MY 50-STATE STRATEGY

Your humble correspondent under the South Window at Arches National Park in eastern Utah.

Message from Moab

With Mexican Hat, Utah and the Valley of the Gods regretfully in the rear view mirror, I headed north through the southwestern Utah desert ‘til I reached Moab
Moab sure looks like a ski town, but it’s one without a mountain. Although the peaks of the Le Sal Mountains tower above this hamlet, none have been carved out to cater to the downhill and snowboard crowd. Jammed between two high red-rock canyon walls, Moab’s stuffed with cafes, restaurants and fast-food joints, motels and youth hostels, bookstores and souvenir shops, auto, motorcycle and bicycle supply houses and many outdoors-adventure outfitters.

The foothills of the Rockies beckon from outside  Moab.

A Mecca for mountain bikers, motorcyclists, off-roaders, rock climbers and river rafters, Moab does offer some cross-country skiing in the winter months at the foot of the nearby Le Sal range, but it draws most of its tourist dollars from its location, nestled between two wonderful and very different National Parks: the Arches and Canyonlands.
Triple-A seems stingy with its recommendations for spots to stop and camp at along the road, sometimes completely ignoring towns with more than a few serviceable areas. Here at Moab, however, the AAA boosts no less than 25 camping, RV and cabin parks in the vicinity.
Yes, folks, Moab really, really wants your disposable income. C’mon out here, let ‘em prove it to you …
Not that Moab was without obstacles: road resurfacing had the main drag torn asunder, to misplace a nautical term, from stem to stern. Your federal tax dollars at work, my travel time in tatters.
I finally pulled in a RV park about mid-town and, after securing a spot, was going about setting up for a visit of a few days when I was approached by a little lady, limping along, her left leg in a walking brace. After noticing my Florida plates, she declared, “You’re a long way from home!” After I told her I really was from the Boston, she said she recognized my accent as she and her husband had many friends from Beantown and The Big Apple.
So began a brief but very pleasant association with two kindred spirits, Rocket and Kelly. Camping one site removed from my trailer, this pair from north of the border had pulled in only a short while before me.

Rocket & Kelly

Down from Whistler, British Columbia, they prove out that old maxim of how opposites attract: Rocket, nicknamed after Montreal hockey great Rocket Richard whose surname he almost shares, is a laid-back, square-shouldered, retired fireman. He’s currently serving as Man Friday, butler and chief bottle-washer to Kelly, the diminutive and chatty ski instructor in a leg brace.
(Several days after we met, Kelly asked me if she and Rocket would rate a mention in this blog and, if so, how would I characterize them? After some thought, I decided on a Looney Tunes cartoon couple, Foghorn Leghorn and Tweety Bird: He the huge-in-comparison, stoic no-nonsense take-charge guy, she the tiny-in-contrast, never-ending stream of consciousness personified, balancing precariously upon his shoulder.)
And hey, they’re both huge Booby Orr fans, saying several times that the majority of Canadians serious about hockey take into account Orr’s injury-abbreviated career and so consider him the best to ever to lace up his skates, with Wayne Gretzky a close second.
Rocket and Kelly are traveling the western U.S. in a RV after Kelly had recent knee surgery in Kansas City. Saddled with a very serious injury that occurred in a ski training accident, Kelly was denied the procedure in Canada. The Canadian government’s medical evaluator gave them some lame excuses about her age (early 40s) and professional status, but it seems, after it was explained to me, that you can lay the blame for this snafu squarely on the nationalized healthcare system north of the border (“Take a number and go to the back of line 68. … That’s right, back of the line. … Yep, that’s the one … Around that corner, the end of the line’s there, three-and-a-half, blocks down that alley … Don’t worry about that, there’s port-a-potties down there”).
Seriously, Rocket and Kelly both swear that the Canadian system is serviceable for health maintenance and in emergencies, but if an expensive procedure – such as knee surgery – is required, you’re plum out of luck. Kelly, however, held a trump card: she knew a Kansas City surgeon who skies at Whistler and he volunteered to help her out.

Forgive me now, as I editorialize briefly (be aware it's May 2006 as I wrote this, without benefit of a crystal ball or Tarot cards):

Remember that this Canadian system, which could deny one needed medical care on some evaluator’s flimsy whim (with no recourse or second opinion even considered), is funded by a general national sales tax of 10 percent on all items bought except food -- and is still forever in a serious funding crisis.

