Vagabender

The Road To Goblin Valley -- Notes For Travelogue

Jacob's Lake Inn, that's where all the cooped up and attractive service industry girls are at, just so you know. We'd thought for a minute that they might be at the North Rim Lodge, the Rough Rider Saloon. No dice there, but on our way out we stopped off for breakfast in Jacob's Lake, a tiny junction town just outside the Kaibob National Forest. Shazam. Good coffee and a staff of bright young faces spending their summer getting rustic. The prettiest one was from Alaska and since Mark was talking about working up there on the slope (the pipeline) we had a little exchange that was human rather than commercial in nature.

I know this can all sound a bit skeevy, but we're perfect gentlemen in these situations. We may have a crass conversation about the situation later, but for three guys on the road, these are some of the moments we live for; a little talk and attention from a pretty girl. Quite a treat.

After that it's a day of hard driving.

We return through Zion in the daylight this time and it's quite the natural spectacle, 11 miles of windy old two lane through a sinuous cliff-ringed canyon. There's road work this summer so we have about a half hour delay on one of the switchback. Luke and I do a few pushups and we all stand around in the heat of the day watching the road crew spread and settle asphalt. There are maybe 50 or more cars backed up and a lot of people are venturing out of the AC to stand around in the road, sort of a party atmosphere. It's good people-watching; grandparents with video cameras, Germans in rental cars, teenagers taking the chance to get away from their parents for a few minutes, the whole scene.

Once we're moving we blow right out of there and out to I-15. There's still a lot of ground to cover and the back roads aren't going to cut it today. We stop off in Cedar City again to get supplies and make sandwiches. The atmosphere gets dicy sometimes when we're all low on blood sugar. It sneaks up on you. One minute you're driving along fine and the next you're outrageously annoyed at the guy sitting next to you because he's not putting music on the stereo fast enough. It takes a moment of clarity to realize what's going on, and then it can be a little embarrassing. "Sorry I snapped at you, dude. I was really hungry." But that's how it really is, so selah.

making our sandwiches on the tailgate of Ol' Shifty, we talk for a minute with a guy who works there at the grocery. Luke's misfits shirt is the entree, he's an old punk rocker so we talk scenes briefly and he recommends a sweet-sounding state campground that's too out of our way to hit. The plan is to gun for Goblin Valley and then begin making our way south into Arizona proper, down to Tucson and Taelyn's for the 4th of July.

After lunch I pull driving duty, barreling up I-15 and experimenting with the AC to see what it does with the gas mileage. The interstate speeds in the southwest are pretty high. Posted limit is usually 75, but you can be doing ten more and still be in the slow lane. Even the semis are hauling ass.

It turns out that the AC kills the mileage. I'd thought that perhaps eliminating the wind drag of the open windows would be a good tradeoff, but I suppose with the two rocket boxes on top open windows are water under the bridge. In any event, I'd also been assuming that the junction between I-15 and I-70 would be a little Americavile outpost; a McDonald's, gas station, maybe a Starbucks or something. Turns out I was wrong there too; this is the very beginning of I-70, and there ain't nothing there but a long banking right turn you can take at 60 miles an hour and then a steady climb up over the mountain.

So we're starting up that hill and the gas gauge is sitting on the E line, which we know is a ways from really empty, but still we've got these mountains to get over and 23 miles until the town of Joseph, which we're hoping has gas. I kill the AC and use Neutral on the way down the hill, and with the emergency gas light steady on we make it to Joseph, which is a real piece of vanishing America.

We pull in to an unbranded stop, just 5 pumps lined up on a gravel lot with no shade structure or price signs. The first three are Diesel and there's a young llama tied up to one of them and an older man doing some maintenance work on another. I gas up the truck on the last pump, which is regular unleaded (no choice for plus or super) and it sucks down 17.19 gallons. We have a 17.2 gallon tank, no kidding. Inside is a kind of mom and pop general store with attached gun/hunting shop. The woman behind the counter is a tall willowy blonde who would be beautiful except for her unfortunate acne scars. I pay for the gas and get some peanut M&M's and we're back on the road.

The first 150 miles of Interstate 70 are really amazing. After Joseph come a few larger sized towns with more Americaville type settings, and then there's 110 miles there's nothing, just a lot of winding mountain canyon driving, a few rest areas for truckers getting drowsy on a long haul, and a series of turn offs marked "Ranch Exit, No Services." The descent is truly amazing driving. There's very little traffic (mostly semis) and the road cuts through some really amazing red rock canyons, mountain crags and mesa vistas. Feels like driving through history, and we heat it up with some Zeppelin and Metallica, singing along as we catch a tail wind and bomb it for Highway 24, the open range and Goblin Valley.

Location

UT

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