North to Alaska: Day 54

Welcome! Day 54/55 (Oct 01/02) of North to Alaska

Quote: There's a book that tells you where you should go on your vacation. It's called your checkbook. ~Author Unknown

The days of the Canyons. Day 54 and day 55 were spent in southern Utah, better known as Canyon Land. A few years back we briefly saw a small portion of this area. Cassie has always wanted to come back and see more. Now she has. As we started out we had our first encounter with “The Government” at its finest. Natural parks were all closed. Since state highways passed thru most of the parks people could still drive along the highway but were not allowed to take any road or do any activity not on the state highway. Luckily for the government we had not planned to partake of any activity except site seeing or Cassie would have been mad, she told me so. I just kept driving. Normally they charge a park entrance fee at the park entrance on Highway 9 even if you are just passing thru and do not plan on using any of the park side roads. Since they are not open they cannot charge a fee so I think more people took advantage of seeing what they could. We travelled slowly as on Day 54 there was a good deal of cars on the road. Many of the paved pull out were blocked but most people found a gravel place to pull into when needing to take pictures. I did take several. On day 55 the traffic was very lite.

I had expected the route and road to be worse than it was. I thought the road would be more like the mountains and coast line we had previously seen. I am sure if we had been allowed to take any of the side roads they would have been more to my expectations. We took Highway 9 out of Hurricane which turned into Highway 12 at Zion Natural Park. We then went on to Torrey about a 4 hour drive. Mostly on Day 54 we drove either on top of the canyons or at least part way up the sides of canyons. The views were fantastic. After staying the night in Torrey we slept in (Cassie I got up around 6:30) and headed out toward Blanding, UT. On Day 55 we travelled a lot in the bottom of canyons although at one point we were at elevation 7115. Leaving Torrey we first took Highway 24 then Highway 95 down to Blanding UT. The views were also fantastic but with a different perspective. The drive for this day was about 3 hours since we were not allowed to take any side trips.

Blanding was not originally planned as a stopping place. At first we were going on to Durango and ride the Durango/Silverton train the next day. But since we were not sure after leaving Canada of our route or timing I had not made any reservations for the train. I also assumed that this late in the year the train would not be crowded. My bad. I looked a few days back and it appeared that here were many open spaces for the train so again I assumed all was ok. When in Hurricane I decided to make reservations just to be sure we had a spot. As before when I checked I put in any train for Oct 3. They have an 8 AM and an 8:30 AM for that day. With that filter all cars showed up from the open air to the President’s car. I thought the seating was wide open. So I was surprised when in Hurricane, I actually selected the middle of the road price wise, Deluxe Car, it returned a message saying not available. I tried all the cars at both time slots and all combinations of train up and back, bus up and train back and train up and bus back for each time slots, nothing available. I had assumed the first filter would have returned not available instead of showing all options. I guess all programmers do not think as I do, I wonder why. So I tried the next day and found one seat in one car and two seats in another, Cassie almost had to stay in the hotel. So instead of spending three nights in Durango we elected to break the day into two and make the driving shorter. Blanding is a small town but has a Super 8 and a Quality Inn. We selected the Quality Inn it is small but nice and cheap. But as I write this I am using the battery on my laptop as the power is off at the motel, I am now wondering about my choice.

Tomorrow on t0 Durango and exciting times.