People of Wal*Mart

Earth Date: 2014 July 28th
Location: Salt Lake City --> Price, Utah

Monday was a fairly relaxed day. We had plans to meet Mark Kozek that evening for dinner, and then heading down to Moab. Mark was coming in from Fort Collins, Colorado so we had some time to kill before he arrived. We decided that we had spent enough time in SLC, and went to the nearby Lehi to look at their dinosaur museum.

We spent a couple of hours looking around at exhibits. We were a little disappointed overall, and would not recommend driving out of your way to see it. We had been excited about what might be shown, as many fossils have been collected from Utah, but the number of exhibits were reasonably small.

As we waited for Mark, I looked over the weather in Moab. There were warnings of flash floods that would occur over the next couple of days, and we worried about setting up tent in that weather. We talked about our plans, and it turns out everyone was tired of staying in tents and didn't want to try and struggle with the elements.

We bandied about various plans, and the one that seemed the most convenient logistically was to make our way over to Zion that night, and pitching a tent there in the slightly better weather. If there was not a tent site to be found, we would try to find a cheap cabin. We would make our way over to Vegas a day earlier, and this would cut some of the driving out. At this point in the trip other plans we had were driving straight back to Whittier, and Amanda coming out to Vegas later in the week. We were travel weary, and ready to come home. Zion seemed like a compromise that involved less back and forth.

At least, this was the plan until we got to Bohemian Brewery and Grill, where we met Mark. As we were talking about our trips (Mark was also making his way across the United States, but he was coming back from the East Coast) we mentioned our plans to cut Moab out of our trip. Mark told us that when he had made a similar trek through the national parks of the US, Arches National Park was one of the highlights because it was so different and it would be a pity if we missed it. We had a pleasant dinner talking about where our trips had taken us, and the highlights. Mark had a slight advantage, as his trip was significantly longer than ours (and took him over to Brazil).

After making our leave with Mark, we discussed whether we wanted to stick with our original plan of cutting out Moab. After some discussion while driving south, we decided that we should cut out Zion instead. With the flash flood warnings in effect, we decided that to book a hotel instead of using our (unfortunately already booked and paid for) campgrounds.

Hotels in Moab are expensive. For that evening, the cheapest place we could find was around $200 per night. We could find a place for $100/night for Tuesday and Wednesday, so our plan evolved into sleeping in the car on Monday night, and then checking into the hotel for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Dinner had gone a little later than expected, and we were still driving around 2 am. I was certainly getting tired, and I think Amanda was as well. We decided that we would pull into the Wal*Mart in Price, Utah, as it did not matter too much where the car was as we tried to sleep in it -- as long as it was off the road and safe.