to go ask that little question. Just as a side note… Is it just me or do Wisconsin people seem to get ten to twelve added hours in their day, with the only stipulation being that they’re only allowed to use the extra hours for chit chat sessions? 🤭 I’m terrible, I know. Our Wisconsin friends are sweet, bless their hearts, but very chatty.

I’m extra chipper this morning because I had another shower victory. Today makes a total of two shower victories in the last fourteen days. A shower victory means no new bruises, no blood and no bandages, of any kind are required post-shower. Maybe, just maybe, I’m finally learning how to shower and shampoo my hair in a tiny shower stall, with minimal injuries. I’ve only attempted shaving ONCE in the Airstream shower. My first attempt was so horrendous that I nearly died of blood loss. The end result of that shaving attempt was the shame of walking around for two days, with little pieces of one ply, cheap ass RV toilet paper stuck to about forty-nine spots on my legs and armpits. Never again! I wanted it to be physically possible, but it’s just not. 😤

We do have a tiny bit of bad early morning news… we had another toiletry fatality and yet another campground memorial service. This time it was an item of mine and a pretty important one. I don’t know how many times I’ve sweetly tried to train Ben to close the Airstream potty lid, especially before opening the cabinet above. 🙈 The training obviously hasn’t taken root!

So with my armpits, generously, coated in Ben’s manly deodorant, I’ve packed up the backpack, in anticipation of a another full day of rock exploring. Yay for rocks (secretly 😩😩😩).

Once again, we leave poor Peppy behind today. Breaks my heart, every time. Not because she’s so old that we don’t think she can handle a day of rock exploring (we all know she’d label it poop exploring). The national parks don’t allow dogs anymore. That was the main reason why we left Charlie and Bailey with Noni and Pop-pop, to run around on their property to destroy, hunt and kill. Better there than destroy the Airstream while we’re gone six to seven hours a day. 🙈 It’s just not fair to lock three dogs in a camper all day. However, Peppy likes to sleep almost as much as she likes to eat, so Pepper has big plans for the day. A FAT NAP! I’m kinda in her camp today, but we only have one last day in Moab. No rest for the weary!

After an exciting 45 minute drive through lots of rocks, we arrived at Canyonlands National Park to look at more rocks. We found the parking lot, which connected to the trail for our first planned exploration. The only problem was that there wasn’t a parking space available. Especially for Ben’s huge truck! Boy, people sure do love their rocks!

After circling 23 times, we finally got lucky and happened to be at the right place at the right time, as someone departed. So up the trail we went to find our first special rock of the day. And no, it wasn’t phallic shaped. Well, I guess if you turn the picture this way or that way, use a little imagination about the rock’s potential and kick in a Viagra, it could definitely be phallic shaped.

Of course, once again, I was too scared to venture out where that person is, to get the winning scrapbook pic, so we’ll just say this was Bob, our friend from Wisconsin and move on. “Hey Bob! Pssst! You’re sitting under a limp rock penis!” 🤣

So as we made our way back to the truck we discussed what to do next. We honestly hadn’t planned a ton of strenuous hikes for the day, due to my crazy and unpredictable pancreas and my out of control Lupus flare. I kept checking the park map and kept seeing these crazy long hikes and honestly, it was only to see more rocks. Fine. I’ll admit it. I’M ROCKED OUT!

As I was checking the map, I did see something that caught my eye and it just happened to be on the way back down the mountain, headed towards the campground. A road, which technically wasn’t part of Canyonlands, nor was it technically part of Dead Horse Canyon State Park, which was just outside the national park. It was just a DIRT road, called Pucker Pass. Intriguing! I know that my husband is always up for an adventure and who could resist an adventure with Pucker Pass in the name?

Now granted, I have no clue what I’m getting myself into, but I have two choices and I’m getting desperate to avoid touristy rocks. One, I can wear myself out looking at more famous rocks or go for a possibly insane bumpy ride out into nowhere. I’ve definitely decided that I’m DONE with rocks, so I convinced Ben that we definitely needed to check this Pucker Pass out. Didn’t take much convincing, especially since we weren’t dragging an Airstream behind us, this time. 🤦🏼‍♀️

This is one of those adventures where the road isn’t physically marked, but it popped up on the truck navigation, so we knew we were in the right spot. When we arrived at the dirt road, I started to understand the pucker part. It was a dirt road mixed with small boulders to drive over and through. And as far as I could see down the road, it looked like it dropped off into a free fall to the canyon below. Pucker up buttercup because Ben was all in. 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️

We followed the road until it got to the point where it looked like it was about to drop straight off into nowhere and I made him stop! LOL The rocks that we had to drive over, to continue on, just kept getting bigger and bigger and I know it crushed Ben to stop because he was finally having fun with his 4×4 truck.

We got out briefly and walked on some rocks until we got scared of a potential rattle snake encounters and decided our mission for the day had been accomplished. The one thing I really noticed about this particular spot was how QUIET it was. I asked Ben to just stand there with me, out towards the edge of the canyon, BUT NOT TOO FAR, and just listen with me. Dead silence. You couldn’t even hear the wind. Until Ben broke wind and the echo was booming! 💨 😩 It’s not fair how free Ben is with his farts. I swear he needs to check HIS pants when he does that!!! That’s gonna catch up to him, as he ages!

Time to go back to the campground. I’ve had my explorations for the day and I finally feel like I’ll puke if I see another rock.

We got back to the campground and everyone had deserted us, which was just fine by me. I could sit outside and pretend I wasn’t surrounded by rocks, at least for a little while. UGH and BIG SIGH! As you can see from the pic below, I can’t even do that. We’re surrounded!

Tomorrow we start the long journey towards our home in Florida. Our first stop on the return is Central City, Colorado. We’re there for two nights so we can visit with Ben’s brother, David and his family. We better sleep well and skunk-free tonight, because our little nephew, Peter, is so stinking cute, but a huge bundle of energy!