Several examples of a needle.

 (Under the socialist political system which stunts Canadians’ financial growth, personal as well as business-wise, this burden is on top of provincial, or state, sales taxes of at least seven-to-10 percent, depending on the province, very high national and provincial income tax rates - on average much higher than in the U.S., gas taxes, cigarette taxes, liquor taxes, etc., along with fees tacked on for many activities. Maybe it’s me, but Canada sounds very taxing, kind of like Massachusetts.)
Canada has about 30-35 million residents, all stuck under this flawed health program. Bring this type of plan south to America, extrapolate it out to fit in our about 300 million citizens and you got a problem. No, make that 10 times the problems. Bottom line: everybody pays into the system, but anything expensive is either not covered or greatly delayed. If you need leg surgery, learn to like your limp. If you desperately need a triple bypass – but haven’t had a heart attack yet -- just hope you can last at least 18 months or a couple of years before getting one. Otherwise you must he wealthy enough to completely afford independent care or be unbelievably fortunate enough to know a generous American surgeon. And, even if those two options were available, you still have to pay the general sales tax - of 10 percent.
Now I’m no fan of the insurance mob, as it seems bogus to pay through the nose for something you hope to never, ever use. But the Canadian system is no panacea; it’s a bad idea, absurdly expensive and taxing to common folk with coverage that’s full of holes.
Which brings me to America. Perhaps tort reform here could drive down the ridiculously onerous malpractice insurance rates U.S. doctors must pay to protect themselves (I've heard figures of $80,000-$100,000 annually; I don't care how much you make, that's a lot of cake for something you hope to never, ever use!), forcing the bulk of those costs to be passed down by health insurers into the single rates we all pay.
A small number of individual lawyers, of course, rake in huge fees from some astoundingly generous medical malpractice awards and thus have a huge stake in making sure that tort reform never passes into law. To that end, the American Bar Association lobby in Washington is constantly fighting, tooth-&-nail.

Mesas and buttes form a pseudo city in the desert.

Now, certainly not all lawyers are crooks, and not all doctors are perfect. If a doctor – willfully or not - screws up, the courts should, in a fair fashion, screw that doctor to the wall financially, providing remedy and some sort of small comfort to a wronged patient. But we are all paying, via our exorbitant health insurance rates and fees, for a small number of crazy tort judgments in some far-flung cases brought forth by a few money-hungry, ambulance-chasing, jury-shopping shysters (read up on the filthy rich-from-shady-tort-case-fees John Edwards’ pre-Senate career in front of the bar should you need a clear example of this style of barrister).
It’s all just plain wrong, and something’s got to give. No surprise, but I’m on the tort reform bandwagon. E-mail your representatives in DC, tell him or her you think tort reform might be worth a try. That’s except, of course, for you Bay Staters. It’s useless, for all your senators and congressmen are either members of the bar or else deep in the ABA’s back pocket. Despite all their lip service to the contrary, the Massachusetts delegation’s voting record on legal issues – the only true barometer - time-and-again backs up this assertion. Sorry, I know the truth hurts …
Tort reform won’t mean medical care will be free. It is big business now, and, just like any other, it costs to do business. However, tort reform will make medical treatments more reasonable and affordable. That’s just common sense.
Anyway, it’s your money and, ultimately, it’s these few sleazy lawyers with greedy motives whose shady actions are forcing up malpractice insurance rates for doctors, and therefore your rates, effectively picking your pocket.
Thanks for staying tuned while I vented; now back to Moab:

Larry & Navajo Joe.

