It’s Monday afternoon. I started this post yesterday, but we lost our internet connection in Bluff, Utah. It can get frustrating. The RV Park internet was down and Verizon couldn’t hold a signal.

On Saturday, before we left Lone Rock Beach at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, our new friends from the Netherlands, Rob and Bettea, stopped by. They were leaving, heading south to Flagstaff, then into the Grand Canyon National Park – the opposite route of our travels. Rob wanted to see what an American 40-foot motorhome was like inside. Donna gave them the tour. Then we took a look at their European (French) RV built on a Toyota HiLux chassis.

Rob is quite tall and he told me our motorhome is the only RV he’s ever been in where he could stand up straight. Their RV is small, but efficient. Inside, it’s much like the cabin of a small sailboat. The diesel engine in his Toyota gets about 25 miles per gallon.

We’ve run across quite a few European visitors over the past nine months. There seem to be two types. There are those who spend an extended amount of time here, say three to six months, and spend at least a few days at each stopping point to sightsee. The other type tries to see the entire country in three to five weeks. They check in to the RV park in the afternoon. They go sightseeing for an hour or two and are on the road again first thing in the morning.

We decided to leave Lone Rock Beach and hit the road around 10:30am. Friday was very windy and the forecast for Saturday was not only wind, but also rain arriving by evening.  I didn’t want to be in the soft sand and dirt if it was going to rain. We drove back to Page and stopped at Walmart again. We stocked up on a few things, then headed out on highway 98. We climbed about two thousand feet on this highway to an elevation of nearly 6,000 feet before we descended down to US160.

It was scenic east of the town of Kayenta. We passed Church Rock and Baby Rocks which are interesting rock formations the wind has sculpted. The Navajo reservation (officially called the Navajo Nation) is the largest native American reservation in the country. It covers approximately 27,000 square miles (about the size of West Virginia) in three states – Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The entire Hopi reservation is encompassed by the Navajo Nation.

We crossed about half of the width of the reservation before turning north on US191. US 191 is very rough in places. Although the speed limit was 65mph, I had to slow to about 45mph through some areas.

We pulled into Cottonwood RV Park in Bluff, Utah around 4pm, local time (we lost an hour coming from Arizona to Utah). We booked a site for two nights and quickly set up in a large pull-through site and didn’t have to drop the trailer.

The wifi worked fine when we first used it Saturday evening. After a while, it became very unstable and ultimately unusable. We shut down our laptops and watched the first two episodes of Lost before retiring for the night.

On Sunday morning, we were frustrated by the unstable wifi again. I couldn’t even get the Verizon Jetpack to work reliably. We had strong winds again and a few rain showers. Around noon, Donna and I strolled into town.  We’re located on the west end of town. The east end of town is about a mile down the road.

As we walked through town, we found historic Fort Bluff. Much of this old site has been reconstructed. Entry is free. We found the old cabins, wagons and buildings to be interesting.

 

From there, we walked to the east end of town where the Two Rock Trading Post and Two Rock Cafe are located. The photo shows where they got the name “Two Rock.” The rock formation is also known as the Navajo Twins.

We ate at the cafe. The food was good and the service was excellent. I had a Navajo pizza, which is a pizza made with a fry bread crust. Donna had the chili (and some of my pizza). I also ordered a Utah craft beer from a Salt Lake City brewery called Squatters. I had their pale ale called Full Suspension. The beer was only 4% ABV, but balanced nicely and was easy to enjoy.

This morning, we were frustrated with the Internet connectivity again. Donna was able to establish a connection with the RV park wifi. I couldn’t get anything.

It was windy and cold out. We decided to head north. We pulled out around 10:45am and followed US191. The road is newly paved and very smooth between Bluff and Blanding. We stopped in Blanding and topped up our fuel tank with 50 gallons of diesel fuel.

We climbed to an elevation of more than 7,000 feet before descending into Moab. Our coach is currently sitting at an elevation of 4,550 feet at the Spanish Trail RV Park, just south of the town.

When we arrived in Moab, we drove all the way through town. We saw several RV parks on both ends of town. I pulled over in a wide shoulder on the north end of town. We had 4G service, so Donna fired up her laptop to look for an RV park. We didn’t have a reservation anywhere, and didn’t know what was available. We weren’t able to do much research with no Internet in Bluff.

It turns out that our timing is impeccably bad. There’s an off-road rally starting tomorrow in Moab, called the Rally on the Rocks. It runs through Sunday. All of the RV parks are booked for the rally. We found this park for the night, but nothing for the rest of the week.

We’ll come up with a plan and move on tomorrow.