Moab: Friday, April 16th

We had an easy morning of school to allow for catch-up time on some of the little things we needed to finish.

In the afternoon, we drove the Utah Scenic Byway, along Potash Road, looking for dinosaur tracks. We found the location of some three-toed allosaurus tracks in the Navajo/Kayenta sandstone interface. We needed binoculars to see them well from the road and then climbed the rocks to get a little closer. It was pretty cool to see these fossils up close.

We continued further along with road until the paving ended and the dirt road began. Dave had been waiting to drive this off-road route all week; it took us into the canyon, which was neat. We were traveling along the area we could see from above when we visited Dead Horse Point Sate Park. Unfortunately Dave was really the only one enjoying the experience. The extremely bumpy surface didn’t make for a smooth ride at all! We passed cows grazing next to the road and mountain bikers working their way along the winding track. Finally, Dave did turn around; we were all grateful!

We made a stop at Jug Handle Arch on the way back – it’s awesome that there are random arches around the area.

While I went to the grocery store, Dave and the kids spent some time at the library. Apparently Moab’s Library won the ‘Best Library in America’ Award in 2007 – who even knew that such an award existed!

We enjoyed our week here, Archview Campground was well located for the Parks. There is a church on the campground that was built specifically for the purposes of a made-for-tv movie: 'Riders of the Purple Sage', so it is unused but a cool example of an old-style western church. Archview and the surrounding area have been the set for many feature films, including 'Geronimo', several John Wayne movies, and most recently, 'Breakdown' , staring Kurt Russell. It is easy to see this as a movie location and in fact, the State Park was used for a few, Thelma and Louise is the one we remember most.