THE Trip, Moab Utah, The Move, The 4-Wheeling Photo Op

CABS for Reflections From the Fence

Originally Man and I had snagged just a few nights in Moab.  We hear that lots of visitors to the area can stop off for a night or two and visit a national park, or two, and be gone in about 72 hours.  We see and hear this attitude stated time and time again during THE Trip.  Well, that just does not work for us.  We need more time!  So, when we realized that those few nights were never going to do, we set about finding another place to stay.  We actually did find another campsite, cross town, for 7 more nights, the last campsite in that park.  We would shoe horn Tana in and ended up parking Big Butt in another campsite that was very small (with permission).  But we were in and we now had that precious commodity, MORE TIME!

Moab is a very popular area, it is particularly busy in the spring during Jeep week and the annual car show.  Our timing was perfect, we arrived just after the Jeep week and just before the car show.  In fact, the car show was one of the reasons we could not stay longer at the first park.  Our last evening in that first park the cars started arriving in Moab.  Really neat cars, some old, some custom, and most, mmmm, sans mufflers, so, they had great loud rumbles.  That park we were in had a lot of rumblers.  I was hoping the new park would not have so many rumblers.  And, I was right, they did not.

The new park, and our campsite, however, backed up to a hunk of vacant land where they were preparing for a 4 wheeler type competition.  No, we were not aware of that when we registered.  Not that it would have mattered, mind you, it was the last campsite in Moab, anywhere.  Period.  So, we would have taken it anyway, even if we had known.

The organizers of this upcoming event were "building" the track. That meant a lot of large noisy equipment with those annoying back up beepers.  Some of my friends know only too well how I feel about that kind of noise pollution.  Ya, I tend to have violent outbursts when forced into listening to those beepbeepbeeps for more than about 1 hour.  After 12 hours of that kind of noise I am ranting and raving, it gets ugly, real ugly.

I was resigned, realizing that we would be out sightseeing most days, praying they did not work until midnight.     I was more than thrilled when the beepbeepbeeps ceased and the 4 wheelers started testing the track.  I mean, here was an opportunity I may never get again, they were riding very close to the back of Tana, and as long as they stayed ON the track and did not slide down and into the campground, I was good.  And, I was CLOSE!  All I had to do was open the window and put Sony to work.  Ya, eventually I did go outside for a few shots.

Sony, take it away!  By the way, none of these photos were cropped, yea, we were that close!

Interesting to me, a greenhorn, they did not wear any seatbelts or protective gear.  The machines were TOTALLY awesome!  Look at what they can do with them.  Not like this is something I am going to participate in any time soon, well, never, but, I sure did enjoy seeing them in action.  Sand spraying, wheels stretched from rock to rock, almost like they were walking.  AWESOME!!

The crew left before dark, and we never saw or heard the earth/rock moving equipment or the 4-wheelers again.  A few hours was all, my chance, grabbed, and recorded!  Wahhooooo!!

And, then there was the sunset that night, photo has not been edited in any way, really:

The perfect end to a wonderfully different and interesting day.  You just never know what you might learn or see next.

Photos from April 29, 2011.
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