We took a quick trip to Utah this month. We decided it was worth the risk to take a careful trip for a change of perspective and remind ourselves of how much beauty there is in nature.
We stayed at a rental house in a RV Park in what remains of the town of Thompson Springs, Utah. This was a great home base for visiting both Arches National Park (about a 30 minute drive) and Canyonlands National Park (closer to an hour drive to the northern Island in the Sky side and about double that to the further away southern Needles side). Plus an easy drive to hiking around Moab. And Sego Canyon with a ghost town and petroglyphs was practically in our back yard. The town of Thompson Springs itself looked like it has dwindled to just a handful of houses and two campgrounds about a mile off of busy interstate. I actually found myself wondering if this town was the inspiration for Radiator Springs in the Cars movie.
There was a wool industry link to our tiny rental town that I didn’t know about ahead of time. It turns out that the town of Thompson Springs, Utah was one of the largest sheep shearing capitals west of the Mississippi in the 1930s and 1940s. And the view out our front door was amazing.
Mostly still on a road. 
Less of a road. 
Even less of a road. 
We’ve arrived…. 
We took the path less traveled more than once on this trip. Just above is a look at our trek out to find some petroglyphs near our rental. I won’t lie. I spent a good chunk of the short trip to these petroglyphs pretty sure the husband had us on a wild goose chase…..and complaining semi-loudly about it. We did find the petroglyphs though and they were pretty great.
This road to Elephant Hill on The Needles southern side of Canyonland National Park felt like a decent illustration of our trip. In the first picture you can see how very beautiful the area is, in the second the road is narrowing and by the third picture the narrow road going around a blind curve into the unknown is enough to disturb the calm a little bit. It’s still pretty though.
We spent quite a bit of time on hiking trails. Hiking is an outdoor activity where we can easily maintain social distance and we all love hiking (….or at least 3 out of the 4 of us love it and the youngest teen tolerates it mostly politely). The trails in Utah look a bit different than our normal and that was pretty great!
Because we were so very careful not to take any chances with COVID exposure, I didn’t manage a trip to the LYS (going inside would have broken our No Buildings Rule and I didn’t try to arrange curbside pickup around the hiking). Instead I ordered yarn from Desert Thread in Moab as soon as we got home. That yarn is currently following me home and I’m excited for it to arrive! I’m especially excited since I purchased some of the locally grown fiber she offers in her shop and we might have driven by the very sheep herds that produced my yarn.
This was our third try at a trip to Utah with the other two cancelling at the last minute due to circumstances beyond our control. I was super glad this trip worked out! This was the first time to eastern Utah for our whole family. Usually we travel places that the husband and I have been before to share them with our teens. It was a nice change to visit a brand new place for all four of us.
Working on the Prairie Fire Shawl while stopped on the Interstate. 
Working on the Beach Glass Cowl on the way to The Needles south of Moab. 
Starting the Citrus Shawl for the long drive home. 
Knitting on a bright yellow Hot Chocolate Hat.
I managed quite a bit of knitting on the 12-hour drive there and back! And the knitting in my lap was good for everyone involved while we sat in stop-and-go traffic on I-70 for almost three hours on the way west out of Denver. Knitting is how I maintain a mostly calm disposition in situations like that. We were lucky that we made it through the mountain passes before the biggest blizzard in years blew into the area. And everyone else was lucky I had plenty of knitting to stay chipper while we slowly made our way past the delay.
In case anyone else is feeling the itch to travel here is how we very much minimized our exposure along the way. We followed our now normal pandemic rules for this trip – a strict No Buildings Rule (no restaurants, no grocery stores, no stores or buildings at all except very quick forays for pit stops properly double masked and distanced), renting a private spot instead of a hotel room (on this trip it was a rental home/cabin at the RV park) and always wearing our masks out and about….even outdoors. I actually stayed double-masked most of the trip even while hiking.
