Wednesday, December 24
518 miles Las Vegas – Moab (I-15 to 9 (Zion Mt. Carmel Road) to 89 to 12 (Scenic Byway, loaded with National and State Parks) to 24 East to 70 E to 191 South)
Gorgeous day!! We were checked out and driving away from Paris to Vons at 6:15.
Leaving Las Vegas:
We loaded up on groceries for two days since we don’t know what sort of stores we’ll have in Moab. We were the only people in Vons except for the workers loading the shelves… LOL. We were on the road again by 7:10 heading up I-15 towards Zion.
We lost an hour when we left Nevada so I started looking for coffee places on Yelp when I realized it was already 10a local time. Up came Main Street Cafe in Hurricane just below the entrance to Zion. It had 4-1/2 stars which is a lot. What a find! Two young women servers and a male cook. Maybe 10 tables most were full and they were ALL regulars. Bob ordered the Begian Waffle with sausage and I had the Veggie Scramble (two eggs, mushrooms, peppers, onions with sliced avocado and tomato on the side). Bob had an Americano and me a cappuccino with soy — so perfect; I asked for one exactly like it for the road.
I have to start taking the photos from Bob’s side… his waffle was humongous. Hahaha. He likes this photo:
This was on the wall by our table, which is an appropriate motto for our road trips/life.
I took hundreds — literally and I mean literally — of photos and you will see too many but it was so hard to cull! We went through Zion, Bryce, Escalante and Capitol Reef on the way to Moab. It was breathtaking.
We saw big horn sheep on the side of the road in Zion and cows on the road outside Boulder followed five minutes later by deer. What follows is a very small percentage of our day in photos…..
The sunset behind us:
We got to Moab and the condo at 6:30p. It was pitch black so we used both our phones to get into the lockbox and enter. By the time we got in, dumped our bags and loaded everything into the fridge it was after 7p. We headed back out to the one restaurant we saw that was open. We were starving as we only snacked on apples, nuts and water in the car since breakfast.
The Branding Iron. Beer only (I had a Stella draught, Bob had a Pepsi). Welcome to Utah. The menu was the anti-Sharon menu of all-time. We had intended to be here early enough to make onion soup for dinner with a salad but…. Bob had the chicken fried chicken (really) which came with a baked potato, Cowboy (baked) beans and a dinner salad. I ordered a baked potato and a dinner salad. Can we say carbs?? The salad was good and full of carrots, cukes, red onion and the baked potato was good, with a little butter. Bob’s chicken came with white gravy which really bummed him out. It was all fine. We eat well enough!!
Went back to the condo and watched an old John Wayne movie with a glass of our good wine and some dark chocolate.
Did I mention that everyone has wished us and everyone else Merry Christmas this whole trip? Is it only Northern California that is so f’g PC everyone is afraid to ‘offend’? MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Bob and Sharon's Travel Diary 