Also around and about was an older fellow named Larry who was accompanied by his dog, Navajo Joe. Larry told us he had rescued this happy hound about eight years ago from a Navajo reservation in Arizona just over the border from Mexico. Navajo weighed just 18 lbs. when Larry scooped him up off the desert floor, so the vet was the next stop. The doggy doc told Larry that Navajo was probably around three or four years old at that point and most likely a mix of Irish setter and Mexican Grey Wolf -- an endangered species, one of which I recently viewed in a zoo in Carlsbad, N.M. Sweet-natured and healthy now at his full weight and with a heavy coat of red and black fur, Navajo Joe provides good company for Larry, a gentle eccentric who, at age 73, travels North America in a oversized van he customized for extended trips in comfort. (Larry may well have been the one who coined that bumper-sticker motto, “Little Red Riding Hood was a big fat liar, a wolf won’t hurt anyone,” for he quotes it often.)
A father of six, Larry is a nature photographer of -- judging by his prints -- prodigious talent. His eventual destination in the lower 48: Puget Sound in northwest Washington state and the ports of departure for the Alaska Marine Highway ferries – a voyage northwest that Larry will soon sail on (and one I took 10 years ago this August, which I shall always fondly remember for its beautiful scenery, ashore as well as at sea, and for its true relaxation).
The four of us shared several dinner feasts, a couple of cocktail hours, some genuine conversation and more than a few laughs. Just one more example of how very lucky I’ve been so far to meet many such generous and authentic characters along the trail.
I spent a day each exploring the nearby national parks, and will detail those areas below, but first, as we were all breaking down to leave, I briefly engaged in a conversation with the fellow who had pulled into the next campsite late the prior evening. His name was Joe and he was in his 70s. Joe had seen the Mt. Washington sticker that is affixed to the back of the trailer and, demonstrating once again what a small world we live in, told me he and his wife were from Saco, Maine – home to one of my favorite restaurants, the Kerryman.
Along with several pals, I stumbled upon this eatery between 15 and 20 years ago during an evening ride north to ski country and it has become a must stop on almost all trips through that area. It offers the best lobster pie your correspondent has ever enjoyed (and I freely admit that I’ve partaken in many).

Golden glow these Arches

As you head north out of Moab, you quickly cross over the mighty Colorado River and then enter Arches National Park . The gate is that close to Moab – about two miles away. You swiftly begin to climb up the windy roads between the canyon walls and suddenly the state of the scenery may bring some strange thoughts to mind.

The now-collapsed Delicate Arch.

 To me, the Arches looks like that fun couple, Mother Nature and Father Time, conspired to chisel it out of stone: Mother Nature held a fearsome chisel while Father Time swung a mighty hammer, cleaving and smashing the gold- and red-rock formations. In some spots, it looks as if these ethereal giants then played with the stones as if children, piling them up like building blocks and later scattering some of the blocks about, as children sometimes will.
Strange thoughts, stranger looking place …
Huge squared-off sandstone formations, tall spires or fins, massive granite domes, colossal stones balancing atop smaller stone spires, and, of course, the many, many arches. The geological story of the Arches differs slightly from the familiar Southwestern tale of the tape. Sorry, it’s no fairy tale, but instead the result of the fact that the park lies on top of an immense underground salt bed. Thousands of feet deep in some spots here, a salt bed is generally unstable under the pressure that the Earth’s constant sub-surface movement produces.

Fellow travelers provide scale against the Double Arch.

Faults deep in the earth created instability on the surface and this movement caused the cracks that later became the famous Arches. Over time, water seeped into these cracks and ice formed, forcing those cracks open. After much erosion, wind and water pounded these huge sandstone surfaces and stripped away the debris fallen from the holes. Many of these structures collapsed, but others survived to produce the more than 2,000 arches catalogued so far in the park today. Those arches listed range in size from just three feet wide to the Landscape Arch, which measures 306 feet across. Divergent minerals in the sandstone and soils provide for many visual delights. The evidence of these natural processes, however, is circumstantial, as the park handout readily admits.
The park gate is at an elevation of just under 4,100 feet above sea level. It’s just a little less than 18 miles from that gate to the Devils Garden campground, but you rise up almost 4,000 feet in elevation. Along the way, with several short side trips, you can view such natural wonders as the Tower of Babel, a huge vertical formation and the Fiery Furnace area, a kaleidoscope of colors upon a variety of surfaces. There’s a huge Balanced Rock along with a personal favorite, the Parade of Elephants – several huge geological anomalies reaching for the sky, along with many arches, among them the Turret Arch, the Double Arch, the Sand Dune Arch and the Delicate Arch (a trail marker near the thin, frail looking Delicate Arch declares that it will soon share the fate that has befallen New Hampshire’s Old Man in the Mountain, which it did in August of 2008).

A camping site in the amazing Devil's Garden.

