May 27/28

May 27
We had a lazy day today with a little shopping in Moab, lunch at the local brewery, and reading time in the afternoon. Every other vehicle in Moab is a 4x4 and the place is hopping with the Memorial Day weekend. After cooking three meals a day for a week, we decided eating out in Moab would be a nice change. The Sunset Grill high up on the hill overlooking Moab and the red rock cliffs was our choice for dinner. It is in the home that Charlie Steen built in the fifties after making it big in uranium mining. The house is three stories and a little tired at this point but it must have been quite the place in the fifties. He had a colorful past working as a geologist in South America and then in the oil fields in Texas. He ended up getting fired for insubordination and nobody would hire him. In 1950 he came out west after hearing that the government was subsidizing uranium mining. He and his family lived in a trailer and then a tarpaper shack as he continued drilling and coming up with nothing. He couldn’t afford the Geiger counter others were using. The story goes that two years later he went into Moab for gas with rock he had drilled out and put in the back of his beat up station wagon The gas station attendant came out with a Geiger counter and it went crazy! He had just found the largest concentration of uranium in the four corners area and became a multimillionaire over night. He spent like crazy. One story is that he couldn’t get good TV reception so he would fly over Moab in his private plane so his kids could watch their favorite TV shows. The story on the back of the menu ended with his move to Colorado, but the reality was that the money ran out and other ventures failed causing him claim bankruptcy in 1968. He must have had quite a ride living high while the money lasted! It is now a restaurant with every seat having a great view.
May 28
We had breakfast in town and headed north to make a circle drive up the Scenic Byway on Hwy 128 along the Colorado River. The river is 1,450 miles long, supplies 29 million people with water and irrigates 3.5 million acres of farmland. It has transformed desert land into cities, farms and recreations areas. Even now when it is running so high and fast it is hard to believe it can benefit so many. The Tamarisk plant now lines the river banks and is a worry at this point. It drinks about 17,000 gallons of water a day from the river! It is an invasive plant that made it’s way from Asia in the 1940’s. An eradication project has been set up but it must seem overwhelming. We drove up the river as far as the Dewey suspension bridge. It must have been quite a project when it was built in 1916. It had wooden planks and was strong enough to hold six horses, three wagons, and 9,000 pounds of supplies per crossing. It burned in 2008 and is now just a skeleton. There are still a couple of the original boards attached. We drove back to Castle Rock and Red Rock Cliff Resort. So many movies, TV shows and commercials were made in this area and the resort holds the memorabilia in a movie museum. With John Ford beginning to make films in the area in 1939, George White, a local Utah boy, founded the Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission in 1949 with the filming of Wagon Master. It holds the title as the longest running film commission in North America. Movies like Indiana Jones, TV shows like MacGyver, and the Malboro Man commercials all have some the area’s landmarks as their backdrops. It continues to help this area economically with locals being hired to build sets and play bit parts in many of the films. The museum did an excellent job showing how the locals have been involved. The resort is right on the river at a class 3 rapid. They offer a delicious Bar-B-Q lunch stop for visitors like us and river rafters. We sat on the grass having our burgers and looking out at the river and red rock cliffs. We watched a couple of groups go over the rapids as they screamed with delight. It brought back memories of our rafting trips. The circle drive took through Castle Valley and up into the La Sal Mountains.
　
　


Look who we ran into!



Rafts Lined Up along Colorado River - Red Cliff Lodge



WildFflowers and Cactus Are Blooming