Wilkommen from Capitol Reef, Utah!

Moab is a mountain biking and jeeping Mecca. It is filled with mountain bikers and Jeep drivers. You can easily tell the former from the latter by sight. Mountain bikers wear shorts and Teva sandals when they’re not on their bikes and they walk with a hip self-assuradness that says, “I can eat anything I want because I just hit the trails for four hours in the hot desert sun.”

In contrast, the 4x4 crowd seems to have a higher than average rate of cigarette consumption, big round bellies and hip holsters concealing camouflage colored Insulin pumps. These folks walk or hobble through town with a grim self-assuradness that says, “I can hit the IHOP any time I want because I’ve got my medicine and my jeep could roll at anytime and kill me and I’d sure hate to miss out on one more Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity before my Maker calls me home.” Or something like that.

With all the self-propelled and motorized Fat Tires out in the rocks, Moab isn’t generally known for its golf. And today, we found out that the Moab Golf Club takes itself about as seriously as mountain bikers and jeepers do. We had booked a 7:57 tee time weeks ahead of our visit. When we arrived at 7:30, we found ourselves standing outside the Pro Shop with several other groups, scratching our heads, wondering why the establishment was closed up tight as a drum. At just after 8, a bleary-eyed kid showed up, apologetically mumbling something about festivities from the night before and some sort of confusion about who was supposed to open. So much for the myth of Mormon temperance.

The course itself was beautiful, tucked among folds of red slick rock towers and cliffs. It was straightforward, with most holes showing up as subtle doglegs or long, wide straight-aways. But it was difficult to concentrate with the mowers running full tilt right next to several tee boxes and, in at least one case, motoring straight up the fairway into the line of fire. We played with a gentleman from South Africa who started out well but melted down as the round wore on. All told, it was a fun, yet uninspiring round of golf.

On the way out of town we loaded up with camping supplies and stumbled onto an errant WiFi network, which we used to quickly upload a post to this blog.

Several hours later we found ourselves in Capitol Reef, Utah’s “other” National Monument. Being the stepchild of Utah recreation areas, Capitol Reef encourages travelers to clamber into the many orchards that dot the property and pick all the fruit they care to eat at deeply, deeply discounted prices. All the peaches had been taken, and all that remained on the limbs for us were red apples. We declined.

Utah has an amazing amount of rock. It’s everywhere. It’s beautiful rock, but it’s rock nonetheless. With all this rock around, it was easy for me to understand why the early Mormon settlers took on several wives. You have to do something out there in the rocks, and procreating seems as good a hobby as any. It certainly beats the delusional thoughts that wracked the minds of Capitol Reef’s early founders, who gave the place its name because they said one of the rocks was reminiscent of the Nation’s capitol. Not only that, the rock created a barrier that made crossing nearly impossible. I really couldn’t see the Capitol in the namesake rock, but I did see forms reminiscent of Marshmallow Peeps, those delightful, brightly colored little mallow-birds that are so popular around Easter.

At Capitol Peeps, Caroline and I navigated a beautiful, yet narrow canyon. It was a good hike, and it included evidence of early bloggers, who had carved stories in rocks way up the stream bed. That night in camp I slept soundly. But at around 2 a.m. I heard the unmistakable creak of a cooler being opened. When I shown the light out into the night, a pair of shameful eyes glowed in the darkness. The marauding raccoon scampered away with a packet of hard salami slices, and I successfully woke up the entire campground securing our supplies inside the car.

“The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup,” I sang as lantern after lantern came on in tents and RVs all across the area.

Earlier in the day we came across a one-room cabin of one of the area’s earliest inhabitants. The man, his wife and 10 children all lived there, in a 10 by 20 foot shack. The boys slept out in the rocks. The littlest kids slept near the parents. The parents kept having children. Those rocks were doing their job.

And so it goes.