The Park Service allows tourists to get up close and personal with many of these structures as you can access numerous arches with short hikes. Serious hikers will find many more such opportunities available to them along the park’s 13 trails.
The Devils Garden offers a unique camping experience with desert conditions at about an 8,000-foot altitude and 52 campsites scattered among beautiful red sandstone formations with a mountainous backdrop. I couldn’t access this area after dark, but was told that the stargazing here is sensational.
As usual with the National Park Service, there is a very informative Visitors Center near the park entrance and various comfort stations scattered throughout.
You could spend a couple of days exploring the Arches, but a thrifty sightseer can cover it in about four hours time.
Let’s play a little Canyonlands

With just a little over a 30-mile drive from downtown Moab, you reach the gates to Canyonlands National Park . If you consult a map, it appears that the Arches and Canyonlands stand side-by-side. But geologically and visually, they are worlds apart. At the Arches, almost every remarkable spectacle requires you to gaze upward. At Canyonlands, nearly the exact opposite is true.
Canyonlands lies at the heart of the Colorado Plateau and -- once again according to the park handout -- water and gravity are the primary forces that shaped this extraordinary landscape, fashioning the hundreds of magnificent canyons, mesas and buttes, along with some arches and spires.

One of many canyons in Canyonlands.

If you check a map of the park, it seems that the mighty Colorado River and the formidable Green River plot to divide Canyonlands into three parts or districts, with the Colorado flowing in a southwesterly direction and the Green joining it from the Northwest. It looks as though a watery, twisty Y trisects the park with the arms splitting off the north and the stem partitioning the south.
Each district has a name: Island in the Sky is the northern section; Needles, where most of the spires are located, is the southeastern section with the wild and remote Maze section holding the southwestern corner. Needles and Island in the Sky are accessible by auto transport, while the ledges and labyrinths of the Maze are strictly the province of hikers, backcountry campers and your occasional bighorn sheep.
Since Island in the Sky was the area closest to Moab, that was the section chosen for exploration. While driving north from Mexican Hat, I had passed the long access road west out to the Needles, and was intrigued by names of some of its landmarks, such as Paul Bunyan’s Potty, but I had to pass by that opportunity to reach the central location of Moab.

A road winding along the cliffs through the Canyonlands.

After some morning chores and shopping, and with plans for a supper feast with my three new friends, Kelly, Rocket and Larry, I was a little pressed for time when I reached the park gate just after 1 p.m. I spoke to a park ranger at the Visitors Center and asked where one could find the best photo opportunities; she shrugged her shoulders and smiled, saying “Everywhere.”
And she was right. Despite the sometime overcast skies, the views were wonderful at every turn.
Although the windy, twisty roads do not follow the rivers, they certainly mimic their path. I made my way south along the 12-mile road out to the Grand View Point, rising more than 2,000 feet in altitude along the way.
The Grand View is certainly all that, offering a sweeping panorama of colorful canyons and mesas for as far as the eye can see. In the distance you notice both the Colorado and Green Rivers as they carve their path through the stone.
Other scenery of note was the Buck Canyon (see above), the Orange Cliffs, the Holman Spring Canyon and Mesa Arch.
All and all, it was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

A bargain, then Eastward Ho!

As I was soon to head east then north up into the mountains and the Rocky Mountain National Park and then later down into the city of Denver for a few days, I decided to try and store the trailer in the Moab area and then return to pick it up for the trek west. To that end, I found a storage area and stop to inquire about prices. Having no idea about prices, I was expecting the tab to runs about $10 dollars a day for 7-10 days.
Here I met Franky, the storage lot caretaker and a delightful woman about to celebrate her 80th birthday. She told me that the company didn’t do short contracts and that the least amount of time I could rent a spot for was one month. Steeling myself for the bad news, I asked how much a month would cost. She said, “33 dollars.” I was instantly sold, and then stored the trailer after unpacking my tent and camping gear. Rocky Mountains, here I come!

I am actually kind of glad to be getting out of the Southwest for a while, as I was swiftly running out of adjectives to describe this beguiling area. I’m scraping the bottom of my vocabulary barrel, struggling to describe this beauty. Perhaps I may find a bigger, better thesaurus in Denver …

To read about three stops made in Colorado, including the Rocky Mountain National Park, click HERE

Truck and trailer provide scale at Wilson Arch, the first arch I encountered, just south of Moab and due east on the Needles section of Canyonlands NP.