©Countrybagging.com
Day 21 - Sat 29 April 06
The clocks moved forward one hour last night. Excitement at breakfast! A bloke sat opposite me, and just pointed at his selection on the menu. The waitress said "you just want bacon?" and he nodded. The she said "Do you speak?" (in a pleasant way, it seems that there's a deaf guy on the train, and she's been passing notes to him..). Anyway she tries again and asks if he wants anything else, and he points to Eggs. I noted that they didn't sit anyone else next to us even though there were two spare seats.
When he comes to pay a) he doesn't have his ticket stub (I don't know why this is a big deal), and b) he tries to pay with a gift credit card, which it appears you cannot do! At that point I lost interest and headed back to my seat. "Do you speak?" Priceless.
The train arrived in Grand Junction about an hour late, and one of guy's I'd had supper with dropped me off at the airport where I'm collecting my rental car. My plan was to drive to St George (Zion National Park) which would take about 5 1/2 hours - I decided that this was a bad plan and headed for Arches and Canynonlands instead. Zion and Brice can be done on another trip with Salt Lake City and Golden Spike.
Arches is impressive, but some of them do require a bit of a hike to get to, and it was the hottest part of the day when I arrived, so I skipped a few and got back in the car and headed for Canyonlands which is 'just across the road'.
Canyonlands is impressive, it's like the Grand Canyon, but without the tourists. I got there by about 17:00, so the sun was on it's way down and casting some great shadows. Arches was quite crowded, but I've got Canyonlands to myself. I was going to try and find somewhere to stay out here, but in the end I drove back to Grand Junction (arriving at about 21:00) , but finding a room proved a bit tricky - it seems that there is a motorbike race here and all the rooms are taken. In the end one Motel rang another who had some rooms, and I gave them my credit card number over the phone to secure it. The good news was that its was right by the interstate, and there was a Subway next door for supper.
NextView my route through the USA here
You haven't got JavaScript enabled - you're missing out
